The recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan have damaged factories and stopped all production of Sony professional media. Maxell, Panasonic, and Fujifilm have had little or no damage, but they face electrical and infrastructure challenges in production. Sony alone made the popular HDCAM SR format. Other manufacturers can make most of the other formats, and are moving to increase production to compensate with increased demand. As a result, there is a critical shortage of HDCAM SR, and shortages of other popular tape formats.
We ask for patience and understanding during this difficult period. We will do whatever we can to provide for the ongoing needs of our customer base during this critical time. We have been offering alternatives for years, which are well worth considering during the current situation: VIDEO TAPE EVALUATION and TAPELESS WORKFLOW.
Video Tape Evaluation
Empress has Research Technology International (RTI) 4100 TapeCheck units, capable of evaluating Betacam SP, Digital Betacam, Betacam SX, IMX, HDCAM, and HDCAM SR tapes. The machines clean each used videotape, erase all of the content, and electronically inspect for physical tape defects that potentially cause playback or record problems. Options are also available for reuse of DVCAM, DVCPRO, XDCAM, D5, Umatic 3/4”, and other tapes.
We have ten years of experience in video tape evaluation, with a veteran staff. We are increasing production in NY with additional space, staff, and machines, and will start evaluation in our LA office this month. Quality remains our first priority. Each tape and case is thoroughly cleaned, with labels and marks removed. Tapes are individually processed as described above. Finally, tapes are double degaussed to ensure complete erasure. Machines are regularly checked for correct operation and periodically inspected by factory technicians on-site or at the factory. Our careful process ensures that each tape will be error free, eliminating the guesswork out of simple degaussing or re-recording of tapes.
Evaluation as a Service: We can process your used tapes as above. We will send back only the good tapes to use, so you can be comfortable with all of your stock.
Purchase of Evaluated Products: You can purchase evaluated used tape that we have in stock from customers who no longer need or want their used product.
Tape Donation: You can donate your unwanted used tapes for cash or credit, depending on the quantity and format of the tapes you have.
Legal Erasure: We can count and individually erase each of your used tapes. We can provide documentation of every used tape and certify that any content is completely and totally gone. Your valuable content is protected from unwanted distribution and copy.
Digitization: We can help you move content on tapes or hard drives to a centralized storage or archive system for protection, storage, and universal access. We have partnered with experienced veterans in media migration to provide complete end-to-end solutions to customers. We have partnered with many of the largest names in storage and archive to provide powerful and scalable solutions for our customers.
Digital Delivery and Tapeless Workflow Options
Our flagship eMAM™ Digital Asset Management Software System is helping customers from small production and edit facilities to major broadcasters manage their workflow without tape stock. eMAM™ provides a digital library of all your content with universal web access. Small proxy copies of each video, audio, image, or document allow for easy web browsing, collaboration, annotation, rough cut editing, comments, approvals, and sharing of content. Producing and distributing copies on tape is becoming a thing of the past for our customers.
eMAM ™ is a media manager for the original source content, providing download and digital delivery across platforms, with transcoding on demand. The system is feature rich and highly configurable to meet your needs; with our team ready to customize or produce specialized middleware as needed.
eMAM Online Our remote server stores your content for web access for your authorized staff and clients. Use our infrastructure and bandwidth for easy setup; no equipment costs, and flexible monthly payments. It is also an easy entry point for customers who seek to test our technology, or use a smaller remote system to sit outside their facility security firewall.
eMAM Enterprise Our system can run off servers in your facility to power your operation. We have developed integrations with many of the non-linear editing systems, broadcast servers and storage systems, such as Isilon, Rorke Data, Blue Arc, JMR; and archive systems such as SGL Flash Net and XenData. Working with our partners we can develop complete turnkey solutions to meet the needs of your organization.
The Future
Tape stock production will return to previous levels later this year. In the interim, an increasing number of customers may never go back to their previous demand. Many have already discovered what others have known for years: that high quality evaluated tape can be used for many or all of their needs, at a much lower price. An increasing number have already migrated from tape into a tapeless workflow.
Tape budgets may never be the same again.
