Organizing Infrastructure

Digitization is useful when the digitized material is stored in a high quality format that will last its time, but even more so when it can be worked with easily. Content only becomes truly meaningful when it can be linked to interesting services and applications. To this end an infrastructure (the project’s back end) will be needed as a platform for all modules that will be connected to it in the (near) future (the project’s front end).

To properly supervise this, a separate ‘Digital Infrastructure’ sub workgroup has been formed within Images for the Future’s Workgroup 1. Sound and Vision heads this workgroup and delivers a distributional infrastructure that provides access to the digitized material in the best possible way. The infrastructure currently in use at Sound and Vision in Hilversum will serve as a starting point.  

The infrastructure is built with, among others:

• The multimedia catalogue iMMix (iMMix ASP). iMMix Sound and Vision’s new digital archiving system, linked to the Digital Provision (‘De Digitale Voorziening’). A user can search via fragments and directly view them in low resolution.
• The digital archive that functions as a storing facility for the system.
• Software that makes controlling, distributing, downloading, etc. of the content possible.
• The ingest-client that allows content to be added to the system (Ingest is the process in which tapes are converted to digital files and run through a quality check).
• The Meta-data client that allows for extra information to be coupled with content.
• The Digital Rights Management-system.
• A link to Surfnet, Kennisnet, ISP’s, etc. in Mediagateway, a system that can convert files to other formats.