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The AIBs
2016
Broadcasters throughout the world are faced with
an immense problem: how can analogue TV and film
libraries be archived effectively and efficiently to
preserve a country’s audio-visual history for future
generations?
It’s a problem on an industrial scale. In almost every
broadcaster there are tape and film libraries running to
tens or even hundreds of kilometres of shelving. The
tape and film stock is degrading. The equipment that
was used to record the programmes in the analogue
era is now obsolete and finding the kit and the spares
to enable analogue tape to be played is increasingly
challenging.
However, when a country sets its mind to it, these
obstacles can be overcome. That’s what has happened
in Qatar where the Private Engineering Office (PEO)of
the Qatari government has devised and implemented a
solution to the problem.
Hidden away in a rather unassuming Doha location is
a new facility that houses the analogue tape and film
library of both Qatar TV and Al Rayyan TV. A complete
ingest to deep archiving facility has been built.
Two- and one-inch tapes, along with analogue and
digital cassettes (ranging from VHS to DigiBeta), are
cleaned and then ingested. The PEO has bought up
many of the world’s remaining analogue tape machines
and repaired and restored them to broadcast standard.
Old Film Archive Project - Private Engineering Office, Qatar
INNOVATION
A team of trained staff ingests all the tape and film into a
central storage system from which every programme and
film is then passed through state-of-the-art computer-
based sound and vision enhancement. From there, the
content – now in a high-quality, easily-accessible digital
format – is made available to a team of historians. They
use their knowledge of Qatar’s history to add vital meta-
tags to every digital file. Through this work, the new
digital archive becomes an immediate resource to the
whole nation – now, and in the future.
The Qatar Old Film Archive Project is arguably the
most comprehensive archiving system that has been
developed in a single undertaking. For this reason, the
Association for International Broadcasting is pleased to
award its 2016 Innovation Award to the Old Film Archive
Project of the Private Engineering Office in Qatar.