Case Study: ORF preserves Austria’s broadcast heritage and digitizes 300,000 hours with Atos' DiMi

For Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF), the Austrian national public service broadcaster, it was time to end the costly and unproductive cycle of continual media format migrations

ORF, Austria’s national public service broadcaster, faced an unsustainable cycle of continual tape‑to‑tape migrations across a multimedia archive of over one million hours (with an initial 300,000‑hour / ~600,000‑tape tranche identified). To break the cycle, ORF engaged Atos to run the DiMi (Digital Migration) project, using an on‑site Atos DiMi workshop and technologies such as VidiCert automated quality tooling and NOA workflow components to convert fragile tape assets into sustainable file‑based formats and integrate them into ORF’s MAM.

Atos delivered a dedicated in‑country DiMi team and an industrialized, flexible workflow (16 VTRs, mixed automation and staffed QC, agreed average throughput of 82.5 hours/day) to ingest, QC, log and upload files so transferred tapes can be disposed of and content made directly discoverable. After two years Atos is on schedule—having converted some 40,000 hours toward the 300,000‑hour goal—reducing archive footprint and playback costs, improving searchability and third‑party access, and demonstrating clear, measurable throughput and quality gains.

ORF

Herbert Hayduck

Head of Documentation and Archives