National Film Board of Canada digitizes 70 years of history with Atempo

Atempo Digital Archive will preserve and manage more than 6,000 hours of content as part of the NFB Content Digitization Project that has 70 years of history. XML ingestion allows the archiving of all digital assets along with all their metadata creating three digital versions: uncompressed, digital master with image and sound processing, and an unjoined and compressed file that is used to generate copies for streaming.

Atempo is collaborating with the National Film Board (NFB) of Canada to carry out the complete digitization of its collection of films and tapes with a fund of more than 70 years gathered in 13,000 works and 6,000 hours of content.

Founded in 1939, the NFB has produced and distributed bold and diverse social documentaries, arthouse animations, alternative dramas and innovative digital content from a unique perspective. When planning its digitization project, the challenge was to preserve its incalculable audiovisual legacy for future generations and at the same time, make these collections available to anyone on the platform they prefer, including screening of plays, online streaming and on mobile devices.

The chosen solution has been Atempo Digital Archive (ADA) which with its cataloguing, indexing and search functions, the extensive capabilities of ADA optimally satisfy the most critical needs of NFB. Additionally, by fully integrating with NFB's legacy management system, ADA helps improve content workflow.

Ingest XML

XML ingestion allows the archiving of all digital assets along with all their metadata. In the NFB digitization workflow, three separate digital versions are created and archived for each production: the uncompressed Digital Source Master, the Digital Master with image processing and sound elements, and an unjoined and compressed file that is used to generate copies of the production for other distribution platforms such as broadband streaming and mobile devices. At the same time, each digital version also requires the recording and archiving of the films' metadata, which includes the resolution at which they have been digitized, the different ratios, source types and other content factors. For every one hundred titles, digitization processes generate around 10 million metadata entries associated with 30 TB of content and 2.4 million files.

Much of NFB's films are edited into new works and ADA automation allows the organization to effectively meet its objectives by providing specific platforms and formats for its users. ADA provides an easy-to-use graphical interface that simplifies metadata searches and enables drag-and-drop archiving and retrieval that allows NFB technicians and collection managers to efficiently search and find archived works.

For media and entertainment users, Atempo Digital Archive advances preservation and hierarchical storage management (HSM), to actively participate in day-to-day workflows. Today, more and more organizations are required to retain their creative data in different states throughout its lifecycle. Raw data, edited files and final projects need to be stored, just as any versions should be saved for future projects. ADA's transparency to end users and its integration with popular creative applications allows people to easily archive the content creation process in multiple steps and drag information in and out of archives as needed. This makes it possible for users to transfer fixed digital assets stored in Final Cut Server and other applications to a wide number of long-term storage devices simply by using the application's native interface.