Like most other broadcasters, Finnish Radio is addressing the problem of what to do with its mounting volume of sound archive material, much of it still stored on quarter-inch analogue tape. A digital archive system is planned for the year 2000 and this article looks at the thinking which has gone into the planning of this new system.

The EC-funded Euromedia project set out to develop the software components for a basic digital video archive platform. Based on this work, the German engineering company TecMath – who was a Euromedia project partner – has produced a multimedia repository called “MediaArchive”.

In this article, the author describes three successful implementations of MediaArchive by public broadcasters in Germany and Austria: ARD BUFFET, SWR FAMOS and the “Euromedia Light” version that has been implemented by ORF.

At the beginning of 1997, RAI launched an internal project with the goal of digitizing and redocumenting all the audio-visual materials produced and owned by RAI. The project has been subdivided into several sub-projects, according to the parallel developments taking place in multimedia catalogues, radio and TV libraries, etc.

After a brief description of the system architecture, the article describes the RAI Multimedia Catalogue in some detail.

There are not yet any accepted definitions for the “safe areas” in widescreen television production. This was a matter of pressing concern in the UK so the UK broadcasters together drew up an ad-hoc standard for immediate use in the UK.

The basic concepts behind dual-standard transmissions and the approach taken to achieving compatibility, are outlined here. The reasoning for setting the safe areas at the chosen values are then given.