San Francisco Giants Digitize Historical Video Archives with SGL FlashNet

The reigning World Series champions San Francisco Giants have purchased the FlashNet archive system created by Software Generation Ltd (SGL). The installation, which sees FlashNet fully integrated into the Giants’ Avid workflow, was carried out by systems integrator Cutting Edge.

In January 2012, the Giants installed an Avid ISIS online shared storage system and Avid Interplay PAM system to begin their transition to a digital workflow. The SGL FlashNet archive followed in January this year allowing the Giants to begin the process of digitising their huge catalogue of material dating back to the 60s and 70s. This material, which is currently stored on various tapes such QIC and Beta, has significant historical value for the club and for future generations.

The Giants are also constantly creating a large amount of new material for the scoreboard, the website, TV and advertising. This continuing acquisition of content means that the ISIS operators need to run the system as efficiently as possible, pushing old material off as new material comes in.

“The ISIS is always running at about 60/70 per cent capacity,” says Paul Hodges, Executive Producer, San Francisco Giants. “We have to make the decision as to which material stays online and which gets sent to the archive. Some of the very old material from the 70s is kept on the ISIS because when a player from that period comes to see a game we like to show footage on the scoreboard to welcome them. It’s quite hard for us to pull those clips quickly so we have to keep that type of material online. On the flip side all the material from 2009 – 2011 is being archived because we’re unlikely to need to use that for a while.”

He adds, “We’re really happy with the system. The workflow between SGL FlashNet and Interplay is seamless; it’s been a great investment and installation and training was very quick and easy. We made a huge investment in Avid with Interplay and ISIS and required an archive that fully integrated with that workflow. We looked at a couple of other systems but nothing was as seamless as SGL. Cutting Edge did a great job, they were really behind SGL and they’re fully trained on the entire workflow so it was a no brainer.”

Doug Wynn, SGL’s VP Sales Americas concludes, “This installation is an excellent reference for other sports production facilities. The material held by these teams has huge historical value that needs to be preserved for future generations. Using a digital workflow, facilities can digitise their material and also find new ways of working that enable them to run with greater efficiency and save money.”