San Francisco Giants Digitize for Archiving

Software Generation Ltd (SGL), a provider
of content archive and storage management software for media and entertainment,
announced a sale of its FlashNet archive system to reigning World Series Major League Baseball champions, the San
Francisco Giants.

The installation, which sees FlashNet integrated into the SF Giants’ Avid
workflow, was carried out by systems integrator Cutting Edge.

In January 2012 the SF Giants installed an Avid ISIS online shared storage
system and Avid Interplay PAM system to begin their transition to a digital
workflow. The SGL FlashNet archive followed in January this year allowing
the SF Giants to begin the process of digitising their huge catalogue of
material dating back to the 60s and 70s. This material, which is currently
stored on various tapes such QIC and Beta, has significant historical value for
the club and for future generations.

The SF Giants are also constantly creating a large amount of new material for
the scoreboard, the website, TV and advertising. This continuing
acquisition of content means that the ISIS operators need to run the system as
efficiently as possible, pushing old material off as new material comes in.

Paul Hodges, executive producer, SF Giants explains: "The ISIS is always running at about 60/70% capacity. We have to
make the decision as to which material stays online and which gets sent to the
archive. Some of the very old material from the 70s is kept on the ISIS
because when a player from that period comes to see a game we like to show
footage on the scoreboard to welcome them. It’s quite hard for us to pull
those clips quickly so we have to keep that type of material online. On the
flip side all the material from 2009 – 2011 is being archived because we’re
unlikely to need to use that for a while."

He adds: "We’re really happy with
the system. The workflow between SGL FlashNet and Interplay is seamless; it’s
been a great investment and installation and training was very quick and
easy. We made a huge investment in Avid with Interplay and ISIS and
required an archive that fully integrated with that workflow. We looked at
a couple of other systems but nothing was as seamless as SGL. Cutting
Edge did a great job, they were really behind SGL and they’re fully trained on
the entire workflow so it was a no brainer."

Doug Wynn, SGL’s VP sales Americas concludes: "This installation is an excellent reference for other sports production
facilities. The material held by these teams has huge historical value
that needs to be preserved for future generations. Using a digital
workflow, facilities can digitise their material and also find new ways of
working that enable them to run with greater efficiency and save money."