2020 IASA - FIAT/IFTA Joint Conference

2007 - 2020. It took more than a decade to go through the TV collections produced and broadcasted by the French overseas public network RFO. 9 different stations, from North Atlantic to South Pacific oceans, facing challenges as sorting carriers highly damaged by humidity, harmonizing technical and documentary metadata, transferring tons of material from across the globe, setting technical facilities onsite… The list of issues to overcome is endless.
If the first steps were to focus on sensitive carriers as film reels, 1” or 3/4 “ tapes which were shipped to INA headquarters, the main innovation was the creation of an itinerant technical facility to process onsite DVCPRO and Beta carriers (see FIAT/IFTA 2014, Amsterdam).
A close and fruitful partnership between INA, Vectracom and our host in the stations led to the digitization of more than 150 000 hours of programs that are now preserved and accessible.
Let’s take a step aside and analyze the successes and setbacks of this worldwide and unique experience.