Thousands of clips from the AP Archive can be viewed online by the UK education community thanks to the programmers at re:fine!

The clips are part of an initiative by JISC Collections (Joint Information Systems Committee, a government-funded agency) to provide the UK education community with access to archives of digital images to support all levels of teaching, learning and research.

The images will be accessible through an online database currently in development. Once a school, college or educational institution signs up to the scheme, their staff and pupils will be able to use the images freely, and without further authorisation.

The databases are incredible resources, designed by JISC to maintain the UK’s position as a global leader in education. The AP Archive, rich in its coverage of events, war and conflict, politics, disasters, environment, culture, social history, human interest, science, entertainment and sport is perfectly placed to deliver footage for the resources.

re:fine delivered over 350,000 files and associated metadata. Each clip was transcoded to WMV, MPEG2, MOV and JPEG files.  re:fine programmers created a function to automatically insert metadata, enabling the clips to be searched by subject, date and key word or key-phrase.

With planes grounded, and flight deemed unsafe, quantities of tapes and screeners were stuck in airports and courier depots instead of being delivered all over the world.

Sometimes it can take drastic circumstances to change the way we work, and we were really pleased to be able to offer an alternative to physical delivery to our clients during this time.

Digital Delivery is very secure; instead of travelling through many hands on its journey the content travels direct to its destination. It is cost effective, as once a file is ingested from tape it can be sent to multiple locations. It is  greener as it uses less energy than dubbing and saves the CO2 emissions of couriers.

Finally when encoded files arrive at their destination they are easily slotted into digital & playout workflows so do not have to be encoded from dubs.

At re:fine we’ve got huge bandwidth, so a 1hr TV programme can be digitally delivered in 45minues

If you’d like to find out more about this service, drop us a line

With a repertoire of Singalong hits including ‘You took the words right out of my mouth’ and ‘I’d do anything for love (but I won’t do that), Meat Loaf’s live shows are always epic events.  And Mr Loaf’s colossal stage persona makes for entertaining viewing in the 1978 spectacular Bat out of Hell – the Original Tour.

Bat out of Hell is one of the all time great albums.  It has sold over 40 million copies worldwide, spent over 9 years in the UK charts and still sells over 200,000 copies a year.

Delivery to BT vision of this classic concert coincides with the release of Meatloaf’s new album ‘Hang Cool Teddybear’ which entered the UK album charts this week at number 4!

Cult Spanish horror film [REC] is one of the titles we delivered to iTunes this month.

This terrifying film shot with shaky hand-held cameras was directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza.

[REC] features a team of local TV reporters who are following a squad of firemen on night duty.  The footage is completely live and their task is to make a show about the life of those professionals who work while we are sleeping.

The first job of the night is to rescue an old lady who is trapped inside her apartment but the routine rescue soon takes a sinister turn.  Something evil is spreading throughout the building, out of control.  Trapped inside the firemen and the TV crew have to confront an unknown and lethal horror.

The sequel was a huge success and the much anticipated [REC]3 is released next year.  [REC] will be available on the 17th May.

The worldwide distributor of factual prgramming  has relocated their entire catalogue  to re:fine.   OTF owns over 4000 hours of natural history, science, health, adventure history and social documentaries.

re:fine will provide a range of services including tape duplication, QC,  storing and managing the library, sending screeners, encoding  and metadata requirements.

We will also look into exploiting content for packaged media [DVD and Blu-ray] and digital media platforms and also to fulfill international tape dubbing and HD requirements.

OTF was looking for an integrated approach to tape and digital workflows whilst taking advantage of re:fine’s ability to offer economies of scale and pricing and training to OTF staff and clients in tape and digital workflow.

Sam Neil, Operations Manager, Off the Fence, explained the partnership:

“Off the Fence has grown rapidly over the past three years and, as we evolve into the future, this deal with re:fine will enable us to use new technologies being developed.  re:fine are experts in their field and our aim is to work closely with them on digital delivery, which will enable a faster delivery and ultimately reduce costs for our clients.”

The venture is also designed to allow a ongoing relationship with the producer/distributor to plan the most effective and practical way to digitise the library, both catalogue and new titles, ready for commercial exploitation across established and emerging VOD platforms.

The latest addition to American platform Hulu is British comedy ‘Balls of Steel’

For those not in the loop, Mark Dolan’s Balls of Steel challenges a team of comedians and performers to a range of stupid stunts, undercover set-ups and loads more hilarious things to prove that they have ‘Balls of steel’.

Episodes uploaded to the platform feature the characters ‘Scummy Mummy’,(the worst mother in the world), ‘Mr Inappropriate’ and ‘The Annoying Devil’.