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Ingex

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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

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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

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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:

Supported operating systems

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See also

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References

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

Whitepapers:

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