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everything is digital, but over time, they’re going to take their historical
content and re-ingest it so that it’s in digital format.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.
