Archive notice: This article was originally published on July 2, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Alongside ARD broadcasters and cooperating stations such as Swiss public broadcasting and Austria’s ORF, many ARD foreign bureaus have now been added to the replication network. The goal of the partnership between ARD and DAVID Systems was to make file transfer as simple as sending an email and integrate it as directly as possible into broadcasters’ tapeless workflows and IT infrastructures. By exchanging audio and video files via tapeless, IP- and network-based systems, the broadcasters aimed to achieve additional speed and cost advantages. In ARD and DAVID Systems projects completed by the beginning of this year, reports are not only sent using a push process; recipients can also search online data pools, order material and then transfer it using a pull process.
Divided into numerous projects, ARD continued its successful cooperation with Munich-based DAVID Systems. Since 2007, ARD’s network hubs and broadcasters in Germany, Austria and Switzerland have worked intensively on advancing Broadband Audio File Transfer (BAFT) for exchanging radio reports and audio files. Significant progress has also been made in further developing video-file transfer, with participation from IRT, between ARD broadcasters and the ARD broadcast centre using replicators and mailboxes from DAVID Systems. The advantage of these systems, based on standard IT technologies, is that sending reports is almost as simple for the sender as sending an email. Transfers use ARD’s internal networks or the internet.
Another advantage already used by many broadcasters and ARD network hubs is that DAVID Systems applications and solutions can be integrated into broadcasters’ internal tapeless workflows. Metadata and media files, for example, can be transferred directly to and from central file servers and archives.
Browse, order and request reports
In numerous projects completed by the beginning of this year, ARD employees can use Broadband Audio File Transfer to listen to audio reports from various pools through the intranet and order them when needed. Metadata and accompanying material such as graphics or text are generally available alongside the audio files. Examples include the Music Promotion Network for centralized distribution of new music-industry releases, digital access to archive material and broadband programme exchange for radio plays or features. Another system, the ARD TVAudio Pool, provides radio editors and journalists outside ARD with high-quality audio material from ARD television programmes for download. This material can be used to promote broadcasts attractively on radio or discuss them in media reviews after transmission.
Broadcasting increasingly depends on European cooperation. Together with ARD, DAVID Systems developed the technical infrastructure for the EBU Euroradio concert exchange. Concert recordings can be transferred directly from one European broadcaster to one or several ARD broadcasters simultaneously. Once a contribution has been distributed through ARD’s network hubs, it is stored and can subsequently be browsed in a pool. Editors can preview it and then place an order. The often extensive files are transferred later, overnight, to conserve bandwidth.
Long established as a standard in audio and radio, DAVID Systems’ IT standards-based Moves Media technology has now also become established within ARD for video-file transfer. Alongside exchanges between ARD broadcasters, ARD-aktuell, the ARD Play-Out Center and ARD network hubs, it is used to transmit reports between foreign bureaus and broadcasters, in some cases through laptops and mobile editing systems. At several ARD broadcasters, Moves Media applications also successfully handle system integration—exchange between different databases, archives and server architectures—and tapeless transfer to and from regional studios.
