Crawford Acquires New Samma Robot

Crawford Media Management, a division of Crawford Communications, Inc. -one of the largest broadcast facilities in the United States, has acquired a new betacam tape robot by SAMMA Systems, the global leader in media migration.
This state-of-the-art robot, coupled with Crawford's existing SAMMA Solo videotape to digital file migration systems, enhances the company's leading-edge services.
Jesse Crawford, CEO of Crawford Communication, said: "The acquisition of this SAMMA robot compliments our SAMMA Solo systems now employed successfully in the field.
"We are committed to helping our clients overcome the problem of migrating existing tape
libraries into their new digital workflows."
The betacam tape robot is completely contained and provides three simultaneous tape sources, each capable of up to three encode streams.
Supported codecs include standard definition MXF wrapped Motion JPEG 2000 and a combination of two other formats: MPEG-2, Windows Media, QuickTime or Flash.
With the ability to operate around the clock, even large libraries can be migrated in a fraction of the time. Proxy files can be encoded simultaneously with hi-res files. The robot benefits both broadcast and archival projects.
Crawford launched its Media Management division in 2007. According to Steve Davis, Vice
President of Media Management for Crawford said: "We believe that automated processes, such as the SAMMA platform, are the key to overcoming the huge backlog of tape media that awaits digital migration.
"We have been migrating in double shifts at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington, D.C. since December. This robot will allow us to extend our efforts beyond
regular business hours, greatly improving the efficiency of this project."
Mark Gray, CEO of SAMMA Systems commented: "Crawford Communications has a long history of bringing high quality innovative services to their customers. Over the years they have established a leadership position in many important markets. Now that the industry is moving from videotape to digital files, Crawford is once again at the forefront, providing content digitization and management services for their clients."
Crawford Communications Inc, an Atlanta-based privately owned company, is a leader in the electronic media services industry and has been offering domestic and international clients a full spectrum of video, film, audio, IP-media and satellite services since 1981.
Further information is available at: www.crawford.com.
SAMMA Systems Inc develops and manufactures systems designed to cost effectively digitize medium to large size videotape archives.
Further information is available at: www.sammasystems.com.
(KMcA/JM)