The audiovisual archives are much more than the legacy of TVs

The audiovisual memory of TVs is strategic for generating new content and monetization, not only an archive to be consulted. This was the consensus reached by the attendees at the panel “MAM – The Challenges of Managing Archives, given the Non-Material Nature of Pictures” during the SET EXPO Conference. Erick Soares, a technology expert at Sony, opened the discussions, emphasizing the essential issues for digitalizing old media, such as magnetic tapes which require appropriate temperatures and chemical processes that cleanse and preserve them before they are digitalized.

In the case of the studio, this demands a production line concept, given the immense amount of data, as well as metadata governance, systems architecture, connectivity and the capability to evolve with the new technologies and demands so as to prevent them from becoming obsolete in the future. The strategic importance of metadata was also touched on by the other speakers, like François Modarresse, international business consultant at Eidr, a company with over 20 million titles identified and whose proposal is to use the digital information available to create a unique identifier.

“This is an essential step to easily find an archive among millions of sources, enrich it and transmit it, once again generating incomes using the material”, he asserted. Cutting out manual work in this environment could reduce the costs for TV channels belonging to studios by more than US$ 30 million a year, according to the company’s projections. SBT was represented by Juliana Ferrari, Media Center Operations Technology director, and Giuliano Charadia, the channel’s Head of Digital.

They discussed the case for digitalizing archives using a unique identifier for localization and whose metadata are being completed with additional information such as exclusivity, copyright and restrictions on use. Also dealt with was the launch of the TBT of SBT last Thursday, which draws on the Brazilian audience’s affective and emotional recollection of programs to re-launch content on YouTube every Thursday – in just four days, there were over 40,000 views, creating automatic monetization on the platform.