The BBC is testing the replacement of tape for storing TV footage by inexpensive GNU/Linux servers using disks and USB drives, Computerworld reports.
At the Linux.conf.au conference in Australia earlier this month, BBC IT researcher Stuart Cunningham discussed the BBC's development of Ingex, software for tapeless TV production using GNU/Linux. The software allows the use of commodity PCs to be used for storing TV footage on a storage server on the network or a local USB drive, Computerworld quotes Cunningham. "The goal of this is to get rid of all tapes."
The software was developed by BBC Research and Development in 2005 and was released under the terms of the GPL software licence. The application is available on sourceforge.org, along with three white papers describing Ingex and its use for various BBC television productions.
"Now we have proven it works, productions are going to rely on it", Cunningham said. According to Computerworld, the BBC is now in trial stage, meaning that some of the broadcaster's productions are using the GNU/Linux computers instead of tape. "Tape is still useful for backup. In the next stage of production, we expect to use our system for online and offline storage and only use tape when something goes wrong."
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