Monday, 12th April 2010

BCE’s Engineering and Digitization departments worked hand in hand for the setup and installation of a mass digitization infrastructure including a Media Asset Management system. The infrastructure makes also all historical contents of the European Parliament for archivists, production team and public available.

Late 2008, the European Parliament selected BCE for the complete installation of its digitizing infrastructure and for the digitization of video content with quality check and corrections to ensure the best quality.

In less than 12 months, BCE delivered a fully operating platform. To this purpose BCE created a test infrastructure in its premises for the fine tuning and the first phase of digitization. The platform was then moved to Brussels, ready to work.

“Even with tight schedules, BCE worked in a very effective way and met the deadlines for both infrastructure installation and content digitization”
Philippe Masson | Chief Engineer of the Audiovisual Unit | European Parliament

BCE also developed a software solution for the interface between the European Parliament’s existing Flexicart and the new Front Porch Digital library.

“The software interface between the Sony Flexicart and Front Porch Digital’s SAMMA products is very effective and intuitive. We decided to resell this interface for future similar needs.”
Rino Petricola | SVP, Managing Director | Front Porch Digital International

The European Parliament may now discard the tape and focus on the re-use of its archives in new films. Thanks to the metadata, the users of the platform have better search results, opening a world of content to the production department.

About the European Parliament
The European Parliament, a directly elected institution of the European Union since 1979, is one of the world’s most powerful legislatures.
The audiovisual unit provides broadcasting on an internal cable television network, and transmission to Europe by Satellite (EBS), the news exchange networks, and to selected television channels. It also provides video streaming to the Web, publication on FTP servers and oversees a media archive kept for legal and historical records and for the use of parliamentarians, journalists and scholars.