The M-Net video archive has been made searchable frame by frame, with the introduction of Convera Screening Room technology from Knowledge Focus.
The new technology was introduced after new kykNET CEO Theo Erasmus took the reins of the Afrikaans TV channel. While the kykNET library was well-catalogued and ordered, the only information in the archives was the title, a synopsis and the producer of a particular show, but no information on the actual content, frame-by-frame, of the tapes.
"We have more than 290 000 tapes in our library. M-Net does not have copyright on most of those," says Dave Hagen, head of broadcast services at M-Net. "However, where M-Net does hold copyright on a show, and the out-takes of the show, we have the opportunity to re-use footage that has already been shot, significantly reducing production costs."
He says the challenge was to find technology that allows the company to mine the available footage to help run the business more cost-effectively. "We ran a three-month pilot phase, which cost us very little as we didn`t have to buy the software outright."
"Traditionally, I would have to pull a tape from the library and go through it to find suitable footage for producers," says kykNET archivist Zenobia Gillion. "Now it`s much easier to search for information because I simply type in a word and a range of different footage is displayed."
The project team has started digitising kykNET and Carte Blanche footage in low resolution, and will move on to other M-Net content soon. The digitisation process automatically captures both the moving images and a storyboard, and generates an automatic time code. This low-resolution footage with its concurrent metadata is then imported into Convera Screening Room, where it is fully searchable and is available on the desktop.
Asked why the digitisation process is not in high resolution, Hagen said while there is much hype around media asset management, M-Net`s requirement is not for a new library system, but simply for a new way to search through the library it already has.
Piet Dempsey, MD of Knowledge Focus, agrees: "The value of being able to search through content intelligently cannot be underestimated. This solution puts M-Net on par with leading organisations such as Encyclopaedia Britannica and National Geographic Television, and allows M-Net to create additional markets for its video assets."
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