Streamlining Asset Management at the World’s Largest Museum

Located on the historic site of a former fortress and palace, the Louvre is a central landmark of Paris. The museum today holds more than 380,000 pieces of art and regularly displays 35,000 in galleries that cover 15 acres. With more than 10 million visitors each year, the Louvre is also the most visited museum in the world.

The Louvre hosts a variety of conferences, symposia, and live musical performances each year in its main auditorium. Those events are recorded on video, and the footage becomes a valuable historical record for the museum and students.

The museum had used Apple Final Cut Server, a back-end server-based solution, for managing Final Cut Studio files. But that solution no longer met the museum’s needs. The Louvre needed a cost-effective, proven asset management system that would interface perfectly with leading video editing software, including Final Cut Pro. At the same time, a new asset management system had to operate across physically separate networks.

Transforming Asset Management with CatDV
The Louvre selected the CatDV Asset Management Platform as the new asset management solution within the museum. Video is captured and transcoded using the CatDV Worker automation engine and then ingested into CatDV. Louvre librarians and editors in charge of asset management can access and log media directly using the CatDV Web Client.

Simplifying Search and Retrieval
CatDV makes it easier for users to find and retrieve what they need in the large volume of assets. Samuel Brosset, technical manager at the Louvre, noted, “CatDV’s Worker Node provides powerful tools that organize media on our SAN, while the CatDV Web Client provides access to the media throughout the Louvre, making search and retrieval very simple.”

Streamlining Migration, Preserving the Workflow
“The switch from our Final Cut Server was seamless,” says Brosset. “The migration tool meant that all our existing assets and logging were maintained, saving us weeks of work.” As the designer of the media workflow at the Louvre, Brosset was also impressed that CatDV could easily adapt to support the museum’s preferred workflow rather than imposing a particular way of working on the team.

Maintaining Tight Security
Security of assets was a key consideration in selecting a new asset management solution. Fortunately, CatDV offers flexible security configuration options through seamless integration of CatDV with MySQL database.

Looking Ahead with CatDV
Brosset continues to explore new ways to capitalize on the solution. CatDV’s continual evolution and update program have allowed Brosset to plan integration of more new features, such as LTO tape archiving, into the workflow.