Working with the archives team, the broadcaster's Research & Development team and GB Labs, a system was configured that integrates with existing fault tracking, QC and database systems.
The project being given priority because of was the impending obsolescence of the D3 format tapes that the content was originally recorded on.
Facing the prospect of holding years of programmes on unusable tapes, the archives team needed to transfer the content to modern media, quickly, safely and accurately.
Ben Pearce, Chief Business Officer and Co-Founder of GB Labs, comments:
“The archive tapes need to stand the test of time so the broadcaster stipulated that the LTO drives should be able to sustain the maximum writing speed in order to avoid any wear from tape shuttling.
And to ensure that as many as 20 quality control operators can concurrently access any of the uncompressed files over its network, they had to be sure that our shared storage solution could handle this high level of data traffic.
With the SPACE and VAULT integration, the transfer and quality checking process has been significantly speeded up while data security has been improved.”
With tape handling reduced, copying times lowered and the speed of fault tracking increased, BBC Archives are now working their way through the backlog of material awaiting quality control.
The team has learnt lessons about resilience and redundancy along the way and is now confident that it has now mastered an improved method of fast and safe content archiving.
News archives, comedy shows, dramas and documentaries are now secured for future audiences.
Whether it is released on disk, broadcast as TV repeats, made available via an online platform or simply pored over by social historians, years of D3 archive have been preserved for posterity.
The project being given priority because of was the impending obsolescence of the D3 format tapes that the content was originally recorded on.
Facing the prospect of holding years of programmes on unusable tapes, the archives team needed to transfer the content to modern media, quickly, safely and accurately.
