Case Study: Austin City Limits achieves digitization and preservation of 40+ years of archival footage with Backblaze B2

Austin City Limits moves 40+ years of concert footage from tape to B2

Austin City Limits, led by Amanda Moore and James Cole at KLRU-TV, faced the urgent challenge of digitizing and preserving more than 40 years of programming — over 550 hour-long episodes and thousands of hours of unaired footage — as aging videotapes deteriorated. With limited PBS station budgets and an Internet connection too slow and unreliable for large media uploads, Austin City Limits needed a secure, affordable cloud solution and a way to move huge volumes of data offsite. Backblaze (Backblaze B2) was chosen to meet those needs.

Backblaze supplied Backblaze B2 cloud storage and a B2 Fireball ingest device to securely migrate data: KLRU digitized tapes, loaded 40 TB onto the Fireball, shipped it to Backblaze, and the data was downloaded into their B2 account. KLRU then connected its media access and distribution system to B2 via APIs, using local proxies for preview and pulling high-resolution files on demand. The result was a faster, more reliable ingestion process than their Internet connection, predictable low-cost storage, and a durable, accessible archive that preserves thousands of hours (including 4,000 hours of tape material and 550+ episodes) for future licensing and long-term protection.

Austin City Limits

Amanda Moore

Technical Project Manager