NAB Event News
NASCAR Taps Front Porch Digital For Content Storage Management
By
Apr 15, 2008 - 7:47:41 PM

by Carolyn Braff

NASCAR is moving its headquarters to a new building next summer and by the boxes are unpacked, the company’s workflow will be entirely digital. As part of the move, NASCAR is digitizing all of its tape archives, relying on the DIVArchive system from Front Porch Digital to get it done.

“NASCAR has used a bunch of different vendors, Front Porch being one, to create a cradle-to-grave digital workflow,” explains Dave Polyard, senior vice president of sales for Front Porch Digital. “That gives them a lot of flexibility long-term to be able to repurpose and reuse content that they’re capturing and creating today.”

The DIVArchive content storage management system is newly enhanced for NAB 2008 to include multiple parallel transcode support, rebuilding damaged data tape functionality and IBM TS3550 library support, among other innovations. The DIVArchive software bridges the gap between the broadcast side, where NASCAR uses a videobank and Quantel editing systems, and the IT side, where content is being stored on a Spectra Logic T950 data tape library.

Front Porch installed the system in NASCAR’s Charlotte office last month, and talks of phase two have already begun.

“Now we’re talking about the second phase which is fine tuning, high definition and also talking about their move to their new facility in downtown Charlotte,” Polyard says. “Immediately, everything is digital, but over time, they’re going to take their historical content and re-ingest it so that it’s in digital format. Eventually, their entire library will be on data tapes instead of deteriorating video tapes.”

The process of going digital and having a fully-searchable digital archive is also creating opportunities for NASCAR to create new sponsorship opportunities, new consumer products and new broadcast products, and NASCAR is opening the door for Front Porch to tap further into the sports market.

“We think that there are many other opportunities in sports,” Polyard says. “It’s also an opportunity to save really important history because these old video tapes are rotting away.”

Also new for NAB is DIVAprotect, an option for DIVArchive that monitors the storage device and media performance to warn of degradation before data loss can occur.