The System of the Automated Archiving - Leitch
By Eugenie Zayzev

In front of each TV company, except from the creation of content and the broadcasting itself, there is a whole row of important adjoining problems that doesn't have the direct relation to the air, as without them the normal functioning of the system of the video production is impossible. One of the important issues is the archiving of the video materials. The building of the archives in necessary, first of all, because very often due to some reasons the spear plot or fragment might be required for the control, analysis or the second reproduction on the air. So with the contemporary volumes of work it is required not only to store the thousands of hours of the video information, but also to realize the effective search of the needed material. Especially pressing the problems of archiving are standing in front of the complicated complexes of the news preparing.

In this or that form the video archives had already existed in the very beginning of the development of the television branch, but not so long ago there appeared the real opportunity not only to build the absolutely digital archive but also to create the finished automated system. Till today the majority of the national TV companies are still storing all of video materials on the magnetic tapes and the search and loading of the material is hand made. With the increase of the volumes of stored information the operative control of such an archive becomes more and more difficult task. That is why the only real exit from that situation will be the switch to the contemporary systems of archiving.

The minuses of the traditional approach are obvious: the huge amount of exhausting hand work, very low and awkward search of the needed materials, and, at last, the degradation of the quality of image with time. And still even with such serious disadvantages the switch to the more absolute systems passes very slowly. Certainly it is generally connected with the existing traditions and debugged cycle of production which is very difficult to break, but it needs to be done sooner or later anyway. One more very important aspect at the switch to the digital automated decisions is the problem of transfer of already existed archives, as these materials would be needed to transfer to the digital form, to supply with the required metadata and to systemize what would need the additional financial and time spendings.

The automated digital archives, first of all, are appealing to help to the TV company to get rid of the main disadvantages of the traditional archives and to offer the whole range of new additional opportunities. The transfer to the information storage in the digital form not only allows to use different information mediums more pliable, but also to get rid of the bigger part of the loss in the image quality. Besides the automation opens the direct access to the data to the main users of the information, journalists and directors, what makes the operations with the archives much faster and easier.

One of the most difficult in automating is the process of the filling of archives. In any case, the incoming material needs to be looked through, classified, accomplished with the metadata, digitize, and, at last, to be enter to the archives. In spite of the impressive success of the systems of recognition of images to do without the hand work on all that stage is still impossible. The process of the preparing of data for the storage looks much easier in the case of if all the system of processing of the information uses the digital medium with the short access time period. Recently the tendencies of the transfer to such tape-free complexes are traced patently and here the whole system of the archiving of the video material looks different. First of all, all of the used materials pass the preliminary processing, classification and digitizing right on the entrance to the system. At the storage of the materials of broadcasting quality don't need any additional reorganization at all and in the cases of using of the draft copies the reorganization and compression can be made 'in passing' online. So the system of archiving loses the number of its traditional functions what allows implementing the main task which is the operative search of the required material faster and easier.

The archived part of the server complex of the Leitch Company can be an example of such an integrated digital system. With the taking into account of the fact that actually this only one of the constituent parts it is necessary to say a few words about the general structure of the complex.

As it was mentioned earlier, already on the stage of takeover all the materials pass through the preliminary processing and as a result the archiving system actually uses the earlier prepared content. Absolutely all of the video materials are stored of the general disc array of the large capacity. The output of the material on the air occurs with the help of the specialized video servers. All the constituent parts of the complex are integrated between each one of them with the help of the general thoroughfare that is the fiber optic network with the arbitration access. An opportunity of the high-speed data exchange allows avoiding the creation of the additional copies at all the stages of the video production and, as a result, to make the work easier.

The archive's part of the complex is represented by five main components:

• the server system that integrates all the facilities into the general information network. All the additional facilities like RAID array, source and user of the signal are included in here as well;
• VR Advanced Archive Streamer (Gateway). It is a special computer that is directly connected to the transport fiber optic ring 1 and so has a direct access to the disc array. VR Archive Streamer has the external interface SCSI-2 and is realized the data transfer between the server complex and the library;
• Asset Manager Software is the software that controls the data flows between the disc array and the library. Besides the Asset Manager controls the robotic mechanism of the library. The program is operating with Unix (Sun/NT-Solaris/SGI) as well as under the control of Windows NT 4.0 and functions in the tight interaction with the general system of the complex automating. At the use of the digital library Leitch VR-DVD Asset Manager might be fixed directly on the VR Archive Streamer;

• VR-DVDdigital DVD library of Leitch

  the digital library that is the automated storage of the information of large capacity. As the medium there might be used the magnetic tapes and the disc mediums. The library is accomplished with the robotic mechanism of medium loading and has the external interface SCSI-2. In general, the archive system is not typed up to the concrete type of the library and producer (Ampex, StorageTec, Sony, ASACA) but Leitch offers its own decision VR-DVD;
• the general automating system that sets the strategy of the information storage and provides the timely renewal of the data in the archives. The automation system might be directly connected with the Asset Manage or use the fiber optic thoroughfare.

In general, that is the structure of the archiving system of the Leitch Company. Due to the whole range of innovations the speed of the data transfer between the general disc array and the archived library increases sufficiently. In this situation such factors as the time of the medium change and the data flow speed that meant a little earlier start to play a part. That is why the transfer from the traditional approach stackers to the various disc facilities had outlined. From the today existed variants closer to the capacity/cost ratio to the well spread to the digital DLT cassettes happed to be the DVD-RAM. Even by the contemporary measurements they have the enough capacity and reliability and besides have the small overall dimensions. Probably the similar considerations had defined the type of the medium for the contemporary digital library Leitch VR-DVD. The construction of the library allows changing the configurations in rather wide limits but the Leitch Company offers three main basical sets of the total capacity of 13.8; 7.8, and 2.6 TB. As the mediums the one or double-sided DVD-RAM discs are used with the capacity of 4.7 or 9.4 GB correspondingly. In the standard sets there are fixed by three DV-RAM stackers but depending on the dimension-type of the body their amount might vary at the 1...24 limits.

The contemporary construction of the robotic mechanism of loading and the efficient control allows changing of the disc at the record short time of about 3.5 sec. For the comparison there can be site an example of the analogous operation for the tape library Sony DMS-B9 needs over 20 sec. for the same task. Besides Leitch VR-DVD can produce the operations of loading/unloading at the same time not only for one, but also for the five discs at once. The fixed speed of data recording is 1.4 MB/sec and the speed of the information read-out is 2.7 MB/sec.

The libraries allow storage of the materials with the different level of compression and to site an example there can be said that on the VR-DVD750-3 there can be situated over 340 hours of video with DV compression (1:5). If it is not enough the system might scaled and with the integration of the maximum number of modules (eight modules) the general capacity would account for 62.4 TB.

To summer up it would be desired to underline the main advantages of the Leitch archive system once again:

• the integration to the automated system of broadcasting and news production;
• low price, comparing to the autonomous working systems;
• an opportunity to joint the capacity and scaling;
• the use of the general high-speed fiber optic thoroughfare;
• the use of the contemporary discs mediums DVD-RAM;
• the short time period of the search of the required information;
• the high level of automating of the archive system.

So the company offers today the effective and finished decision for the storage of the large volumes of the archived information that operates in the limits of the Leitch VR server complex.

Provided by the I.S.P.A.-Engineering.

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