Belgium’s Sonuma, a subsidiary of RTBF (Radio Télévision Belge Francophone) responsible for the digitization and commercialization of RTBF’s archives, is implementing Netia’s content management system to manage 120,000 hours of archive, writes David Fox.
The Netia CMS should simplify the task of preserving, managing, and accessing content within Sonuma’s rapidly growing library, which in turn will support hundreds of RTBF journalists and enable delivery of archived media to partner news organizations.
Sonuma chose Netia because its media asset management system “is highly focused on documentary aspects, can be customized and scaled to our operations, and provide the power and flexibility required in complex, large-scale media management applications,” explained Eric Denis, Sonuma’s IT manager.
“By integrating seamlessly into our existing environment, the Netia CMS will enable us to leverage previous technology investments to realize a highly automated workflow.”
The RTBF archive encompasses content on a wide range of media, including VCR tape, DAT, LP, MD, and 16mm film. Sonuma developed its own process of metadata consolidation from various metadata sources and formats, along with metadata collected through segmentation and automatic speech-to-text transcription. Both metadata and media are ingested into the Netia system, which allows archivists to perform fast searches of stored content.
In managing this workflow, the CMS organizes media management, harmonizes exchanges between applications, handles prioritization, and automates content distribution. To streamline content delivery, the CMS provides tools for content packaging, metadata tagging, and rights management, with workflow-supervision guiding these processes. RTBF journalists, directors, and producers will have access to Sonuma’s archived media via their newsroom applications.
“The Netia CMS is an ideal fit for the Sonuma project, as it not only preserves and enriches audio and video assets, but also simplifies processing and management of those assets from ingest through delivery,” claimed Yoann Poizeau, Netia product director. “With a streamlined and highly automated media management and archiving workflow in place, Sonuma will be positioned to make its large store of media assets readily available to RTBF users, as well as to external clients.”
