Sonuma is a publicly funded
subsidiary of Radio Télévision
Belge Francophone (RTBF), the
Walloon region of Belgium,
and the FWB (Federation
Wallonie-Bruxelles), with a
goal to archive, preserve, and
protect francophone audiovisual
content. We are dedicated to
the digitisation, preservation,
and commercialisation of the
rich diversity of assets within
the RTBF archives (amongst
others), an audio and video
collection that comprises more
than 120,000 hours of content
on all variety of media, including
VCR tape, DAT tape, LP, MD, and
16mm film.
We began our work on the
Sonuma project in the spring of
2009. To manage digitisation of
the tens of thousands of hours
of RTBF archive content, we
implemented the NETIA content
management system (CMS).
We chose to work with NETIA not
only because the company has a
long history in audio production
and management, but also
because the company’s suite
of media asset management
solutions is highly focused on
handling documentary content
and metadata appropriately,
and it offers convenient tools for
preserving and enriching these
audio and video assets.
Integrating seamlessly into
our existing environment, the
NETIA CMS has enabled us to
leverage previous technology
investments to realise a highly
automated workflow from
ingest through to delivery.
The solution simplifies the task
of preserving, managing, and
accessing content within our
rapidly growing digital library.
The Sonuma library in turn
supports hundreds of journalists
from RTBF and other media
outlets, allowing them to order
and import content, facilitating
and automating the delivery of
archived media to RTBF.
When digitising RTBF
content, we use an internally
developed process for
consolidating metadata from
various metadata sources and
formats, along with metadata
collected through segmentation.
Metadata and media – both
high-resolution and a low-resolution
proxies created via
a CarbonCoder transcoder
– are ingested into the NETIA
system, in which search tools
and a powerful Thesaurus
subsequently aid archivists in
performing fast searches of
stored content. The archive
itself is a StorageTEK
SL3000 from Oracle
and the HSM is
a SAM-QFS file - system.
In managing this
workflow, the NETIA
CMS organises
media management
processes,
harmonises
exchanges
between different
applications,
handles prioritisation across
the system, and automates
content distribution processes.
The system brings efficiency
to content delivery, as well,
supplying tools for content
packaging, metadata tagging,
and rights management, with
workflow-supervision guiding
these processes. As a result,
RTBF journalists, directors, and
producers all can gain access
to archived RTBF media via
their DaletNews, news and
production system as well
as Tramontane archiving
applications, conceived by RTBF.
And potentially in the future, our
archivists will be able to make
media available to the public via
the Sonuma website.
The volume of
content within the
Sonuma archive grows
steadily, and effective
and highly automated
media management
workflows are essential
to our ability to share
this unique content. As
we move forward, the
power, flexibility, and
scalability of the NETIA
CMS will be essential to
the maintenance and expansion
of what has already become a
valuable large-scale operation.
Eric Denis is IT Manager at
Sonuma.
Contacts
Sonuma
Netia