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NOB, a post production company in Holland uses WebFORCE MediaBase to provide high quality VOD to its customers who can now search for videos in the on-line library. WebFORCE MediaBase helps deliver high bit rate streams to multiple clients over the intranet.  

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 It's a pleasant fall morning at Hilversum, Holland, where the video director of a teleproduction company is closeted with her client in an edit suite at the NOB Media Park. They're working on a commercial spot for a cough-and-cold medicine, and they need footage of working boats crashing through the waves of a North Sea gale. The deadline is tight, but they're unconcerned. The director is at a workstation, moving swiftly through menus within Netscape Navigator�. A few weeks ago, it would have taken a full day to go through a text database, read descriptions, get the tapes from the archives, view them, copy segments, and take them back. But Silicon Graphics� WebFORCE� MediaBase software, running on a pair of Silicon Graphics WebFORCE CHALLENGE� L media servers, has just streamed out an ideal segment: glowering sky, howling gale, gunmetal-gray water, and a seagoing tug climbing mountainous white-crested rollers. The director and the client look at each other and smile. They view six more clips, but none matches the drama of the first one. The director looks at her watch. No need for a late lunch after all.

Taking the First Step Toward the Internet

The largest European Broadcast Facility Centre (Nederlands Omroepproduktie Bedrijf, better known as NOB) is a powerhouse in Europe's television production community. The majority of all video aired in Holland originates in NOB's studios and edit suites.

But NOB is not satisfied with this level of success. The company is reaching out into Web-related fields, and it has begun by using Silicon Graphics WebFORCE technology to give its customers on-site Internet access to its enormous media resources.

Until recently, clients accessed the public broadcasting companies' archived audio, video, and film by looking through a text database that described the clips. When they had made their selections, they would go to the archives and ask for the corresponding tapes, which they would take away, preview, and copy. It was an effective system, but it had flaws: it consumed precious time in the face of deadlines, it was not available around the clock (a serious problem in the news and production communities), and there was always the possibility that somebody else had just beaten clients to the resources they were looking for. NOB saw a better way: an "extranet" --which can be defined as one business sharing information with another over a private Internet network.

One-Stop Digital Media Shopping on a Secured Intranet

NOB recently installed a Silicon Graphics Media Server system with WebFORCE MediaBase software to give its clients--typically, public and commercial broadcasters and video production companies--fast, simple access to the huge media archives. At edit and screening suites throughout the NOB Media Park, clients can use workstations to access digitized film and video stored on CHALLENGE L servers and served out by WebFORCE MediaBase across a high-speed ATM network. The clips they select through a Netscape browser are streamed out to the edit suite, where they can be browsed.

This remarkable online browsing environment has grown out of a Silicon Graphics/NOB Interactive development partnership for MediaBase tools. Both companies are investing time and resources to enhance the power and versatility of MediaBase. At the same time, they have created significant economies for NOB's clients.

With Silicon Graphics' scalable, high-performance video streaming capabilities and its open architecture, NOB Interactive can provide hundreds of simultaneous networked users access to archived film and video content on an as-needed basis. Customers have quick and easy access. They save countless hours of search time.

Initially, the Video Archival Browse System will contain a modest (for NOB) 600 hours of MPEG-1 news, current affairs, sports, and documentary footage, owned primarily by public broadcasters and production companies. The WebFORCE MediaBase server allows customers to easily browse, search, catalog and view archived film and video content.

Mediabase Diagram

This points up the fact that the WebFORCE MediaBase server does more than simply stream MPEG video from NOB's CHALLENGE L media servers at guaranteed streaming rates. It handles content management, data storage management, and systems operations management, automatically. Its filesystem handles high-performance networking protocols. It also provides support for a variety of client platforms, including Macintosh and Windows based PCs. NOB intends to use this capability to develop an online broadcasting presence in Europe.

Getting Ready for the Internet

When this "extranet" system has been fully tested, NOB will extend its VOD access outside the Media Park over the World Wide Web at other business campus sites. NOB clients will have video browsing access from distant studios and offices. The company is also building two external Web demonstration applications that will be available to public subscribers over Internet-capable cable networks. News On Demand, a demonstration project, will stream TV news and sports broadcasts from live feeds in real time; Music On Demand will stream music video clips.

WebFORCE MediaBase software gives NOB's WebFORCE system the power to stream MPEG video from these databases to up to 300 subscribers simultaneously, and provides Internet network management facilities. The system's open architecture, sophisticated database technology, and plug-in media delivery services will make it easy for NOB to expand its facilities and services.

This is just the beginning for NOB Interactive. The company's research and development department is now setting up its own applications for the emerging online services market in Europe.