CBC, Canada's national public broadcaster, will install Bitcentral's Oasis content archiving and management system.
CBC is the largest news broadcaster in Canada and manages a daily stream of news programming in English and French to stations from St. John's in the east to Vancouver in the west. The Oasis solution will be integrated into Newstream, the system the broadcaster currently uses to push content to its affiliates. Currently, daily offerings are selected centrally and affiliates can vet that handful of story choices, which are then delivered via a satellite feed from Toronto.
With the installation of Oasis, about 14 affiliates and bureaus will be able to search all daily and archived content from the CBC via the Internet, using a browser-based interface to access the centralized server in Toronto. This will increase the quantity and quality of content available to news professionals as they prepare their daily newscasts. It also will eliminate satellite delivery charges. Because Oasis is built as a nonproprietary archiving solution, CBC affiliates will be able to take advantage of a broader array of video content without investing in new, vendor-specific hardware.
"Digital file-based IP delivery represents the most cost-effective way for our affiliates to access breaking news as well as archived material," said John Bainbridge, director of news production, CBC News.
Oasis attaches metadata, which stays with the assets throughout the archiving process, easing the retrieval of video by any authorized user. Because the solution is open, affiliates can select off-the-shelf storage servers with capacity to meet local needs for downloaded content.
