RFO To Implement Front Porch Digital's DIVAworks Systems

Front Porch Digital has announced that Réseau France Outre-Mer (RFO), a state-owned network of television stations broadcasting to France's departments and territories around the world, will implement the company's DIVAworks Professional solution for content storage management (CSM) to support news production at four of RFO's far-flung facilities.
Implementation will begin in Papeete, French Polynesia, in October and will then be phased in Saint-Pierre and Miquelon; Saint Denis, La Reunion; and Noumea, New Caledonia through the end of the year.
RFO adopted Front Porch Digital's flagship DIVArchive (Distributed Intelligent Versatile Archive) system almost 10 years ago at its stations in Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana, and at its headquarters in Paris. Now the simultaneous implementation of four DIVAworks Professional systems elsewhere represents a significant expansion, which - based on the infinite scalability of DIVA's modular architecture - eventually will provide a platform for an enterprise-wide system of easily accessible shared content.
Christian Augereau, RFO's Director of Technology, said: "Our collaboration with Front Porch Digital and our reliance on the DIVA solution goes back many years when, as part of a partnership with StorageTek, we participated in the development of DIVArchive.
"For us, DIVA has proven its ability to support a unified CSM system that is crucial to workflow efficiency and enables us to leverage the value of media assets, improving the quality of our productions. As another time-tested solution in the same family of trustworthy modular products, DIVAworks will similarly provide RFO with outstanding benefits."
DIVAworks Professional is a turnkey system comprised of a 48-slot datatape library, a dual LTO-4 datatape drive, and two Windows(R)-based servers running the DIVArchive CSM software. Occupying eight units of rack space, DIVAworks Professional also includes tape externalisation and object-transfer utility features. A DIVAworks solution easily can be upgraded to a full DIVArchive CSM system as needs expand.
At RFO, DIVAworks will interface with Netia's Hypercast Editor, a software solution for segmenting, indexing annotating, cataloging and low resolution encoding of all content, initially processed and stored in full MXF compatibility, through an Avid Interplay asset management system.
Content will be available to about 40 journalists working on a client interface that provides fast and accurate control for playback of all types of audio, video and metadata stored on DIVAworks or coming over a network. With such an infrastructure, long-term planning for network-wide sharing of content is now in progress.
Rino Petricola, Front Porch Digital's Senior Vice President and Managing Director, said: "Front Porch's versatile DIVAworks will enable RFO's operations around the world to take advantage of the workflow efficiencies and content security of our DIVA solution.
"DIVAworks represents a cost-effective and easy-to-install package that delivers the archiving capabilities of DIVArchive CSM technology in a solution that readily integrates into any customer's file-based workflow."
Front Porch Digital will be at IBC2008 at Stand 11.D45. Further information is available at: www.fpdigital.com.
(KMcA/JM)