Crawford Acquires New SAMMA Robot

Crawford
Media Management, a division of Crawford Communications, Inc. one of the
largest broadcast facilities in the
United States, acquires a new betacam
tape robot by SAMMA Systems. This
state-of-the-art robot, coupled with Crawford’s existing SAMMA Solo videotape
to digital file migration systems, enhances the Company’s leading-edge
services.

“The acquisition of this SAMMA robot compliments our SAMMA Solo systems
now employed successfully in the field,” says Jesse Crawford, CEO of
Crawford Communications. “We are committed to helping our clients overcome
the problem of migrating existing tape libraries into their new digital
workflows.”

The betacam tape robot is completely contained and provides three simultaneous
tape sources, each capable of up to three encode streams. Supported codecs
include standard definition MXF wrapped Motion JPEG 2000 and a combination of
two other formats: MPEG-2, Windows Media, QuickTime or Flash.

With the ability to operate around the clock, even large libraries can be
migrated in a fraction of the time. Proxy files can be encoded simultaneously
with hi-res files. The robot benefits both broadcast and archival projects.

Crawford launched its media management division in 2007. According to Steve
Davis, vice president of media management for Crawford, “We believe that
automated processes, such as the SAMMA platform, are the key to overcoming the
huge backlog of tape media that awaits digital migration. We have been
migrating double shifts at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington, D.C.
since December. This robot will allow us to extend our efforts beyond regular
business hours, greatly improving the efficiency of this project.”

Mark Gray, CEO of SAMMA Systems comments, “Crawford Communications has a
long history of bringing high quality innovative services to their customers.
Over the years they have established a leadership position in many important
markets. Now that the industry is moving from videotape to digital files,
Crawford is once again at the forefront, providing content digitization and
management services for their clients.”

He adds, “In an era when many organizations are becoming worried about
losing their valuable content due to videotape deterioration, Crawford’s
clients can rest assure that their valuable content is being digitized,
preserved and managed by an organization that understands the importance of
preservation and has the tools and expertise to do the job properly.”