Tedial integrates the use of Sony's e-VTR in digitalization

With the integration of Sony's MSWM2000P/BKMW-E3000 e-VTR, Tedial facilitates the flow of digitizing large volumes of material in this format.

Throughout the history of television, tape has gone through countless formats, although it is possibly Betacam, introduced by Sony in 1982, the format in its SP, Digital, SX and MPEG IMX versions, the most widespread throughout the world. To have an idea of ​​the volume of material in this format, it is worth noting that Televisión Española, for example, has more than 80,000 hours in its archives. One of the great advantages of the Betacam range is that it is designed to be compatible with the different existing variants, guaranteeing the reading of previous formats by the new Betacam format.

MPEG IMX VCRs, introduced by Sony in 2001, can play all previous Betacam formats. Sony later introduced the e-VTR concept to facilitate IP transmission over a Gigabit connection of MXF files with D10 MPEG-2 IMX material. An additional advantage of Betacam tapes in IMX format is that we can extract MPEG-2 material without the need for encoding and at 2x speed.

Now Tedial has integrated the Sony e-VTR MSWM2000P/BKMW-E3000 into the digitalization flow of video files in the different Betacam formats. The e-VTR is connected to the data network and is controlled by the Media Process Manager ingestion agent, making the use of digitization stations or video servers unnecessary. Automating the digitization of a video library requires taking into account the different cases that will appear: multi-clip tapes, multi-tape clips, tapes with color bars and/or black separator segments, tapes with discontinuous TC. Therefore, it is essential to establish a digitization control process to extract the clips and catalog them correctly based on the information stored in the video library database.

Through Tedial's Ficus production process management system, operators receive digitalization orders. They will insert the Betacam tapes into the e-VTR or the Flexicart tape library. The MXF files with D10 MPEG-2 IMX material generated by the e-VTR are transferred live to the storage system managed by AST, which is Tedial's distributed HSM system. In real time the MPM generates a proxy copy in H.264 format with audioAAC. Using Proxy copy the operator will define the existing clips on the tape or create an EDL of segments belonging to the same clip. All cutting editing operations created by the operator are automatically executed by the MPM. The MXF files with D10 MPEG-2 IMX material are conformed in accordance with the SMPTE-378M standard, the storyboard is generated and both the high-quality MXF copy with D10 MPEG-2 IMX material and the low-quality H.264 copy are indexed, to facilitate partial media recovery. Finally, all media files, auxiliary files and associated metadata are ingested into TarsysS/AST, which is Tedial's content management system. The incorporation of the Sony e-VTR into the digitalization flow of Betacam tape video libraries represents a significant simplification of the digitization process, making the use of automation systems unnecessary.