The market for storage media now demands more storage, more bandwidth, and more resilience. There is also a requirement for better scalability to manage both play-out and editing simultaneously.

The world of broadcasting is changing. From HD to mobile video, new formats and delivery methods must be addressed. At the same time, great value can be derived from re-using existing media assets. The market for storage media devices in India is on an upswing, receiving impetus from an increasing number of news and entertainment channels, and the need for efficient, error-free workflow of programs by broadcasters. The media and entertainment industry faces unique challenges in the management and storage of data, including the following:

• Reductions in costs while gaining efficiency;
• Protection of business assets;
• Workforce effectiveness;
• Process improvements.

The requirements of storage are increasing with the introduction of newer technology in production and play-out, such as HD and 3D. New and bandwidth-hungry operating systems for workflow have set in motion a demand for better technology and more storage space. Demands for storage and more bandwidth are projected to increase in the coming years as well.

Factors driving the market include more storage, more bandwidth, and more resilience. There is an increasing demand for scalability to manage both play-out and editing simultaneously. Also, the system should be redundant, because a production house cannot afford to lose any content.

The underlying factor is the adoption of file-based workflows, even at the acquisition stage. That is where the need for storage actually arises. Broadcasters are not only using file-based workflows during post-production, but are opting for an end-to-end digital workflow, including capturing the rendering and the play-out.

Even during a recession, people realized that tapes were no longer an option. Capacity expansion with regard to this workflow shall drive the market. Also, networks are moving toward end-to-end digital archiving, and 2010-2011 will witness a number of brands adopting this process. Without digital archiving, a file-based workflow is not complete, and this will also help in improving processing and faster flow of content.

Manufacturers believe the market will continue to evolve to accommodate the demand for new channels, to provide an efficient transition from SD to HD infrastructure, and to support the need to save content in different formats. Video on demand (VoD) is also driving the demand for media storage devices.

Creation, distribution, and conversion of video content are all huge demand drivers for storage device manufacturers. As image resolution increases, storage requirements are exploding. The development of HD TV and other high-resolution venues in the home and in mobile devices will drive the demand for digital content. It is expected that there will be a 12-time increase in the required digital storage capacity by 2015.

Growth will also depend on the number of channels moving toward HD in the near future. For every channel venturing into this transition, storage requirements will increase at a rate of 300 percent.

Not many channels have transitioned from SD to HD in the last year. Sun TV has three operational HD channels. Times Now has also invested in new HD storage servers, and is planning to launch a new HD English movie channel soon. Zee recently installed a setup for two channels in high definition, and is planning to launch Zee TV and Zee Cinema in HD. However, Zee is only up-converting these channels on their platform at the moment. DD is also planning to introduce two new HD channels for DD Direct. Others planning to move toward HD include NDTV and Colors.

Change in technology is not expected to revolutionize the market, as most of the channels have been present for a long time. There will be new additions and improvements in infrastructure; however, a majority of the channels will be repurposed with time.

Along with upgrading to HD, channels are trying to include 3D in their offerings to attract consumers. HD and 3D require three times the amount of storage as compared to SD. However, 3D is not a continuous phenomenon, and at best, a viewer will be able to watch only a particular show or a couple of movies and sports events. The supremacy of 3D technology in terms of driving the storage market will take some time to become established, as this technology is not meant for the masses.

Leading players on the production side include Apple, Avid, and Harris. Popular brands in the market in play-out include Harris, Omneon, Thomson Grass Valley, and SeaChange.

Price trends

Prices of storage devices have seen a downward trend over the last few years. The technology has moved forward and with that, the price of storage equipment has drastically decreased. Globally, in 1990, the cost of a megabyte of storage was Rs 405. In 2000, the cost of a gigabyte of storage was Rs 405. Currently, the cost of a GB of storage is Rs 4.05.

From a drive accommodating a few gigabytes, the market has moved to a range of 32 to 512 terabytes, with newer systems as large as 1000 terabytes. Advanced technology and lower prices have led to lower costs for archiving. The awareness of people is increasing. People are becoming educated about the content, and moving towards tape-less archiving for faster workflows.

Technology trends

There is a major trend toward the adoption of file-based workflows by all major networks. A file-based workflow depends on access to content, but it does not necessarily require instant access to any content. Hierarchical storage is almost always part of a complete file-based workflow. The industry realized that they do not care where the content is stored; it should show up when required. So it is less important to know what directory an item is stored in, than to be able to use a software system to gain access under reasonable requirements. If a file is needed for air in a week, it does not need to be in online storage, but perhaps it is time to make a request to the queue for the archive, in order to retrieve it within a day of going to air.

By structuring storage in ways that support the intended system utilization, significant expansion in capacity and simultaneous reduction in cost are often achieved. Video servers require high-speed and high-availability storage to keep the decoder queue filled at all times. That requirement for high performance creates the most expensive storage. A compromise would be to have nearline spinning disks available with lower performance, but much more capacity. Behind that often resides a robotic library of tape or DVD storage, which provides long-term backup and the lowest cost, but slow access for both reading and writing. Systems like this are not possible without good management of the assets with MAM or archive management software.

There are interesting dynamics at play in the choice of storage of media. Disk prices continue to fall, and even solid-state disks have reached practical economics. One video server manufacturer offers a green solution with entirely solid-state storage. The argument for using tape instead of huge farms of spinning disks is based on several factors, including cost-per-gigabyte, power consumption and cooling, MTBF, and the need to have backup copies stored off-site. All of these factors, except for power consumption, decline in impact over time. By the end of this decade, HDD storage should cost less than one percent of current costs, or a capacity 100-fold larger will end up costing the same as today. Tape storage costs will also decline and access speed will increase, but likely not in direct sync with disk space costs.

Choosing storage options is also affected by the type of workflow planned. If post-production processes need rapid access to several different layers during rendering, solid-state storage may improve throughput and performance. These are not video issues, but rather relate to good design practices for IT systems and supporting video processes.

Currently there is some awareness and trend of scale-out storage in the market. This could be a solution for those customers looking for high-end storage.

As broadcasters and content owners face new challenges in providing a plethora of content for a growing number of mediums, they are looking for cost-effective systems to help them manage this change, and market players are cashing in on the opportunity with a large gamut of products to choose from.

Apple

The exponential growth of business digital assets, the persistent concern surrounding security, and the increased focus on return on investment (ROI) make a proactive server and storage strategy essential to every business. Implementing a reliable solution for managing large databases, media-rich documents, audio compression, and digital footage has become a priority for every business.

The Promise VTrak Raid from Apple is an ideal storage solution for direct-attached or SAN-based server and workstation applications, qualified for use with Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, Final Cut Studio 2, and Xsan 2.

The Promise VTrak E-class Raid subsystem delivers outstanding performance, reliability, and expansion for video and server applications. With up to 16TB per 3U rack-optimized shelf, and support for 1TB 7200-rpm SATA or 450GB 15,000-rpm SAS drives, it has excellent support. The VTrak E-Class is able to deliver consistent low latency performance without dropping frames. When used with Xsan film and video post-production, users can scale performance and capacity to support large-scale, uncompressed HD workflows.

Xsan is a 64-bit cluster file system specifically designed for small and large computing environments that demand the highest level of data availability. This specialized technology enables multiple Mac desktop and Xserve systems to share RAID storage volumes over a high-speed fiber channel network. Each client can read and write directly on the centralized file system, accelerating user productivity while improving workgroup collaboration.

Avid

Real Image represents Avid in India in the media storage device market. In production storage Avid offers ISIS 7000, which provides effortless performance and efficient bandwidth delivery. It delivers up to 400 MB/s of useable bandwidth; and predictable, linear performance is sustained even as client counts increase, right up to 4.8 GB/s - easily meeting the challenge of large installations or the most demanding and ambitious uncompressed HD real-time workflows. It is the ideal media network foundation for any content creation enterprise.

Avid ISIS 5000 shared storage sets a new value benchmark for reliable, flexible, high performance media access that enables new workflow efficiencies that directly impact the bottom line. With up to 88 client connections, a 128TB capacity, and the linear performance of ISIS, the power to boost productivity and competitiveness has never been more affordable.

Designed specifically for storing, accessing, and sharing media in collaborative workgroup environments, Avid Unity MediaNetwork systems offer significant advantages over simple storage area networks (SANs). Avid Unity MediaNetwork solutions integrate seamlessly into the production process to deliver real-time, high-resolution media to creative workstations. In addition, Avid Unity MediaNetwork systems offer stable performance in demanding environments; ease of administration; flexibility and scalability; and seamless interoperability with a powerful suite of asset management, media transfer, transcoding, and archiving tools.

EVS

EVS continues to revolutionize the way live events are recorded and played back. Whether the production is an OB, an international broadcast, a live studio show or a TV series production, the instant ingest and play-out solutions offer the most reliable and flexible way to get the most from media in any event.

EVS develops and designs production and play-out servers matching the most demanding broadcast production applications. The XT2 production server allows broadcasters to record, control, and play media easily, quickly, and intelligently. The XT2 comes equipped with up to six record channels, and up to eight audio tracks available per video channel; and the ingest capacity is scalable within a network configuration. Users can instantly retrieve any clips or a recording train for live replays or transfer to post-production; while channel ingest synchronization based on TC allows users to control related content recorded on any other channel. The XT2 platform can be configured to play or record based on a simple in/out 4/6 channel system, which is available in SD and HD.

The new XS video production server guarantees a reliable and flexible transition to tape-less production in a studio environment. The new XS server offers multiple SD and HD codec configurations with native support, for faster and easier media exchange with post-production.

Facilis

Facilis products have been deployed along with a wide range of editing clients, 3D/2D graphics animation, color grading, encoding, and archive and asset management products. The TerraBlock was created to compliment all post-production processes as they transition into HD formats.

The TerraBlock system delivers virtual volumes of storage that can be allocated per-room, per-project, and per-user, or shared among multiple projects and users simultaneously through the shared file system. All applications are supported, including digital audio workstations, color grading and conform, craft editorial and special effects, and modeling and rendering. Through dynamic data sharing methods, TerraBlock can provide volume-level or file-level access to virtual volumes, and the appearance of the virtual volumes can be changed for applications requiring proprietary file systems for advanced features. TerraBlock can scale to almost a petabyte in size, but starts at an affordable entry level. Facilis offers one of the only turn-key fiber channel and Ethernet SANs on the market, and there is never a client license fee for up to 100 connected workstations.

Harris

Harris Broadcast Communications is a division of Harris Corporation, an international communications and information technology company serving government and commercial markets in more than 150 countries.

Harris has introduced NEXIO Farad, a high-performance online storage system ideal for large-scale ingest, editing and play-out for production, sports, news, and live-event applications. NEXIO Farad is designed for customers requiring more than 10,000 Mb/s bandwidth, and more than 58 TB storage capacity. NEXIO Farad makes building a storage system that meets individual needs simple, thanks to its scalable architecture, which allows bandwidth and capacity to be accommodated independently of each other. Customers can achieve the system design they need, without compromising on performance, channel count, file-based I/O or their preference of compression technology.

Compatibility with NEXIO AMP and NEXIO Volt servers, Velocity editors, Apple Final Cut Pro, and an extensive range of media appliances, is assured for best-in-class performance. The system is equipped with inherent RAID-601 storage protection to maintain system performance and resilience, and provide complete redundancy and backup without degrading system performance. Coupled with unattended, fully automatic drive rebuilds, and a system monitoring and notifications system, NEXIO Farad represents the state-of-the-art standard for high-performance, online, true shared storage.

Isilon

Isilon's Scale-out storage platform, powered by the OneFS operating system, combines a robust suite of management applications and enterprise-class hardware to deliver meaningful and sustainable productivity enhancements. Isilon's three product lines provide a broad range of options to address enterprise storage needs. The software applications provide enterprise-grade storage management, protection, and distribution capabilities.

Powered by the OneFS operating system, all components in an Isilon cluster create a unified pool of highly efficient storage with a proven 80 percent storage utilization rate. Isilon's high efficiency means less physical storage is required to house the same amount of data, reducing capital and operating costs.

Omneon

Omneon provides an open platform optimized for the production, transformation and distribution of digital media. The Omneon Media Grid active storage system combines clustered storage with grid computing, using multiple intelligent, interconnected-yet-independent nodes to create a system that scales in manageable increments of capacity, bandwidth, and media-processing power. Designed specifically for digital media workflows, Omneon Media Grid integrates easily with workflow and content management applications to deliver a complete platform solution.

The Omneon Spectrum media server offers broadcasters and video production facilities, unparalleled reliability, flexibility, and efficiency in the deployment of file-based workflows. Designed as a modular system, Spectrum can be configured with just a few channels and entry-level storage or with many dozens of channels and storage for hundreds of hours of content. With support for a wide variety of SD and HD formats, and numerous industry standards, a Spectrum system can be easily adapted over time as customer needs change and grow. It can implement best-of-breed solutions for transmission, studio production, news and sports highlights, and distributed broadcast workflows.

Quantel

The volume of media a broadcaster needs to handle today is growing rapidly. Finding, choosing, and versioning that media across multiple formats and platforms is a problem that needs a solution. Mission, Quantel's integrated media asset management solution, makes asset management a fully integrated part of the media handling process. Mission brings full asset management, search, retrieve and deploy capabilities to every connected desktop - producers, directors, librarians, journalists, and editors (legal with Mission) all get the media they need, when they need it, and how they want it.

Mission sits right across Quantel server systems and archives, providing an overarching asset management layer that gives full access to all material held, both on and offline. Mission system components include web browsing, archiving, media import/exports and trans-coding. sQ Load is a new central ingest tool for native loading of P2 and XDCAM. sQ Load delivers faster-than-real-time ingest for file-based media to shared storage.

SeaChange

SeaChange has market-proven streaming and storage solutions to keep costs under control. The Flash memory-based server from SeaChange provides a high rate of reliability and performance.

In production storage, SeaChange offers Universal Media Library (UML). It provides NAS storage with 10gige ports to provide edit in place capability for news workflows with direct ingest from the MCL6000 series for faster turn around of media processing. In the play-out storage segment SeaChange offers Flash memory servers (FML), SAS drives-based BMLex platform, and ingest /DR Site standalone servers as MSV series. Flash memory servers provide super reliability with no moving parts.

BMLex range provides RAID5 square protection of data and very high throughput for HD operations. MSV provides the concept of edge server with storage and codecs for low-cost on-Air or E-VTR operations.

In archival storage, SeaChange offers Universal media library with 1/2TB SATA drives, offering very low-cost, still reliable, and expandable storage for DAM/MAM storage needs.

Thomson Grass Valley

The Thomson Grass Valley K2 media server/media client system is ideal for broadcast and production environments, offering support for a wide range of applications to address specific workflow needs in the most cost-efficient and cost-effective ways possible.

The K2 LxO system supports multiple online, near-line, production, and stand-alone storage configurations. These systems are available in both non-redundant and redundant configurations.

On-line storage. The three basic online RAID storage systems scale from lower-priced systems that support from 4 to approximately 20 channels, to mid-range systems that support up to approximately 50 channels, to custom systems supporting hundreds of channels. More storage and more bandwidth can be added to any configuration, and can make it redundant.

Near-line storage. Featuring RAID-6 protection, they scale from 90 MB/s to 300 MB/s of bandwidth. Large systems can also be created using additional servers and controllers.

Stand-alone storage. For stand-alone K2 clients with large storage requirements, it offers a directly connectable RAID system that supports RAID-protected external storage.

Production SAN storage. For ingest and editing applications, a production version of K2 Lx0 storage is available with high capacity 7.2k SAS drives. This works well for a workflow with a SAN for editing, and when finished, content is pushed to another K2 system for play-out.

K2 Classic Stand-alone. It is a file-based, IT-centric, scalable, RAID-protected storage and delivery system, that scales from 2-4 channels to more than one hundred; supports the expansion of channels while online; MPEG-2 with built-in encoders; up and down-conversion; user-definable aspect-ratio management; CC preservation, available with internal storage and direct storage; and can also be added as an iSCSI client to online K2 storage, and internal storage on RAID 1 up to 3TB

The K2 Summit. It is optimized for production and live event workflows with a combination of special features. Additionally, it offers full support of broadcast and news workflows based on DVC PRO HD/SD formats

K2 Near-line. It is an ideal, cost-effective central architecture. It can be deployed as an archive system, as temporary storage, or as storage for editing or other applications. K2 near-line systems scale from five to hundreds of terabytes. FTP bandwidth can be added in increments of 90 or 300 MB/s to support additional users. The system supports simple FTP connections, as well as CIFS connections that enable users to edit files directly. The systems can even store data in standard wrappers for MXF, GXF (SMPTE 360M), QuickTime, or other formats.

On market trends

The Indian broadcasting market is taking a huge step in terms of technology, today. HD is on the horizon, and the digitizing and conversion of all media content is of prime importance. Tapes are facing the end of their life. Acquisition and production have already embraced the tapeless workflow. Post-production moved to tape-less architecture a decade back. It is now time for the broadcasters to move in the same direction. The broadcast storage market will grow dramatically in the next few years, as tape-based HD production, post-production, and content delivery will be expensive, cumbersome, and time consuming. Since a library of all tape-based media needs to be digitized and converted to different formats, storage will be of key importance.

On factors driving the market

The Indian market for these storage devices is extremely price sensitive. However, the principal (brand) is also of prime importance to key players at the moment. This is because the mindset of people needs to be skewed in the right direction, as lots of automation will replace manual operations. The Indian broadcast market is comparatively young hence, workflows are complex and demanding. The next few years will surely open the market for many homegrown solutions, which may cause the competition to be fierce.

On technology trends

The Indian market is adopting newer technologies. The file-based workflow has created huge demands for storage. Media organizations are adopting policy-based storage systems that enable them to work on hierarchical storage management, such as a costlier SAN-based system on one side, to cheaper LTO-based storage for near-line and off-line contents on the other.

Cost-per-unit of storage is reducing, and various technology options are available on the basis of organizational needs.

On popular product offerings

At the moment, the majority of the post-production market is based on the Apple FCP editing tool. Promise technologies, with their V-track storage boxes, along-with Apple X-san servers, dominate the TV post-production market. In-house facilities in a few broadcasting companies are Avid-based. They mostly use the unity solution with ISIS storage. In the asset management space, IBM and Isilon are highly trusted brands in the hardware aspect; and Ardendo, Front Porch Digital, Mastek, and Dalet solutions are being considered by broadcasters.