Mumbai: The Films Division of India today announced the launch of its revamped website developed by Recreate Solutions, a London-based premier IT services company, with a major development centre in Mumbai.

Says Recreate Solutions co-founder and president Rajendra Parmar: "It was most satisfying to complete this challenging task within a month. We are very pleased for this opportunity to preserve our cinematic history and talent by the adoption of the latest technology for future generations."

The new Films Division website has over 220 hours of video and audio from over 700 movies with a searchable database. In the next phase, the functionality of the website will be extended to make it more business oriented. Recreate Solutions is also helping the Films Division in developing the marketing strategy for the website.

Says Films Division of India director (administration) Sanjaya Pattanayaka: "Recreate Solutions deserves our congratulations certainly. The new website is extremely user-friendly and offers an opportunity to audiences all around the world to experience the rich cultural heritage of India and also the facilities offered by the Films Division."

In the pilot project comprising of 220 hours of VDO, the Films Division judiciously selected over 700 movies averaging a frame length of 20 minutes per movie clip. These VDO assets are encoded in two different baud rates — 56 and 128 KBPS in Windows and Real formats for the dial-up and high-speed connection, respectively. The site is hosted on a server abroad with a 256 KBPS dedicated link and can have at least 20 simultaneous users logged on to the site. The search engine gives the surfer a choice of category, year of production, director and titles of the clip.

The website also introduces to the audience the offerings of the Films Division like the media lab, the equipment and infrastructure available such as premises and sets for film shoots. There is also information given on tendering procedures and provisions made for press releases to be featured. The architecture is open and flexible but not vulnerable to cyber attacks. It can also be extended to become an intranet and/or an extranet.

The Films Division had floated a tender to digitise, encode, edit, clean up, achieve quality enhancement and hosting of 220 hours of VDO and audio, which also involved redesigning the existing website to make it more user-friendly and provide an enhanced viewing experience of the rich VDO assets shot over the years.

A number of companies including Recreate Solutions made a bid for the tender. The due-diligence carried out by a team comprising technocrats and managers from the Films Division, firmed up their decision. Finally they chose to go with Recreate Solutions based on its experience, impressive client lists, advanced DML (digital media laboratory) and the track record of the co-founders in their professional career.

The task was to device a plan, workflow and even ensure the security of the collateral material while it transited between the two offices. Recreate also had to give an undertaking that these assets will not be duplicated and a digitised copy will not be retained. The entire project was executed at Mumbai and a separate team was set up to meet with the challenges of delivery as Recreate had less than a month to deliver.

Recreate Solutions is a London-based company, with a major development centre in Mumbai. The Recreate Solutions mission is to help its clients unlock the competitive advantages inherent in rich media-enabled information systems by deploying them strategically across diverse application areas such as e-learning, portal development, information visualisation, enterprise communications and interactive television.

Recreate Solutions has skills in DVB, MHP and in Java TV applications and is working with major development platforms such as Mediahighway and OpenTV. Digital TV giant Canal+Technologies has appointed Recreate Solutions as its representative in India for the Indian pay TV and DTH scenarios. Recreate Solutions has also been mandated to develop interactive TV applications for Canal+Technologies for the latter''s Mediahighway platform.

The Films Division of India was established in 1948. For the past 50 years, the organisation has maintained a record of Indian history on celluloid. Nothing less than a mega-film on the film making process in India, The Films Division holds 8,000 titles on documentaries, short films and animated films in its archives. These films range from events of socio-cultural importance to political events.

It is the main film-medium organisation of the Indian government and is well equipped with trained personnel, cameras, recording and editing facilities. This infrastructure is put to use to assist in-house as well as freelance filmmakers and producers. The Films Division has, within its archives, a recorded legacy of our glorious past. With the infrastructure available, it is not merely a storehouse of this legacy, but also an active and evolving participant in creating the legacy on an ongoing basis.