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 Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog or digital signal. Videotape is used in both video tape recorders (VTRs) and, more commonly, videocasset ...

or cassettes. Serial digital interface (SDI) capture is supported, as well as real-time

transcoding Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files (e.g., MP3, WAV), or character encoding (e.g., UTF-8, ISO/IEC 8859). This is usually done in cases where a target ...

(with MXF). Portions of the software suite also act as a network file server for media files, as well as archiving to LTO-3 data tape. Audio and video media files can also be stored on USB hard drives or

Network Attached Storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. In this context, the term "NAS" can refer to both the technology and systems ...

. The software is heavily used by the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

, and was developed by the

BBC Research BBC Research & Development is the technical research department of the BBC. Function It has responsibility for researching and developing advanced and emerging media technologies for the benefit of the corporation, and wider UK and European m ...

Laboratory. Some of the early production projects which have used Ingex include a

Foo Fighters The Foo Fighters are an American Rock music, rock band formed in Seattle in 1994. Initially founded as a one-man project by former Nirvana (band), Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl, the band comprises vocalist/guitarist Grohl, bassist Nate Mendel, gu ...

music video, and the BBC television series Dragons' Den.

Features

The different software products in the suite support: * Multi-camera video capture in a studio environment * Video tape archive preservation * Acting as a server to Avid editing clients ''Media Harmony'' is a module for

Samba Samba () is a broad term for many of the rhythms that compose the better known Brazilian music genres that originated in the Afro-Brazilians, Afro Brazilian communities of Bahia in the late 19th century and early 20th century, It is a name or ...

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. 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 Standard-definition television (SDTV; also standard definition or SD) is a television system that uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high-definition television, high or enhanced definition. ''Standard'' refers to offering a ...

(SD)

codecs A codec is a computer hardware or software component that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder o ...

are: * Avid-compatible

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

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: * DNxHD (VC-3) at 120 Mbit/s and 185 Mbit/s *

DVCPRO HD DV (from ''Digital Video'') is a family of codecs and tape formats used for storing digital video, launched in 1995 by a consortium of video camera manufacturers led by Sony and Panasonic. It includes the recording or cassette formats DV, Mini ...

* Uncompressed high-definition video at 8 bits-per-sample libMXF supports: * 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: * 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: * MXF OP-1A file container, containing audio, video, and timecode data (also known as OP-1A MXF) * LTO-3 data tape * Video

SMPTE The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded by Charles Francis Jenkins in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and e ...

384M uncompressed 4:2:2 video at 8 bits per sample in UYVY format * Audio

382M uncompressed

PCM Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to Digital signal (signal processing), digitally represent analog signals. It is the standard form of digital audio in computers, compact discs, digital telephony and other digital audio application ...

audio at 48 kHz and 20 bits per sample * LTO barcode information *

POSIX.1-2001 The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX; ) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines application programming interfaces (APIs), along with comma ...

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.

Supported operating systems

* libMXF:

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

* Ingex Studio:

openSUSE openSUSE () is a free and open-source software, free and open-source Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. It is offered in two main variations: ''Tumbleweed'', an upstream rolling release distribution, and ''Leap'', a stable r ...

Linux

References

{{Reflist

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 All European countries show eGovernment initiatives, mainly related to the improvement of governance at the national level. Significant eGovernment activities also take place at the European Commission level as well. There is an extensive list ...

project:
Low-cost high tech: BBC tries out Open Source-based tapeless recording

Low-cost high tech: BBC tries out Open Source-based tapeless recording, as ODT document

Low-cost high tech: BBC tries out Open Source-based tapeless recording, as PDF document
Broadcast engineering Digital television Film and video technology Free video software

Features

Supported formats

Supported operating systems

See also

References

External links