About Ingex
Ingex is a branded technology from BBC Research & Development
It is a suite of open source software applications designed for low-cost flexible tapeless recording in:
- TV Production, and
- Archiving Facilites
Features
Ingex modernises media workflows and enables you to:
- Record, encode and log feeds with metadata
- Playback and share assets immediately with post production
- Digitise and archive tapes
Benefits
- Cost Savings: lower capex, no tapes, removes digitisation
- Creative Dividends: instant playback for reassurance, remote viewing of rushes,
logs of cue points and comments being carried through to the edit
Availability
The technology is now available to the industry in a variety of ways:
- Open Source ie without charge, under terms of the GPL software licence
- Under License ie to businesses developing their own commercial propositions for their customers
- Commercially ie direct to end users through established service providers
Software
The source code for the Ingex software can be accessed via anonymous CVS
or can be browsed online directly from the CVS repository.
The software consists of the following components:
- Ingex Studio - a multi-camera television studio ingest and transcoding system.
SD codecs:
- Avid-compatible JPEG codec resolutions known as 2:1, 3:1, 10:1, 20:1, 15:1s, 10:1m
- DVCPRO50 (50Mbps) and DV (25Mbps)
- IMX 50/40/30 (50/40/30Mbps)
- Uncompressed SD video at 8 bits-per-sample
HD codecs:
- VC-3 at 120Mbps and 185Mbps
- DVCPRO HD
- Uncompressed HD video at 8 bits-per-sample
- Ingex Player - software player for playback of MXF OP-Atom and MXF OP-1a files. Supports playout to computer monitor or over SDI I/O card. Features include quad-split, audio monitor, timecode display and jog-shuttle control.
- Ingex Archive - ingest system designed for video tape archive preservation. Video tape is played back from a VTR, ingested over SDI, and stored as an MXF OP-1a file, including all audio channels, VITC and LTC timecodes and archive database metadata. Features include VTR-control, D-3 tape error recording, PSE analysis and MPEG-2 browse generation.
- MediaHarmony - a Samba VFS module which allows multiple Avid editing workstations to use low-cost commodity storage without conflicts around the .pmr and .mdb database files. This is particularly useful for workgroups of editors using Avid XpressDV.
- libMXF - a low-level C library for reading and writing MXF files. Particular attention has been made to creating MXF files compatible with Avid software and P2 cameras. Several useful command line tools are included.
Other tools include:
- TransferToP2 - Re-wrap Avid MXF (OP-Atom) files into P2 compatible MXF files
- Re-wrap EVS JPEG coded "MXF" files into Avid-compatible MXF
- Re-wrap P2 MXF (OP-Atom) files into Avid-compatible MXF for older versions of Avid software which do not support P2 MXF files
Track Record
Ingex is used by flagship BBC shows such as EastEnders and Dragons' Den,
and was used in the children's show BAMZOOKi in 2005
(8 minute video 63 MB).
White Papers
- WHP186 Developments in Automated Tapeless Production for Multi-Camera Programmes. September 2010
- WHP155 File-based Production: Making It Work In Practice. September 2007
- WHP141 Tapeless and paperless: Automating the workflow in TV studio production. September 2006
- WHP133 Improving workflow in practice for low-cost programme-making using MXF & AAF file formats. April 2006
Developer Contacts
The preferred way to contact the developers of Ingex is via the Forums.
Patches and other contributions are welcome.
The Ingex project is actively developed as part of the
Production Automation work
managed by Phil Tudor
of BBC R&D.
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