FEATURE
NEXT-LEVEL STORAGE N
earline storage is among the newest buzzwords to hit
broadcasting and post-production. Though less glamorous than second screen and OTT, it is making people rethink how they store and manage material in these days of fast-turna- round productions, repurposed assets and rising shooting ratios. At its most basic, nearline storage
is a layer between online, local stores for work in progress (WIP) and deep, offl ine archives that are now usually held on data tape, most com- monly on the non-proprietary LTO (linear tape-open) format. This new level of store has estab- lished itself in broadcast and post over the past two years but, as with many technologies now being used in the industry, it is nothing new. As Nick Pearce, co-founder of stor- age and software developer Object Matrix, observes, nearline is a famil- iar concept in general computing. “Traditional IT has been using it
for years,” he says. “It’s become a valid platform in the creative indus- tries because it makes material avail- able before it goes on tape, without having to put everything on costly production disks, like Avid Isis or Apple XSan. But it is guaranteed to be there when you want it.” Nearline is a contraction of “near-
offl ine”, summing up the closeness to the primary storage medium for editing and effects work, but at the same time showing it is one or two steps away. “It’s not an editing plat- form,” explains Pearce, “but it’s also more than just a parking space. Nearline is somewhere to keep rushes, which is a consideration today with shooting ratios of 30:1 and 60:1.”
22 | Broadcast TECH | July/August 2012 Rupert Watson, chief technology
offi cer of Soho distributor and sys- tems integrator Root6, describes nearline as “a big bucket”. He says it is a response from customers to today’s operational set-ups, where they don’t want to spend any more than necessary on WIP systems such as Isis and Omneon. “Large amounts of data are being created before post and, although not every- thing will be used, people want access to it,” he says. “What used to be on tape is now coming in on, or being recorded to, disk, and dealing with all that unor- ganised data is a pain. People realise they need pre-WIP storage in order to get everything in one place before they start the editing process.”
Working smart Specialised products have appeared from developers including QNAP and GB Labs, up to systems from Isilon, which are handled by Root6, along with Object Matrix’s Matrix- Store, Nexsan’s AutoMAID (Auto- matic Massive Array of Idle Disks) and the new Avid Isis 2000. Part of the reason for the appear- ance of nearline storage in broadcast and post is, as technical director at Manchester facilities house Sumners Brian Hardman points out, the shift towards tapeless working. “We’ve been doing tapeless realistically for just over two years,” he says. “Tape is an instant archive – it just sits on a shelf – but with fi le-based
operations, you need to be smarter and have more levels.”
Somewhere between online and offl ine, nearline storage systems like Avid Isis 2000 and MatrixStore are increasingly being used by broadcasters and post fi rms as part of a tapeless workfl ow. Kevin Hilton reports
‘Large amounts of data are being created
Hardman says many IT storage companies thought there was “a lot of money to be made” from the entertainment sector and that they could just use their existing tech- nology. “That wasn’t the case,” he says. “We needed a smarter approach from storage vendors who could make a range of entry-level systems at low cost that could be scaled up when needed.” Sumners installed a 33TB Object
before post, and people want access
to it’ Rupert Watson, Root6
Matrix MatrixStore as its main near- line system in 2010 to work with its Avid production chain, subsequently increasing the number of clusters to more than 90TB of storage. “With our workfl ow, we can get fi le-based rushes, verify them and put it all on to nearline,” says Hardman. Another Object Matrix user is
Welsh post house Gorilla, which is using what managing director Richard Moss says is the meeting of nearline and a more accessible archive, possibly creating another buzzword: nearchive. This holds proxies of rushes that can be browsed and then retrieved if needed for an edit. “It is two levels of storage,” he
MatrixStore: used by Sumners and Gorilla
says, “which is needed today as a dumping ground for all the fi les coming off Alexa and Red cameras and other acquisition media. Near- line is safe storage but it is also a feeder to other areas.” Avid has now entered the nearline arena with the Isis 2000, which was launched at this year’s NAB. This works with the manufacturer’s Inter- play creation and management sys- tem to allow browsing of the storage array. Avid director of solutions development Kevin Usher says the company had a nearline/nearchive
www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils
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