The new storage systems must have ease of integration with other processes and systems within the companies. When it comes to acquiring it, this should be the main determinant and not only the cost.
Richard Santa S.
For a company in the television industry, its main asset is content. Therefore, not having an adequate system can mean putting the stability of the company at risk.
Ángel Ylisastigui of the company Avid points out that the most difficulty encountered by television stations is not having the ability to compete with the requirements of the market and with the speed and efficiency in which the content is processed and transmitted.
Today in the market there are different systems that allow archiving of content with storage scalability, content redundancy, collaboration of two to 300 (or more) users and reduced cost. Companies such as Avid, Front Porch Digital and For-A offer specialized systems for this purpose.
Different systems
Finding a balance between efficiency and cost of equipment for storing content is one of the main challenges for the television industry today.
According to Ángel Ylisastigui, online storage systems offer unparalleled efficiency and speed but still maintain a very high cost. Near-line systems are more moderately priced but access to content is slower and more limited.
He adds that "we finally have the data tape storage systems which have a very low cost and offer more space for content. This makes it ideal for long-term storage. The disadvantages are poor performance and difficulty in accessing the content. It's important for diffusers to find the right balance between storage and cost."
But Pablo Miliani, regional vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean at Front Porch Digital, argues that there are few technological challenges and they are being solved quickly. Non-encapsulated formats have been one of them, and with the advent of the video file sharing format, AXF, the industry will have a standard that allows for the efficient transit of content in high-resolution formats.
"I think the main challenges are the supply of many competing systems that don't really cater to bandwidth and transfer speed needs. Some clients unfortunately do not verify the details, they buy the cheapest, and we have seen in Latin America many projects that end in frustrations," he says.
What's New
In the market there are new storage systems that have features such as performance and reliability, access to content in real time, collaborative work, adaptable and scalable to the needs of each client, ease of use and accessible and durable solutions that give a good return on investment.
One of the products is the DIVArchive, from Front Porch Digital. It features intelligent architecture that eliminates bottlenecks at scale and enables ease of access through a data parallelism with dynamic resource allocation. Its modular design allows for a versatile configuration.
It also allows the video to be quickly delivered to various clients on the network. Their data protection systems are redundant, while the storage plan administrator provides user-defined settings that manage access.
DIVArchive supports replaceable components without interrupting operation, has SNMP connectivity for existing surveillance facility systems, and supports 24x7 phone service and secure VPN access.
The Isis 5000
Another offering on the market is Avid's ISIS 5000, a shared storage system that sets a new reliable, flexible and high-performance benchmark in media access, enabling workflow efficiency. It has a maximum of 90 user connections, 144 TB of usable capacity.
The system easily adapts to a variety of workflow environments, with support for Avid Media Composer, NewsCutter, Symphony, DS editors, and Pro Tools, as well as Apple Final Cut Pro. Supports Mac and PC in the same workspace.
It has a user administration console that simplifies storage management (including LDAP support). Its exhaustive and intuitive tracking and diagnostics are novelties that have never been available in this class of storage systems before.
In general, each of the existing storage solutions on the market must have a working standard for files, it is a need that will finally be addressed by AXF. It is also much easier and more efficient to migrate content on videotapes and incorporate it into centralized storage systems, with automated tools such as SAMMA.
For Pablo Miliani, the new storage systems must be designed as open solutions that allow storing the different content formats, interconnect with native tools within the company and reduce operating and input costs.
In addition, they allow sustained growth and migration management to future storage media and open the possibilities of reusing historical content in new media and distribution devices such as the internet and on demand.
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Latin America forward
The representatives of Avid and Front Porch Digital agree that most of the companies in the television industry in Latin America are at the forefront of video storage and invest a lot of money in this issue.
"A videotape or videodisc is a storage medium that is purchased every day and that has a significantly higher price than generic data storage media. Content management systems such as DIVArchive are paid for with the saving of two or three years of inputs such as videodisc videotapes, "says Pablo Miliani.
The advent of memory- or disk-based capture systems has significantly reduced the need to use these inputs, as long as there is an efficient content storage system.
For his part, Ángel Ylisastigui indicates that 90% of television stations in Latin America have taken the first steps or are in migration plans to collaborative work and medium storage of high efficiency and speed.
He gives as an example the cases of television stations such as TV Globo of Brazil, Televisa and TV Azteca of Mexico and RCN of Colombia, among many others that have taken the first steps to update their workflow and the way they handle the different contents.
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