The ORF multimedia archive contains well over one million hours of video content. Around 30% of this was stored in IMX or digi-beta formats. The background story will be familiar to any well-established media company. Since the 1960s, ORF has been continually transferring content from outdated media formats while adding up to 50 hours of new material every day.

This continually growing archive presents clear operational challenges. Both in Vienna and in regional facilities, the archive occupies significant space. In addition, as tape formats become superannuated, ORF is left needing to maintain recording and playback devices beyond their useful life, incurring additional wasted expense.

But perhaps most importantly, browsing archive content is near-impossible for program makers, which means that most assets lie unused. And when material is requested, the physical process of locating, dispatching and eventually returning the asset is timeconsuming, expensive and places valuable content stored on fragile media at risk.

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