Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive enhances the discoverability and accessibility of its audiovisual heritage using Arcitecta’s intelligent data platform to modernise digital workflows.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia [NFSA] is now working on a broad strategy to enhance the discoverability and public accessibility of Australia’s audiovisual heritage, preserving its continued relevance and value for future generations.
Noting the rapid growth of digital assets today, NFSA has been aware that traditional storage models and standard workflows are no longer sufficient to safeguard the public’s access to cultural heritage. In order to manage the scale and complexity of its collections, alongside demand for access, NFSA identified some key requirements for its digital transformation.
Modern Asset Management Infrastructure
For example, the organisation is taking steps to enhance digital discovery and engagement by improving the user experience online and integrating social platforms. They have replaced their legacy systems with a more modern, centralised platform that keeps workflows simple and integrates directly with existing collection and exhibition management tools. They also aim to support the government’s digitisation programme for at-risk materials held in various National Cultural Institutions.
The Archive also plans to automate the ingest workflows for material coming from external contributors, reducing reliance on manual, labour-intensive asset handling processes.
To serve as its central Digital Asset Management System [DAMS], NFSA chose to work with Arcitecta’s Mediaflux. Arcitecta stood out due to its unified, intelligent approach to data management. The platform is developed for scalability with flexible capabilities for metadata enrichment and long-term preservation, and integrates with NFSA’s wider digital operations.
To build a strong technical foundation, NFSA will integrate Mediaflux with infrastructure and storage solutions chosen and customised for performance, scalability and sustainability. Wasabi cloud storage, for instance, which will be managed by Mediaflux, makes it possible to scale cost-effectively, applying intelligent tiering to optimize storage efficiency and sustainability – without egress fees.
Dell PowerScale flash and archive solutions are the hardware that runs high-speed digitization and long-term preservation operations of the collections, giving users instant access to history at scale.
Unifying and Consolidating Digital Assets
Mediaflux will be the single, cohesive platform that enables NFSA to unify and consolidate its digital assets across diverse formats and departments. Purpose-built for petabyte-scale data environments, it delivers real-time performance and metadata automation to streamline complex workflows.
Mediaflux enables intelligent data tiering and policy-driven governance that automatically places data into the storage location that yields the lowest overall cost at any time.
All of this functionality aims to avoid silos while improving efficiency, and relies on metadata to drive actions, from discovery and automation to governance and curation. In other words, metadata is used not only for documentation but also as actionable intelligence. The Mediaflux schema is flexible, with user-defined fields, types, vocabularies and validation rules, and can be used to store relational metadata that links assets to people, events, instruments, research and other assets.
Capture can be automated, from file attributes, instruments, workflows and AI enrichment. Mediflux uses a sidecar metadata model – that is, metadata is stored separately from the files, enabling it to be previewed and discovered securely without exposing the content itself. metadata can also be managed at scale through in-place editing and batch updates, without moving any of the data.
Scalable Cloud-Native Platform
This project reflects a larger trend within the NFSA’s industry sector, encompassing galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Institutions are adopting scalable, cloud-native platforms, driven by metadata, to address the changing demands of digital stewardship, including research innovation and public engagement.
“The NFSA’s digital transformation isn’t just about upgrading systems — it’s about fundamentally rethinking how we manage, understand and share Australia’s audiovisual history,” said Dr. Keir Winesmith, Chief Digital Officer, NFSA. “Mediaflux gives us the flexibility to structure and enrich our digital assets in ways that make them more discoverable, understandable and accessible. Beyond preserving history, we want to connect Australians with their audiovisual heritage and help them understand the many ways in which the past contains the present and the future.”
An interesting new feature coming soon to Mediaflux is the Cuts-Only Editing Room, a web-based, non-destructive editing tool that quickly prepares content for export. Operated entirely in the browser, without external software, it can be used to select segments from video or audio assets without altering the originals, or to compile cut lists for downstream publishing. Edits are stored as metadata instructions or sidecar files, maintaining the integrity of the source material at all times. Users can then export approved edits to other platforms via API or download.
Upgrading Contribution Workflows
Through a phased implementation, NFSA will upgrade its workflows to make it easier for external contributors to submit and access materials. The first phase focusses on three key areas, aiming to optimize NFSA’s operations. One is devoted to intelligent metadata management. Mediaflux will automate the ingest of metadata that reflects the assets’ context, improving searchability across the archive and aligning with storage formats as they evolve.
Collections management will be improved through a robust digital access workflow that simplifies how new materials are curated and preserved. Contributor interaction will also be simpler and more direct for both ingest and access. A simple-to-use web portal will allow external parties such as broadcasters, donors and production studios to deposit and withdraw digital assets securely.
Mediaflux combines deep domain expertise with flexible customisation. Its robust capabilities also open new monetization and audience engagement opportunities by making the enriched collections more accessible. www.arcitecta.com
