When everything is digital and every frame stored on hard disks, data protection is not an option. It is essential, says Hannes Heckel, Director Marketing, FAST LTA
In 1993, movable storage was 3.5 inch floppy disks and Betacam video tapes. A few years later, FAST Multimedia developed the Digital Player/Recorder as a companion to one of the most successful computer-based video editing systems, the Video Machine. It was a challenge to set up a hard disk configuration that could handle 2 streams of full resolution (SD) video. The biggest hard disk had 1 GB capacity.
Data protection was not such an issue, neither was portability. The raw footage, as well as the final cut, was still going to be on tape. The sneaker network was the preferred method of moving ‘data’ between locations.
Things have changed a lot. Today, we have 8K resolution in HDR, full digital workflows, and a variety of output formats.
Everything is digital, every frame is stored on arrays of hard disks. Data protection is not an option, it is essential. Moving data seems just an issue of squeezing bits through networks, but if moving means covering some miles, cities, countries, continents, and the amount exceeds terabytes, this is not an easy, let alone a quick, task.
Sure, we have the internet, 4G networks everywhere. But the race between data explosion and bandwidth growth is not going to stop.
The fastest way to move terabytes from one location to another in most cases is: copy (often to tape), ship, copy again. Moving data ‘all over IP’, as promoted by some industry leaders, might be an option for some use cases, and for some investment-friendly setups, but certainly is not ready for all - and won’t be available everywhere.
This content was first published at IBC2016
The views expressed are those of the author.
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