The big clean-up after the data disaster
SF Archive: It will take several months before Swiss Television can once again make its damaged broadcast archive fully available to the public online.
SF archive It will take several months before Swiss Television can make its damaged program archive fully accessible to the public on the Internet again. Where and why the mess happened remains a mystery. Both SRG and Schweizer Fernsehen SF have been saying for weeks that it has not yet been possible to determine the cause of the defect. This much is known: Since mid-March, most of the freely accessible program archive of Swiss Television has no longer been available on its website sf.tv (WW 25/07, front page). The corresponding data, confirms SF multimedia boss Walter Bachmann, has been irrevocably damaged. This affects several thousand hours of SF productions prepared for online retrieval: seven years of "Tagesschau" and "Schweiz aktuell", six years of "Rundschau" and "Kassensturz" and more - all gone and goodbye. The raw recordings of the programs are not affected by the mega-breakdown.
Challenge not overcome during move Rumor has it, and this has been confirmed by SRG employees who do not wish to be named here, that data was lost during the evacuation of the General Management building at Giaccomettistrasse 3 in Bern. The servers with SF's video data were located in the basement of the property. Because the high-rise building is currently being renovated, the hardware had to be stored in a temporary server room next door at Swissinfo. Something must have happened on the way between house numbers 3 and 1.
Those responsible had been aware for some time that the move would be a delicate operation. In Swissinfo's 2006 annual report on projects for the current year, the Head of Information Technology writes: "A major operational challenge is moving all systems from the previous data center to the new premises without noticeably interrupting the production systems."
Apparently they were not up to the challenge. There are no backup copies of the deleted data. The case is now being investigated by SRG's internal audit department. Its head, Martin Hirschi, did not wish to provide any information on request. Regardless of its findings, Swiss Television is now working to complete the limited archive offering again. To do this, the existing original data of the affected programs must be converted into a format that can be read by the Realplayer playback software.
Better quality in future The cost of this data preparation is limited both technically and financially. As SRG is currently having its entire stock of historical film material digitized anyway, the restoration of the defective SF data can be completed in one go with the major project (see box). But it won't be without additional costs. "The bottom line is that it costs more than if we hadn't had to do it," says Walter Bachmann, who is responsible at SF. However, he does not say what amounts are involved. It is also still unclear who will pay for it, as SF is demonstrably not responsible for the damage itself. As it stands, the accounts of Swissinfo will have to be debited.
But the loss of data also has a positive side. All those programs that are now being reprocessed for online use will be available to the interested public in better quality than before. However, it will still be a while before that happens. "If we can keep to the timetable, we'll be able to put the contributions back on air in the next six months or so," says Bachmann.
Nick Lüthi
The robot rattles in Ticino
In seven years' time, all film material is to be
The entire content that SF, TSR and TSI, SRG's three regional language television companies, have produced over the last 50 years or so will be stored and available in digital form. Since March, thousands and thousands of beta videotapes, where the programs are recorded for backup, have been transferred in digital form to LTO magnetic tape mass storage in Comano at Ticino Television. An industrial robot helps to process the 200,000 hours of video material. The system was developed by a private company on behalf of SRG.
In addition to facilitating the current TV production
- Television employees can access any sequence from the enormous pool of images more quickly - SRG also has plans to make the historical material available to the public. Exactly what form this will take, whether for a fee or free of charge, has not yet been decided. The political requirements, i.e. the licensing provisions, must also be taken into account in this context. "The draft of the new SRG concession explicitly provides for the possibility of a fee-based service," says Walter Bachmann, Head of SF Multimedia. (nil)
Challenge not overcome during move Rumor has it, and this has been confirmed by SRG employees who do not wish to be named here, that data was lost during the evacuation of the General Management building at Giaccomettistrasse 3 in Bern. The servers with SF's video data were located in the basement of the property. Because the high-rise building is currently being renovated, the hardware had to be stored in a temporary server room next door at Swissinfo. Something must have happened on the way between house numbers 3 and 1.
Those responsible had been aware for some time that the move would be a delicate operation. In Swissinfo's 2006 annual report on projects for the current year, the Head of Information Technology writes: "A major operational challenge is moving all systems from the previous data center to the new premises without noticeably interrupting the production systems."
Apparently they were not up to the challenge. There are no backup copies of the deleted data. The case is now being investigated by SRG's internal audit department. Its head, Martin Hirschi, did not wish to provide any information on request. Regardless of its findings, Swiss Television is now working to complete the limited archive offering again. To do this, the existing original data of the affected programs must be converted into a format that can be read by the Realplayer playback software.
Better quality in future The cost of this data preparation is limited both technically and financially. As SRG is currently having its entire stock of historical film material digitized anyway, the restoration of the defective SF data can be completed in one go with the major project (see box). But it won't be without additional costs. "The bottom line is that it costs more than if we hadn't had to do it," says Walter Bachmann, who is responsible at SF. However, he does not say what amounts are involved. It is also still unclear who will pay for it, as SF is demonstrably not responsible for the damage itself. As it stands, the accounts of Swissinfo will have to be debited.
But the loss of data also has a positive side. All those programs that are now being reprocessed for online use will be available to the interested public in better quality than before. However, it will still be a while before that happens. "If we can keep to the timetable, we'll be able to put the contributions back on air in the next six months or so," says Bachmann.
Nick Lüthi
The robot rattles in Ticino
In seven years' time, all film material is to be
The entire content that SF, TSR and TSI, SRG's three regional language television companies, have produced over the last 50 years or so will be stored and available in digital form. Since March, thousands and thousands of beta videotapes, where the programs are recorded for backup, have been transferred in digital form to LTO magnetic tape mass storage in Comano at Ticino Television. An industrial robot helps to process the 200,000 hours of video material. The system was developed by a private company on behalf of SRG.
In addition to facilitating the current TV production
- Television employees can access any sequence from the enormous pool of images more quickly - SRG also has plans to make the historical material available to the public. Exactly what form this will take, whether for a fee or free of charge, has not yet been decided. The political requirements, i.e. the licensing provisions, must also be taken into account in this context. "The draft of the new SRG concession explicitly provides for the possibility of a fee-based service," says Walter Bachmann, Head of SF Multimedia. (nil)
