BCE and Front Porch Digital won the IBC2010 Award for content management

The finalists in the content management category were the multi-platform newsroom at Antena 3 in Spain and the plan to bring the 50 years of video and audio archive of the European Parliament online. Because it harnessed remarkable technology (automatically ingesting from a huge number of formats) to a civic issue (giving the public access to their parliamentary debates) the judges handed the prize to the European Parliament Audiovisual Unit.

"Using Front Porch Digital's SAMMA and DIVArchive tools, the European Parliament is securing priceless historic video and making it accessible to the public today and to scholars tomorrow," said Rino Petricola, Front Porch Digital's senior vice president and general manager. "We are grateful for this recognition from the top organization in international broadcasting, and we hope and anticipate that it will shine a light on the innovative digital storage technologies available today so that other organizations with valuable content may take advantage of them."

Following a call for tender, BCE & Front Porch Digital teamed up and achieved the platform in less than a year. It is the first time that the digitization process passes directly from the encoder to the digital library archive without the use of a server and its proprietary file format, allowing the audiovisual team to work faster and drastically reducing energy consumption.

The content is stored in an 18,000 hours digital archive with the upgrade capability to 90,000 hours of video files. Its internal and public access is made via the Media Asset Management which handles high resolution copies for production use and low resolution files for the 16 external consoles and the archivists working stations. The next step of the project will be the connection with the production department to encourage the content re-use for future films, series & documentaries.

The EP's audiovisual unit oversees a media archive kept for the legal and historical record and for the use of parliamentarians, journalists, and scholars. To ensure preservation and access, the EP audiovisual unit deployed six Front Porch Digital SAMMA Solo systems to perform real-time, simultaneous encoding of content into multiple digital files that then come under the management of Front Porch Digital's DIVArchive content storage management (CSM) solution. For access, the EP relies on Front Porch Digital's DIVAdirector® application running in combination with DIVArchive and Harris T-Rex media asset management to enable cataloging, tracking, browsing, and retrieval of archived clips.

"Preserving contents for future generations is a race on time. With its digitization infrastructure and its tapeless workflow, the contents are protected and their re-use in new production optimized," comments Jean Lampach, Chief Technology & Development Officer at BCE. "The innovation award rewards the European Parliament for its concern on historical archives and their added value, but also rewards all our team for the development of such platforms".

“The European Parliament is one of the first media organisations to reap the benefits of efficiency, cost effectiveness and transparency in an integrated migration and management workflow.” Rino Petricola, SVP Managing Director at Front Porch Digital International.

IBC received some 100 nominations for the innovation awards across three categories. Judges said the EP project stood out not only for remarkable and innovative digital migration technology, but also because of its linkage to an important civic issue: giving the public access to parliamentary debates.

The award was accepted on behalf of the European Parliament by Fernando Carbajo, Head Audiovisual Unit and Stéphane Rigaud, Head of the engineering department of the Audiovisual Unit.

About The European Parliament

The European Parliament (EP) has been a directly elected institution of the European Union since 1979. It is one of the world’s most powerful legislatures. Besides providing broadcasting services on an internal cable television network, the European Parliament’s audiovisual unit provides video streaming to the Web and publication to FTP servers, and transmission to Europe by Satellite (EBS), the news exchange networks, and selected television channels. The mission of the EP Audiovisual Unit thus is integral to the core democratic mission of the Parliament itself, ensuring that the electorate to whom the Parliament is responsible can see, and study the record of the decision-making process.

About Broadcasting Center Europe (BCE)

BCE is a European leader in technical services in the areas of television, radio, production and postproduction, telecommunication, and IT. With its long experience on the media market, the BCE team provides high-quality services and finds the right solution to match any project and budget. With more than 200 high qualified and motivated employees, BCE serves about 400 clients in various sectors, such as TV channels, radio stations, film distributors, producers, advertising companies, telecommunications operators, and public services.

About Front Porch Digital

Front Porch Digital is the global leader for solutions that migrate, manage, and market media content. Front Porch Digital’s SAMMA® product line performs accelerated migration of media content from vulnerable analog videotape to secure and readily accessible digital storage. Protected by three U.S. patents, the company’s DIVArchive® content storage management (CSM) solution creates a unified system of digital storage from ingest to archive that is distinguished for superior functionality, scalability, performance, and customer satisfaction. In DIVAsolo®, Front Porch Digital has combined the two technologies to form a cost-effective, end-to-end system for preserving, managing, and repurposing media content. More information is available at