Why tape is hard to search
The tape catalogue knows file names, dates and barcodes. It does not know what is in the video. A producer who needs one interview has to remember the year, guess the title and ask someone who was there.
Restoring tapes to look inside them is slow and costly, so most of an LTO library goes unused even when it holds exactly the footage a team needs.
What a useful index holds
Speech in the languages you broadcast, text and scenes shown on screen, the time of each moment, and the reference to the tape and file that hold it.
Search should work by meaning, not only by keyword. A question in Hindi should find the answer even when it was spoken in Urdu, in a regional language or in a mix of two languages.
The workflow
- Index in batches, starting with the material your teams request most often.
- Search in plain language and read the answers with their timestamps.
- Restore only the clips you choose to use, not the whole library.
What to ask any vendor
- Does it search by meaning, or only by keyword and tag?
- Does it cover the languages in your archive, including mixed-language speech?
- Can it run on your own premises?
- Does every result tell you which tape and which file it came from?
Where Deepgrip fits
Deepgrip connects to LTO tape archives and MAM systems and indexes footage where it is held. Search works in 23 Indian languages and English, and every answer carries the timestamp of the moment it came from.
To see it on your own material, book a demo with a sample of your archive. If it fits, we scope a paid 14-day proof of concept against success criteria agreed on day one.