Sony CSM100B Brochure (Pensacola Christian College Case Study) - Page 1

"A Beka Academy" Keeps Video Library Organized with the Sony HDXchange System. CASE STUDY Customer: • Pensacola Christian College's "A Beka Academy" Industry: • Education Challenges: • Create an ongoing archive of recorded classroom lessons to easily share with students, faculty and other schools • Efficiently manage and distribute video content for simultaneous review and editing by multiple parties Solution: • Implement a solution comprising Sony's Media Backbone™ HDXchange™ networked content management system, PetaSite™ content management library system and XDCAM® HD optical disc system Benefits: • The school's production and editing workflows are now based on a scalable and easyto-manage file-based system • Recorded instructional content is easily shared, reviewed, edited and distributed to customers in a more timely fashion • Turnaround time for producing finished content is reduced from months to just days • The school's library of recorded content is archived in a more secure and accessible system networked content management system, working together with Sony's PetaSite content management library system. Recording hours of video during each school day for several decades can result in a massive library of mixed legacy footage. At Pensacola Christian College's "A Beka Academy," the goal of capturing all this footage is to have an ongoing archive of classroom lessons to easily share with its kindergarten through 12th grade home school students and with other schools. But for Greg Moses, the school's TV and DVD productions director, efficiently managing and distributing all this video is a challenge. The Academy's mission is to give young people a quality traditional education from a Christian perspective. The school has been in existence for 50 years, and started recording lessons in the early 80's. "All the instructional material presented live in the classrooms every day is recorded," Moses said."We produce DVD, Web and streaming content for students at other Christian schools or home-school students to use, so they can watch and study right along with our students, using the same curriculum and materials." The Academy distributes content to more than 43,000 home-school customers, as well as several hundred schools. "Our recording started on U-matic, moved to DVCAM™ and now we use the XDCAM optical disc system," he said."We needed to move our production and editing into a more scalable and easy-to-manage file-based system." The technology that the Academy chose was Sony's Media Backbone HDXchange "It's allowed us to maintain our daily library of instructional content in a way that we can easily access it and get it to our customers in a more timely fashion," Moses said."We converted everything to AVI files that are stored in the PetaSite system, and all those files are available through the HDXchange system. We're always recording, revising or correcting something, so the HDXchange system is a perfect match for how we need to work." One of the system's main benefits is that it provides simultaneous access to content by multiple parties. Also, the academy's faculty and production teams are impressed with the HDXchange system's auto-ingest functionality, improving the ingest process, placing material where it needs to go and making it available to everyone who needs to use it. The system also allows operators to add clip- and timecode-based metadata, even as material is coming into the system, which allows them to more easily identify and jump to key points in the video. "If we need to find a piece of legacy footage, I can go into the archive on the PetaSite system, search for it and do what we need to it through the HDXchange system," Moses said. "We just love it," he added."It gives us fast and easy access to all our work." The system has reduced the Academy's turnaround time for producing finished content from months to just days. "In the past, teachers would have to go back to the classroom to review a tape," Moses said. "Now, they can watch it from their office or anywhere on campus that they can log into the system," he said."It gives them a lot more flexibility and they can review a lesson more quickly."