Front Porch to Preserve Tennis History

Front Porch Digital announced that the International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum in Newport, R.I., has selected the company’s SAMMA Solo system to migrate 2,700 hours of archival footage now on videotape to secure digital storage. Besides preserving irreplaceable content, the objective of the multiyear project is to make the clips more readily available to the media, authors, scholars, students, and fans.

"Front Porch’s SAMMA Solo system will enable us to accomplish the migration of our video collection in-house, which is important to us," said Troy Gowen, manager and senior archivist of the museum’s Information and Research Center (I.R.C.). "The system is configurable to our needs, and its easy operation is suited to our small staff. While we are only in the early stages of the project now, I am very satisfied with the Solo’s performance and with the technical assistance I’ve received. In sum, I’m confident the SAMMA Solo system will enable us to safeguard the contents of our videotape collection while making it much more accessible and useful to our patrons."

The oldest footage in the museum’s I.R.C. collection dates from the 1920s and features Hall of Famers Helen Wills and Suzanne Lenglen. More recent additions include Hall of Fame induction ceremonies of tennis greats Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, John McEnroe, Steffi Graf, and Pete Sampras, and many more. Among the archive’s other holdings are video recordings of matches from Virginia Slims tournaments on the historic grass courts of Newport, R.I., World Championship Tennis, and U.S. Pro Indoor tournaments.

Front Porch Digital’s SAMMA Solo migrates analog video content into multiple file-based formats simultaneously in real-time. Preservation quality is assured by using the Solo’s JPG 2000 lossless format. The process preserves source timecode and also associates indexing and technical metadata. High-resolution content is automatically moved to nearline spinning disk and then to high-density LTO data tapes within the automated robotic system. Additionally, proxy formats are recorded at the time of migration in order to place the content eventually on the open Internet.

Because the Solo automates repetitive steps and uses advanced signal analysis to evaluate the quality of the videotape, then to monitor and document the migration itself, the work can be accomplished with minimal staff training or time. This makes the Solo an ideal solution for an archive like the Tennis Hall of Fame, with a high volume of content and a small staff.

The SAMMA Solo was delivered in February, and the I.R.C. staff currently is developing a procedure manual for volunteers and interns who will be working on the project. Eventually, the I.R.C. staff anticipates ingesting the digitized clips into a media asset management system so that they can be made available for future browsing.

Established in 1954, the International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum preserves the history of tennis, inspires and encourages junior tennis development, enshrines tennis heroes, and provides a landmark for tennis enthusiasts worldwide. The facility’s archive contains approximately 5,000 books and periodicals as well as 3,500 films and videotapes. The facility is located in the historic Newport Casino, which was built in 1880.