By grabbing the nettle and deciding what is important, APTN and Arkemedia are building what we think will be a model for the future of content sales.
The Associated Press Television News (APTN) have started a bold project with high ambitions, to become the world’s largest digital commercial library, making thousands of hours of footage available for viewing. To help them archive this they have called on Arkemedia.
When completed, this system will reach the ideals that we at Digital Lifestyles believe will become the norm for organisation holding video content available to other interested parties.
When an APTN Library client requires some of the APTN footage for inclusion in piece they are creating, they will be able to review and select from all digitised material online. Nothing ground breaking up to here, but this is where is gets interesting, they will be able to complete their own edits using a browser-based editing tool, remotely. Upon completion, they will be able to request footage using online ordering and payment. The video material is stored at full broadcast quality, enabling the client to have it delivered any format the they select, be that encoded or physical tape, or at a later date full-quality IP delivery.
While we have been speaking about this kind of access to video material as the way forward it is encouraging to they are starting this project now, and plan to complete it by 3rd quarter next year, 2005.
As with all of these projects, the mechanism to access the material is just one segment of the project. The other significant challenge is the initial digitisation of the material, and on an ongoing basis, its refreshment. At launch they will have 1,000 hours of content that they plan to supplement with an extra 2,000 hours on a yearly basis taken from their content that they generate over that year.
In an unusual, but we think thoughtful move, they will not be digitising their extensive archive in the hope that someone will buy or use it, but will digitise on-demand, as it is ordered by their clients.