DESCRIPTION

This is a combined synopsis/solicitation for commercial items in accordance with the format in FAR 12.6 Streamlined Procedures for Evaluation and Solicitation for Commercial Items as supplemented with additional information included in this notice.  This announcement constitutes the only solicitation; a written solicitation will not be issued.  The solicitation number is NAMA-NW-11-Q-0025 and is issued as a request for quotation (RFQ); quotations furnished are not offers.  This request does not commit the government to pay any costs incurred in the preparation of the submission of this quotation or to contract for supplies or services.  Any representations and/or certifications attached to this RFQ must be completed by the vendor.  The solicitation document and incorporated provisions and clauses are those in effect through Federal Acquisition Circular 2005-51 effective April 1, 2011. 

 COMPETITION, EVALUATION, AND CONTRACT TYPE: This is a 100% small business set-aside requirement under NAICS 541511 with a size standard of $18,000,000.  The Government reserves the right to issue an order based on the initial quote without discussions of this procurement.  Evaluation and award will be in accordance with the procedures of FAR Subpart 13.106, Soliciting Competition, Evaluation of Quotations or Offers, Award and Documentation.   The Government intends to issue a firm fixed-price purchase order.  The Vendor's technical quotation will be evaluated in accordance with the procedures of FAR 13.106 and using the factor schema enumerated below.  Source selection will be based on the best overall value to the Government.  I. TECHNICAL FACTORS. All technical factors are of approximately equal importance. 1. Technical capability. An assessment will be made of the Vendor proposed product capability to satisfy the technical requirements defined in Section 3, 4 and 5 as well as support and training requirements defined in Section 6 and 7. 2. Relevant Past Performance. The Vendor will be evaluated to assess the demonstrated quality of the performance of the same proposed product in relevant, similar work. Assessment will include the ability to control work and costs, timeliness of performance and effectiveness at accomplishing goals of the previous work. Vendors relevant past performance submissions shall be for recent and relevant corporate performance for at least two (2) on contracts/task orders related to the tasks in the PWS and performed within the last twelve (12) months. Relevant contracts/task orders are those that are of a similar scope, magnitudes, nature and work. Submissions must include the contact information for ordering entity including a point of contact and brief description of product used and work performed.  If the Vendor has no relevant past performance, they shall so state in their proposal  II. PRICE All evaluation factors other than cost or price, when combined, are significantly more important than cost or price.  Selection of the Vendor to receive this purchase order will be based on NARA's assessment of the best overall value to the Government.   In order to be determined technically acceptable, all quotation submission requirements must be met including the required documentation submissions outlined below.  The Government will only accept commercial-off-the-shelf items.  Vendors must submit itemized specifications that address the enumerated requirements of the Performance Work Statement (attachment 1) for each proposed item to facilitate a comprehensive Government evaluation. 

 AFFIRMATION STATEMENTS:  It is the vendor's responsibility to ensure that NARA is not provided counterfeit products.  Supplies furnished under this RFQ are of domestic origin unless otherwise indicated by vendor.  Vendors must complete and return Enclosure 1, RFQ Information Sheet, in order for their quotations to be considered.  The products comprising this requirement are not required to be compliant with Section 508 (see attachment 2).

 REQUIREMENTS: All delivery costs must be included in the total firm-fixed price quote. 

 DELIVERY: Packaging must be in a manner that prevents damage to the products during shipment.  Delivery must be undertaken during regular business hours, Monday through Friday, unless mutually agreed upon by NARA and the Contractor.  Delivery will be made to the following location: NARA - A-II, 3301 Metzerott Road, College Park, Maryland 20740-6001 no later than 30 calendar days after issuance of the order.  Failure to deliver in a timely manner could result in termination.

 SUBMISSION OF QUOTATIONS:  Two copies of each quotation should be mailed to National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Attention: Alice Keefe, Contract Specialist, 8601 Adelphi Road, Room B810, College Park, MD 20740-6001 or e-mailed to: [email protected].  Quotations should be received by 1:00 PM ET on June 17, 2011.  Questions regarding this solicitation must be submitted in writing to Ms. Alice Keefe no later than 1:00 PM ET on June 7, 2011, to be considered.  Please allow one extra business day for delivery and receipt if quotation is sent via e-mail, as the e-mail will need to pass through IT security.  Telephonic responses will not be processed.

SCHEDULE B

 NOTE:  Insert unit prices proposed for each CLIN.  The Total Contract Maximum Price will be determined by adding the CLIN prices for each year.  CLIN = Contract Line Item Number; PWS = Performance Work Statement.

 Transcoder Software

ATTACHMENT 1

PERFORMANCE WORK STATEMENT

FOR

Software System for the Automated Transcoding and Generating Derivatives of Digital Video and Audio Files

•1.0   INTRODUCTION

Statement of Need

The Special Media Preservation Division (NWTS) of Preservation Programs (NWT) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is planning to issue a firm fixed price contract to procure a software system for automated transcoding and generating derivatives of computer-based digital video and audio files with training and on-going support and maintenance for the software application(s). This RFQ is for the purchase of software application (s), training and ongoing support and maintenance only, and does not include any computer server hardware.  

•2.0   BASIC REQUIREMENTS

The Special Media Preservation Division (NWTS) of Preservation Programs (NWT) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is expanding capabilities in the Audio, Video and Motion Picture labs relating to digital recordings, and needs a software-based application for batch-processing transcoding tasks and automated derivative generation.

•2.1    General Requirements:  SOFTWARE TO BE PURCHASED

Qty      Software and Services

1          Computer software system for automated transcoding and generating derivatives of digital video and audio files - with training, maintenance and support. Licenses for all codecs supported by the application. The software system must be an out of the box program that has been in production use by at least two (2) organizations for a minimum of twelve (12) months.

All bids must supply the names and contact information for at least two (2) client references using the version of the software system proposed.

Software must be able to run within NARA's existing/target environment. The proposed solution should not include hardware.

Information about the NARA Provided Target Environment in Which the System Will Operate

•§  Target operating platform:

•·         Eight (8) core Intel Xeon X5xxx series or AMD Opteron 6100 series processors with

•·         32 GB RAM

•·         Two (2) 1 Gb/s copper Ethernet network interface card (NIC)

•·         Windows 2008 Server Standard Edition operating system

•§  Operating Environment:

•·         Staff work five (5) days a week, eight (8) hour shift per day

•·         Unattended 24/7 operation of automated processing required

•3.0   Operational Activities

•3.1   Set up workflow - define configurations for different types of process and jobs - both transcoding processing parameters and metadata parameters

•3.2   Set up jobs - define specific configuration for individual jobs

•3.3   Submit jobs to server application for automated processing

•3.4   Monitor system, processes, and errors

•3.5   Output defined complement of audio and video files

•3.6   There must be no constraints in the software about the sizes of input files assuming that NARA provides sufficient hardware to process the job.

•4.0   System functionality

•4.1   Job Configuration

•4.1.1          User should be able to invoke the application from his/her network account.

•4.1.2          When defining the specifications for a transcoding job, a user should have a clear view of all of the supported options that are available.  Any options that are not supported should be clearly identified.

•4.1.3          Help information should be readily accessible from the job definition/transcode definition screen.

•4.1.4          For each supported output type, the user should have the ability to configure all of the variable aspects of the output type.

•4.1.5          The user interface should clearly label the configurable options that are available.

•4.1.6          The user interface should have a clear division between the user interface for configuring a job and the user interface for executing a transformation job.

•4.2   Encoding and decoding capabilities

•4.2.1          Ability to utilize installed codecs with no additional license fees beyond those specified in the proposal.

•4.2.2          Ability to transcode from the following file formats:

•4.2.2.1    DPX (as defined by SMPTE 268M-1994) and version 2.0 (as defined by SMPTE 268M-2003)

•4.2.2.2    MPEG-2 (4:2:2 Profile / Main Level and Main Profile / Main Level) accompanied by 2 channel  (stereo LR) and MPEG Layer 2 audio)

•4.2.2.3    Uncompressed video stream within a QuickTime wrapper; accompanied by 2-8 channels of 48kHz/24-bit-linear PCM audio

•4.2.2.4    Uncompressed video streams with YUY2 encoding within an AVI wrapper; accompanied by 2-8 channels of 48kHz/24-bit-linear PCM audio

•4.2.3          Ability to transcode to the following video file formats:

•4.2.3.1    MPEG-2 (4:2:2 Profile / Main Level and Main Profile / Main Level) accompanied by 2 channel  (stereo LR) and MPEG Layer 2 audio)

•4.2.3.2    H.264 (.MOV) accompanied by 2 channels of AAC audio

•4.2.3.3    Windows Media (VC-1 compliant)

•4.2.4          Ability to transcode from the following audio file formats

•4.2.4.1    BWF as defined by EBU Technical document 3285

•4.2.5          Ability to transcode to the following audio file formats

•4.2.5.1    MP3

•4.2.6          Files from the transcoding process should be well-formed and technically valid against industry standards when read by a number of independent file type identification tools and automated QC/QA tools.

•4.2.7          Ability to integrate transcoders for emerging file formats within the workflow framework of the application

•4.3   Batch Processing

•4.3.1          Supports the batch processing of a group of homogeneous or heterogeneous file types.

•4.3.2          Ability to process multiple transcoding tasks simultaneously. 

•4.3.2.1    Ability to monitor all tasks running at one time.

•4.3.2.2    Ability to terminate an individual task without terminating other running tasks.

•4.3.2.3    Failure of one transcoding task should not negatively affect the other running tasks.

•4.3.3          Ability to farm work to multiple servers as the production capacity grows and track the work on multiple machines from a single interface.  Only one instance is being sought at this time.

•4.4   System extensibility

•4.4.1          Ability to invoke processing by use of local watch folders and network watch folders.

•4.4.2          Ability to invoke system capabilities via a web service or API.

•4.5   Metadata capabilities and compliance-

•4.5.1          Ability to export metadata into XML

•5.0   Workflow Management

•5.1   Job Profiles - software shall have the ability to define and save all user settings as job profiles, and reuse profiles for later sessions and jobs

•5.2   User Profiles - software shall have the ability to configure user interface for individuals and save settings as user profiles - including ability to configure controls that appear in the user interface and ability to lock out access to selected settings

•5.3   Ability to perform rework (reprocessing of digital recordings as identified as part of the quality control process)

•5.4   Audit trail of all work and rework

•6.0   Software Support

•6.1   Software support should include maintenance releases, upgrades and technical support at no additional cost for the base year.

•6.2   Software support should include maintenance releases, upgrades and technical support for up to four (4) option years at a specified cost per year.

•6.3   Technical support by telephone and by email.  Requests should receive a response within four (4) business hours.

•7.0   Training

•7.1   The vendor will provide web-based training for up to ten (10) hours of training for each of six (6) staff persons.

•7.2   A User Manual will be provided, either in electronic on-line or hard copy format.

•7.3   Training will be available as soon as the software is installed.

•8.0   PLACE OF PERFORMANCE

Computer software system to be delivered to the following location:

Special Media Preservation Laboratory (NWTS)

3301 Metzerott Road, College Park, Maryland, 20740

Entrance for delivery will be via Metzerott Road

•9.0   PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE

The period will be for delivery no more than thirty (30) days from date of award. 

•10.0            HOURS OF OPERATION

Work must be undertaken during regular business hours, Monday through Friday, unless mutually agreed upon by NARA Contracting Officers Representative (COR) and the Contractor.

•11.0            TASKS AND DELIVERABLES

The deliverables are discussed in Section 2 above.

•12.0            MISCELLANEOUS REQUIREMENTS

•12.1            All work must be completed on a schedule mutually agreed upon by the vendor and the Government no later than one year from contract award date in base year or applicable option year.

•12.2            No transportation or travel expenses will be paid.

•12.3            Vendor must accept direct deposit for payment.  (Vendor must be registered with the CCR registry.)

Government-furnished materials:  N/A