The Ingex Project- an Introduction
I'm John Fletcher, a Senior Engineer working in the Ingex team.听 Ingex is a PC-based audio/video recording system that can be used in multi-camera studios instead of video tape recorders.听 Tapeless recording systems, such as Ingex, provide a much faster and cheaper means of getting the recordings into the edit.听 And having the material in electronic form means you can do lots more with it, for example, putting it on a website for the production team to review.听 One of the aims of Ingex is to show that this kind of system can be put together using off-the-shelf IT components and open-source software.
The beginnings of Ingex were back in 2004 on the Children's 成人快手 programme BAMZOOKi.听 The producer wanted to avoid all the re-typing of handwritten timing notes that happens when material is copied from video tape into the editing system.听 We put together a system that allowed the notes to be made on a PC in the studio gallery.听 The process is called logging and collects information such as: Scene 3, take 2 was a good one and is on tape between these times.听 With this we were able to automate the process of getting the right material into the edit (known as ingest) but it still involved a lot of video tapes.
We then worked on adding broadcast-quality video recording to the system and this was used for the next series of BAMZOOKi in 2005.听 We also provided new facilities for the programme makers such as DVDs of each day's recordings with a detailed menu allowing them to go straight to a particular scene/take/camera.听 The video below was produced in 2006 to showcase the Ingex systems use on BAMZOOKi (it can also be downloaded from )听
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Since then, we've used Ingex on programmes including EastEnders and Dragons' Den, continually adding new features and refining the workflow.听 Right now we're using the system to help produce The Bottom Line, a business discussion programme with output on radio, TV and the web.听 The multi-platform aspect means a variety of file formats are needed and the topical nature of the programme means the edit has to be turned around very quickly.听 Add to that the need to rig the equipment in a cramped radio studio and Ingex is the ideal solution.
You might have seen that we recently won an Innovation Award from the Royal Television Society.听 The judges said Ingex had "without a doubt raised the bar in a dramatic style by expanding the scope of an already proven industry development that will now bring greater efficiency, flexibility and faster production turnaround times to many programme undertakings - and all at a cost that makes it a really practical proposition."
More technical detail on Ingex is available at the , where you can also download the open source licensed software.
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Comment number 1.
At 19th Nov 2009, Mo McRoberts wrote:For those of us who left the horrors of CVS behind years ago, I鈥檝e set up a of the repository on SourceForge:
In theory, this should be updated within an hour of changes being committed. That said, I鈥檝e never done a CVS鉄穏it bridge before (only Subversion and Mercurial), so it鈥檚 entirely possible it will all go horribly wrong!
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Comment number 2.
At 20th Nov 2009, Mo McRoberts wrote:Minor follow-up:
It鈥檚 worth linking to 鈥淔ile-based Production: Making It Work In Practice鈥, which goes into quite a bit more detail about how Ingex is used and interoperability with other parts of the chain (e.g., Avid)
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Comment number 3.
At 24th Nov 2009, Ant Miller wrote:We've actually got another promo film for Ingex lined up awaiting clearance. We'll post it here as soon as we have it.
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Comment number 4.
At 27th Nov 2009, John Fletcher wrote:Thanks for the git mirror; I'll give that a try sometime. We hope to move to git at some point in the future.
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Comment number 5.
At 8th Jan 2010, vasco wrote:hello to everybody, i am from Bologna Italy and i work in a tv studio.
I will try to setup an INGEX machine
I have some doubt; INGEX works over SUSE 11.2?
About Mediahrmony: I can use the latest samba version without problems?
thanks for now.
Bye Vasco
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Comment number 6.
At 19th Jan 2010, brendan wrote:Hi Vasco,
Ingex won't work with OpenSUSE 11.2 as a lot of the KDE setup and installation procedures have changed. You will have better luck with OpenSUSE 10.2 or 11.1.
We have some new build and installation instructions which should help, they're linked from the main .
For technical questions, you would be better of using the .
Good luck -- let us know how you get on!
Brendan.
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