Harris Broadcast Provides Invenio® Digital Asset Management to European Parliament

The Harris®Invenio solution was chosen by the EP after an open call for tender procedure. BelgianSystems integrator VideoPromotion managed the project.

The Invenio softwareforms the backbone of the EP archive, handling the automation, restoration andmovement of assets and the copying of files into other systems. The archive includesa 35 GB database containing 15,000 tapes, 65,000 video high-resolution filesand 65,000 low-resolution files. This database is growing daily through theaddition of up to 20 new files, each containing up to five hours of content andoriginating from more than 40 different types of events within the EP.

“The archive handlesrequests from journalists at up to 30 external TV stations during the plenarysessions, as well as web requests and requests from researchers and the EPadministration,” said Adelino Pires André, project manager at VideoPromotion.“In one week, up to 80 percent of requests directed at our department will be demandsfor original archived content. With Invenio, you can search within a largevideo file and pinpoint the exact clip you’re looking for. It’s magic.”

The project firstinvolved the migration of all existing tape content from the legacy system tovideo files within Invenio, and the deployment of Invenio Motion for workflowand integration with third-party systems and Invenio Insight for front-endusers.

“The previous vendor’ssolution only handled tapes and provided no workflow automation capabilities,”continued Pires André. “This was not just a migration, but a complete change inthe way the archive department works. Inside Invenio, we can play, mark in ormark out, enrich the archive with user-directed selections you can listen tovideo in multiple languages, handle audio or still images, and export metadatato other systems if needed.”

The plenarysessions of the EP are recorded in 18 languages, the recordings of which areautomatically fed into the Invenio system with EPlogger, a custom applicationdesigned by Harris for the EP. Other events such as symposiums and meetings canalso be logged manually in EPlogger or updated by the archivists themselveswith qualitative data after the event.

Invenio is linkedto the EP’s in-house semi-automatic eCarton flow system, which, among otherthings, captures metadata from each microphone used during events. ElectronicVideo News (EVN) files are also created by post-production after many eventsand need to be archived appropriately. In the archive, the GUI interface allowsa search in English or French. Thesystem is highly redundant and can withstand three points of failure.

“This projectdemonstrates the strength of Invenio when it comes to digital asset managementin a complex, live multi-cultural environment,” said Mathias Eckert, vicepresident, sales and services, Europe and Africa at Harris BroadcastCommunications. “The European Parliament values the ability of the Inveniosolution to handle and automatically capture multi-language metadata, tocomplete searches within video files and to offer low-resolution previews ofany video content in the archive. We believe that the customer will trulybenefit from the fact that Invenio is a unique packaged solution that is easyto maintain and evolve.”