The FIAT IFTA World Conference welcomed dignitaries and broadcast professionals to its Save your Archive programme being held in Dubai. Hosted by Al Arabiya News Channel, the three-day conference is being held for the first time in the Middle East under the theme keeping the past recent. The conference was opened on Oct 26 by […]
The FIAT IFTA World Conference welcomed dignitaries and broadcast professionals to its Save your Archive programme being held in Dubai. Hosted by Al Arabiya News Channel, the three-day conference is being held for the first time in the Middle East under the theme keeping the past recent.
The conference was opened on Oct 26 by FIAT IFTA President,
. In his opening speech Muller welcomed attendees from 40 different countries. He introduced the FIAT IFTA projects and Emphasising the importance of digital archiving, he said: We are all experiencing what it means to enter the digital domain.
He added that the world is currently in a transitional phase, which is exciting yet quite complex. He set the ball rolling for the ensuing panel discussions and technical briefings about archiving in this modern day and age.
Following this Sam Barnett, CEO of MBC Group talked about the specific challenges that broadcasters face in the Middle East. He said: We live and work in a complex neighbourhood where getting content and broadcasting it can be tough.
He added that TV matters a lot in the region and content matters even more.
Its technology anarchy out there, he said. Adding that this may or may not make commercial sense yet companies are making advances in technology to keep in step. Lastly, he mentioned the challenges that broadcasters encounter in funding projects and monetising content.
Barnett lamented the menace of piracy in the region and the fact that lack of government regulations makes it worse to track down illegal broadcast of content, which is extremely damaging to the growth of bonafide broadcasters operating in the region.
There were talks by Nabil Khatib, Executive Editor of Al Arabiya News Channel and Dr Peter Thomas, Senior Director Chief Solution Archive Avid, followed by discussions on metadata as the cornerstone of digital archiving.
The post lunch session began with a keynote speech by Abdulrahman Al Hazza, President of The Saudi Broadcasting Corporation. He said that archiving of radio and television content is imperative to preserving our modern history. He also stressed the fact that broadcasters need to understand the importance of archiving even if comes at the cost of paying millions, it is a worthwhile investment that would for the future generations.
Al Hazza also added how STC has successfully embarked on a massive archiving project to preserve 350,000 hours of television footage, which is now saved and digitised.
Preserving the past is equally important to moving forward in the future. Taking one big decision to save our heritage saved us many small steps. All it needed was a conviction to preserve our past to give our history the respect it deserves, he commented.
Panel discussions on the future of film scanning the archive perspective and the service providers perspective were also part of the agenda. Raoul Cospen, Director of Marketing and Business Development at Dalet talked about the latest innovations in archiving and how saving in the cloud can be a solution for the future.
