INA, France’s National Audiovisual Institute, chooses EVS-OpenCube for its MXF JPEG2000 long term archive

French Version

Toulouse, 8 December 2011 – INA, the Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, which owns and manages the central repository for all French radio and television audiovisual archives, has opted for EVS-OpenCube ingest servers to digitize its video archives in MXF Jpeg2000. OpenCube, part of EVS group, is a leading provider of MXF solutions for broadcast production and archive migration.

Since the launch in 1999 of its massive audiovisual asset preservation and digitisation plan, INA, France’s National Audiovisual Institute, has generated over 300,000 digital Betacam tapes, which it has now decided to migrate into files. In addition, INA plans to archive all of its new SD and HD inputs directly into files. 

The project raised two critical issues that had to be addressed. The first was to ingest all of these materials using a codec technology that would provide both quality and integrity for long term preservation. The second was to choose a master file format that would allow flawless transcoding when these contents were delivered in different formats for different uses and users. After careful study, INA opted in favour of the MXF Jpeg2000 file format, based on EVS-OpenCube technologies.

EVS-OpenCube has both the expertise and the comprehensive solutions required for MXF Jpeg2000 ingesting and file mastering, whether lossy or mathematically lossless. The Linux-based EVS-OpenCube HD/SD video servers are widely used on the U.S. market, notably by 20th Century Fox for daily production and by Iron Mountain for JFK archive migration.

INA chose to implement several EVS-OpenCube units for an industrialized and comprehensive digitization process. The ingest servers are connected to several Flexicart Libraries and generate MXF Jpeg2000 files in SD and HD from “visually lossless” to “lossless”, with different encoding qualities depending on the content’s use.

The MXF files produced by the ingest server offer a high level of compliance with MXF SMPTE standards and seamless interoperability with third party system such as QC and transcoding tools. INA will now be able to carry out its massive digitization operation over the next several years with the guarantee that they are backed by a reliable digitization system and highly efficient MXF file management tools.

After having been part of numerous audiovisual migration projects in 2011 – notably for Antena 3 (Spain), SNRT (Morocco) and GTRF (Russia) – EVS, with INA, will be adding a new and valuable reference to its customer portfolio and thus continue leveraging its MXF expertise for video archive projects.  

“This is a strategic project for INA. We have to partner with companies that provide solid technologies as well as long term sustainability as this project will continue to gain momentum in the coming years,” says Jean Varra, Head of the INA Archive Department. “EVS has an exceptionally strong track record and offers us proven solutions and the know–how we need to carry out the project successfully”.

Adds Benoit Fevrier, General Manager of EVS-OpenCube: “We are grateful to INA for their confidence in our technologies. Their decision means a lot to us and underscores the value of our approach: we make no concessions when it comes to Standard implementation”. 

About EVS-OpenCube (www.evs-opencube.com)

OpenCube, part of EVS since April 2010, has world-class expertise in providing flexible and cost-effective MXF-format solutions. The company develops advanced HD/SD ingest gateways and innovative technology applications to streamline workflows and effectively manage media content lifecycles: from capture to digitization, delivery and archive, display and record, convert, re-purpose and re-use.

About INA

The Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (or INA, French for National Audiovisual Institute,) is the central repository for all French radio and television audiovisual archives. Its headquarters are located in Bry–sur–Marne.

For further information, please visit www.ina.fr

For more information about this press release, please contact:

Nicolas BOURDON
Marketing & Communications Director
+32 4 361 5810
marketing@evs.tv

Benoit Février
General Manager, EVS-OpenCube
+33 561 285 606
contact@evs-opencube.com