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RODEOHOUSTON(TM) Ropes Front Porch Digital to Improve Management of Video Content

DMN Newswire 2009-1-14: Front Porch Digital today announced that the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo(TM) audiovisual and broadcast branch has deployed Front Porch Digital's DIVAworks solution, which is enhanced with DIVAdirector. The systems are able to support the transition to digital, tapeless workflow as well as to preserve and simplify access to stored content. Front Porch Digital partner Broadcast Digital Systems of Houston assisted with the transaction.

"There are several companies out there with products that enable you to move and store huge files," said James Davidson, managing director of audiovisual presentation and broadcast for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. "What got our attention about Front Porch Digital was the flexibility of the database, the ability to customize metadata for searches, and the friendliness of the user interface. With DIVAworks and DIVAdirector, Front Porch Digital has given us just what we needed."

Since 1980, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo �?? the world's largest livestock show and richest regular-season PRCA rodeo �?? has produced its own television programming both for broadcast and for the historical record, amassing tens of thousands of hours of content stored on videotape in multiple formats. The content represents the scope of the 20-day event that takes place at Houston's Reliant Park every March, including not only footage of the rodeo competition but associated performances by musicians from Gene Autry to Beyoncé Knowles, and auctions of everything from champion steers to chardonnay.

As part of an HD upgrade two years ago, the rodeo began shifting to a digitized workflow. It now deploys 20 Sony cameras capturing HD content that is ingested to a Thomson Grass Valley(TM) K2(TM) server and then managed and transferred, as appropriate, to LTO-4 tape by DIVAworks. DIVAdirector affords editors and producers working in three editing suites easy access to stored content. Clips can be searched by customized metadata �?? including sponsor, event, and competitor �?? or browsed frame by frame using the application's built-in Windows Media® Player. DIVAworks manages restoration of content from archive to server as needed.

With the digital workflow in place, RODEOHOUSTON(TM) is now in the process of digitizing its enormous, unique, and irreplaceable video archive. Older videotapes are currently located in a warehouse so that editors wishing to use clips from them must drive across the vast expanse of the Reliant Park complex, pull them off a shelf, and run them through a VTR. Once those clips have been incorporated into the DIVAworks system, access will be a mouse click away.

"The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is one of the nation's top entertainment events with a keen sense of its cultural and historic heritage," said Mike Knaisch, president and CEO of Front Porch Digital. "To bring its media storage technology into line, the Rodeo initially looked at disk-based systems, but soon recognized the advantages in flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of DIVAworks."

Front Porch Digital's DIVAworks is a plug-and-play content storage and protection solution that incorporates a datatape library, LTO-4 datatape drives, and a server running Front Porch Digital's DIVArchive content storage management software. It was designed to provide a turnkey solution for users in a wide variety of media-related fields.
 

About the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo

For more than 76 years, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo(TM) has been the heartbeat of the Southwest, pulsing powerfully with more than 21,000 volunteers who annually contribute their time, resources and talent to the world's largest livestock exhibition, world's richest regular-season PRCA rodeo, and the Southwest's premier entertainment event. Since the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo was established, it has made an impressive footprint on the livestock and entertainment industries and in the sport of rodeo. It also has played a notable role in enhancing the lives of thousands of young people in the state of Texas. Since 1932, the Show has committed more than $230 million to the youth of Texas.
 

About Front Porch Digital

Front Porch Digital is the global leader in content storage management (CSM) solutions and, with the recent acquisition of SAMMA Systems, becomes the global leader in the migration and preservation of videotape to digital files as well. Having merged operations with SAMMA, Front Porch provides an end-to-end solution for cost-effectively digitizing, accessing, and preserving media past, present, and future. Front Porch Digital now can accelerate migration of vulnerable videotape on an unprecedented, global scale to optimize and secure digital storage. More information about Front Porch Digital and its new SAMMA solutions is available at www.fpdigital.com and www.sammasystems.com.

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