Qatar Olympic Committee

On-site digitisation services for the Qatar Olympic Committee

For one of their large-scale projects in Qatar, EVS asked BCE to find a solution to digitise their customer content locally.

Local content digitisation

The Qatar Olympic Committee was looking for a partner to digitise their massive media archive, including picture, video and editorial content. Following a call-for-tender, EVS and Getty Images were selected.

EVS contacted BCE in order to build a solution that could answer their customer’s demand, meaning the digitisation of video content locally with an easy-to-configure provisory platform interconnected within the Qatar Olympic Committee workflow.

Quite often digitising providers need to import the content in order to make the digital copies and to ensure a certain consistency in the quality of the finalised material. In case of large scale projects, BCE can install a complete provisory platform, but since the Qatar Olympic Committee had a short-time frame, BCE’s services were off the chart.

A solution in a nutshell

Unity makes strength

EVS and BCE have worked hand in hand on many projects including the Mobile set project for the national Moroccan television (SNRT) and the engineering of EVS’ A/V & control solutions in their new headquarters.

Combining EVS servers and MAM technology with our integration knowhow, we created a mobile digitisation platform that fits in three standard flight cases. Easy to transport and to configure, the platform is immediately available on-site and ready to be operated.

BCE created the platform in less than a month. It is geared up with VHS, DVCAM, Digital Betacam players and recorders, servers, monitors, storage, computers and an automation system. BCE and EVS worked together to adapt ingest scheduling applications to work seamlessly with metadata standards and allow easy accessibility to the digitised content.

Manage the future

Since the Qatar Olympic Committee was upgrading its infrastructure to a tapeless platform, the solution could not be immediatly connected to their network.

In order to be able to digitise their files immediately, BCE integrated EVS’ MediArchive Director (MAD) inside the flight case, allowing this innovative system to work as a standalone platform. MAD provides the digitisation solution with a set of software tools that allow easy management of content once it has been archived.

Once the Qatar Olympic Committee’s content was digitised, EVS’ MAD solution allowed intelligent media browsing and gave users automated access to any available content.

With the infrastructure installed, a simple connection with their system allowed the transfer of data and metadata.

Flexibility and security

The three flight cases are interconnected and come with standard IT equipment to run the automation. Completely developed by BCE’s software engineers, the automation (Au2Ingest) is able to ingest multiple channels simultaneously. The system comes with a video display to monitor the video ingest. The 1600 hours of video content were digitised in less than six months. To manage the platform, two BCE operators were working on-site sending daily reports to the project managers in Luxembourg and the steering committee.

More than ingesting content, the platform embarks a digital QC system allowing error-free content to be stored on the internal storage.

Game changing innovation

This new solution is a real breakthrough for the digitisation market, BCE was already providing three ways to digitise its customer content including mass ingest at BCE in Luxembourg, provisory platform in the customer premises and integration of a digitisation platform.

With this mobile digitisation platform, BCE is able to meet the needs of the market for security of their archives. The content does not need to travel anymore; it is possible to easily configure a platform and to start the digitisation of your content on the fly.

Fitting in three flight cases, the platform can be moved with reduced transportation costs and operated locally by BCE staff or by your own employees after a short training provided by BCE experts.