"Kablamo has been a fantastic key partner for us on the Content Digital Archive project."
With a primary search system dating back to the 1980s and several siloed systems holding more than 11 million hours of video and audio files, the ABC wanted to transform the archive search experience for their content makers and internal users.
Finding content would take several weeks as it typically required a manual search of at least three databases.
The challenge
There were multiple warehouses across Australia filled with physical reels, several disconnected metadata systems, and five separate on-premise systems storing content that had not yet been digitised.
These legacy systems were costly to maintain and almost impossible to scale. The broadcaster needed a modern platform that could unify access to decades of Australian broadcasting history.
The approach
By choosing a custom-designed cloud solution, the broadcaster removed the costs and constraints of traditional Media Asset Management systems. The bespoke archiving solution targeted precise workflows, efficiencies, and user experiences.
The transformation delivered:
- Unified metadata — Single source of truth for all content records
- Cloud migration — Content moved from five legacy systems to AWS
- Machine learning — AWS Transcribe for automatic transcription and tagging
- Self-service access — Employees can search, add metadata, and manage collections
AWS Transcribe was successfully implemented in 2020. Now, audio and video uploads can occur without manual metadata tagging. As well as automatically identifying key tags, it's helping producers find the perfect content quickly and easily.
Results
Looking forward
Since delivery, the broadcaster is now able to search, access, and edit highly relevant content much faster than they ever imagined. The five legacy storage systems were made obsolete, with content migrated to the new AWS cloud platform.
The solution provides a scalable platform ready for future AWS machine learning capabilities including visual content analysis (AWS Rekognition) and natural language processing (AWS Comprehend).
