In Broadcast - October 2014 - 76

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 36 - OCTOBER 2014

N E W S

InTECH

RAID Storage Wars At IBC2014
Investment in UltraHD capable infrastructure and increased handling capacity for the resultant media
files looks like good news for the storage manufacturers...

By Kieron Seth
Contributing Editor
DotHill Ultra48 ultra-high density storage chassis

s c o n s u m e r m a r ke t i n g
departments continue to extol
the unimpeachable quality of
UltraHD TV sets, broadcasters are
holding their breath. Anticipating
the next wave of capital expenditure,
fast on the heels of the HD transition,
the shift to tapeless networks and
the investment in second screen
solutions and on-demand services,
for TV stations, the push for a
new video standard is likely to be
unwelcome news.
As Tara Montford, EMEA
Managing Director of Editshare
remarks: "It won't be long until
you will only be able to buy 4K
cameras for production and the
pressure on production companies
and broadcasters to re-invest in
equipment and networks will be
difﬁcult to bear."
If there is a rapid shift to UltraHD,
this will inevitably precipitate a new
round of investment in 4K-ready
storage, equipped to handle
higher data rates and cope with
larger file sizes.

conditions are falling into place for
the shift to 4K to happen sooner
than expected. He remarks: "The
certiﬁcation of UltraHD is giving the
industry the conﬁdence to invest. In
the early days of HD, the industry
was agonising for years over 720
vs 1080; as soon as the industry
made up its collective mind, there
was a rush to upgrade. The 4K
standard coming along so quickly
should make the move to the higher
resolution a less drawn out process."
However quickly UltraHD comes
to mainstream TV, there is clearly a
conﬁdence among storage vendors
such as GB Labs and ProMax
that they have the hardware to
help deliver the 4K reality. Cooper
comments: "We are currently
deploying many 4K systems both
on the editorial/ﬁnishing side, as
well as networked 4K workﬂows.
For archival, 4K is just a matter of
ﬁle size - our archival devices allow
for spanning of ﬁles across multiple
tapes so it's pretty simple for us."
Similarly, Editshare is conﬁdent
about its ability to provide an
appropriate 4K storage platform:
"From a technical standpoint,
Editshare systems are already
able to work with many different
ﬂavours of 4K, thanks to SSD
disks, 40GbE connections and
other advanced technology.
But when the wider market will
truly transition to the
higher resolution is an
open question. For the
majority, the focus is still
very much on HD."

Central Storage

ProMAX demonstrated its 4K ready
Platform

"It's not a matter of if it's good for
ProMAX," says Nate Cooper, VP of
Sales at ProMax, "but if 4K will be
adopted by the market. So far, it has
had a greater adoption, than say 3D
had; with some consumer adoption.
But the market has to want it. The
jury is still out on that."
For Ben Pearce, Sales and
Marketing Director at GB Labs, the

This emphasis on high
speed data rates is the
focus for multiple
manufacturers. A focal point
for DotHill at this year's IBC
was its Ultra48 ultra-density
chassis which houses nearly 58
terabytes of data on 2.5-inch hard
disk drives (HDD). Commenting at
its launch, Jon Guess, President
of Southern California-based
ALT Systems said: "Media and
enter tainment professionals
are looking for reliable and
h i g h p e r fo r m a n c e s to r a g e
solutions that excel at streaming

throughput. We are seeing interest
in high-density storage systems
that can perform at the levels
needed for 4K, High Frame Rate,
and 3D workflows."
Ultra48 AssuredSAN 4844
solutions provide the ﬂexibility to
run 16Gb Fibre Channel, 8Gb Fibre
Channel, 4Gb Fibre Channel, 10Gb
iSCSI and 1Gb iSCSI networks
using the same hardware. With a
swap of a transceiver module, IT
administrators can conﬁgure their
storage in the ﬁeld to 16Gb Fibre
Channel or 10Gb iSCSI. The
converged interface includes
a four-port controller that can
be conﬁgured with four Fibre
Channel ports, four iSCSI
ports, or a combination
of both Fibre Channel
and iSCSI ports.
GB Labs released two
new systems at IBC. Firstly,
HyperSpace, an SSD
enhancement technology
designed to accelerate its
tier 1 NAS system by piggy
backing HyperSpace onto the
RAID storage, the system is
designed to offer users the
capacity of the HDD range
with ultra-high SSD data rates.
Ben Pearce of GB Labs remarked:
"Many of our customers require large
capacities - up to 1.7PB - and very
high performance for demanding
media applications and large
workgroups. Our new Space HDD
platform has fulﬁlled these needs
for most clients. However certain
deployments require DPX image
sequence capabilities or very large
HD stream counts for concurrent

GB Labs 4K On-Set for location
production storage

editing, transcoding and rendering.
The random access capabilities of
HyperSpace are ideally suited to
these environments"
Secondly, 4K Duo On-Set is
designed for high end 4K location

production. It offers an ingest
station, an UltraHD storage platform
and a secure LTO backup solution.
The unit opens up 4K project
collaboration and archiving in the
ﬁeld, with the option for editors,
audio technicians and colourists
to share projects using 1Gb, 10Gb
or 40Gb Ethernet.
"Most DIT carts are ill-equipped
for high bitrate 4K. Ingest is slow,
primary storage lacks real-time
editing performance and back-ups
are unsafe. With 4K Duo On-Set,
it's like having a post facility on set,"

Editshare's Field 2 supports SSDs

concluded Pearce.
EditShare showcased its
portable storage platform - Field
2. Now supporting SSDs the unit
is claimed to offer up to six-times
the performance compared to the
enterprise-class 7200 RPM drives.
The turnkey Field 2 platform features
Flow media asset management
and ﬁle ingest, advanced project
sharing/bin locking, and archiving
capabilities in an all-in-one,
high-performance, rugged
chassis. The system is said
to be ideal for on-location
shoots, ENG trucks and
remote ofﬁces. Interestingly,
an optional two-channel Flow HD/
SD-SDI ingest card allows for direct
recording to Field 2 storage, with
edit-while-capture support for fastturnaround events.
The manufacturer also highlighted
EditShare Storage v7, which sports
CONTINUED ON PAGE 77

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