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 or cassettes. [1] [2] Serial digital interface (SDI) capture is supported, as well as real-time transcoding (with MXF). [1] Portions of the software suite also act as a network file server for media files, as well as archiving to LTO-3 data tape. [1] Audio and video media files can also be stored on USB hard drives or Network Attached Storage. [3] The software is heavily used by the BBC, and was developed by the BBC Research Laboratory. [3]
Some of the early production projects which have used Ingex include a Foo Fighters music video, and the BBC television series Dragons' Den. [3]
The different software products in the suite support: [1]
Media Harmony [4] is a module for Samba 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. [5] 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.
Currently supported standard-definition (SD) codecs are: [1]
Supported high-definition (HD) codecs are: [1]
libMXF supports: [6]
MediaHarmony supports: [4]
Ingex archive supports: [7]
Metadata:
Project Pages:
Whitepapers:
Case studies: From the Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR), a project of the European Commission's IDABC project: