Ingex

Ingex is an open-source (GPL) suite of software for the digital capture of audio and video data, without the need for traditional audio or video tape or cassettes.^[1]^[2] Serial digital interface (SDI) capture is supported, as well as real-time transcoding (with MXF).^[1] Portions of the software suite also act as a network file server for media files, as well as archiving to LTO-3 data tape.^[1] Audio and video media files can also be stored on USB hard drives or Network Attached Storage.^[3] The software is heavily used by the BBC, and was developed by the BBC Research Laboratory.^[3]

Some of the early production projects which have used Ingex include a Foo Fighters music video, and the BBC television series Dragons' Den.^[3]

Features

The different software products in the suite support:^[1]

Multi-camera video capture in a studio environment
Video tape archive preservation
Acting as a server to Avid editing clients

Media Harmony^[4] is a module for Samba Virtual file system (VFS). This allows editing clients, such as Avid, to use low-cost commodity storage for video and media files.

Ingex Studio provides studio-style recoding, capture, transcode, and MXF wrapping for multiple cameras, also known as multi-camera tapeless recording.^[5] The software runs on commodity PC hardware and SDI IO cards. The media can then be edited by MXF-based editors, for example, Avid Media Composer.

Supported formats

Currently supported standard-definition (SD) codecs are:^[1]

Avid-compatible JPEG codec resolutions known as 2:1, 3:1, 10:1, 20:1, 15:1s, 10:1m, 4:1m
DVCPRO50 (50Mbit/s) and DV (25Mbit/s)
IMX 50/40/30 (50/40/30 Mbit/s)
Uncompressed standard-definition video at 8 bits-per-sample and 10 bits-per-sample

Supported high-definition (HD) codecs are:^[1]

DNxHD (VC-3) at 120 Mbit/s and 185 Mbit/s
DVCPRO HD
Uncompressed high-definition video at 8 bits-per-sample

libMXF supports:^[6]

MXF
uncompressed video or audio, DV25/50, IMX, JPEG, DNxHD and DVCProHD files
writes MXF OP-Atom files which can be used directly in Avid Media Composer and related editors

MediaHarmony supports:^[4]

media_harmony - per-client .pmr and .mdb database files so there are no conflicts between Avid editors
mxf_harmony - on-the-fly unwrapping of MXF-wrapped DV essence so that a Final Cut Pro client can share the same DV media files as an Avid client

Ingex archive supports:^[7]

MXF OP-1A file container, containing audio, video, and timecode data (also known as OP-1A MXF)
LTO-3 data tape
Video SMPTE 384M uncompressed 4:2:2 video at 8 bits per sample in UYVY format
Audio SMPTE 382M uncompressed PCM audio at 48 kHz and 20 bits per sample
LTO barcode information
POSIX.1-2001 archive format (also known as pax Interchange format), a superset of the tar format which overcomes the 8 GiB limitation of tar format, to ensure future access to programmes

Metadata:

Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) is used for storing edition metadata.^[8]

Supported operating systems

libMXF:^[6] Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
Ingex Studio:^[5] openSUSE Linux

References

^ a b c d e f "Ingex". Retrieved 2009-08-24.
^ "Fallstudie: Die BBC und ihr Projekt Ingex" (in German). Germany: Linux Magazine. 11 April 2008. Retrieved 2009-08-24.
^ a b c Rodney Gedda (2008-01-29). "BBC moves Linux into TV production". UK: Computerworld. Retrieved 2009-08-25.
^ a b "MediaHarmony - Media file interoperability for non-linear editors".
^ a b "Ingex Studio - Multi-camera Tapeless Recording".
^ a b "LibMXF - MXF software library".
^ "Ingex Archive".
^ Stuart Finlayson (2008-01-18). "The MXF files". Australia: Broadcast and Media. Retrieved 2009-08-24.

External links

Project Pages:

ingex.sourceforge.net
Sourceforge Ingex Project Page

Whitepapers:

Improving workflow in practice for low-cost programme-making using MXF & AAF file formats
Tapeless and paperless: Automating the workflow in TV studio production
File-based Production: Making It Work In Practice

Case studies: From the Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR), a project of the European Commission's IDABC project: