Archive of the Storage Category

At NAB, Focus Enhancements was showing its FS5 direct-to-edit recorder as well as an archiving solution for solid-state shops.

Prior to day one at NAB, there was a ton of preshow buzz about AJA’s new Ki Pro unit, a unique solid-state hard disk capture device that also serves as an I/O box for camcorders of all flavors and formats. The online community was also buzzing about the Io Express, the younger sibling of the Io HD ProRes device that AJA came out with some time ago. So we got the low-down on both products at the AJA booth, check it out.

Brad Winnett of Isilon Systems was so happy to tout the company’s emergence into the digital intermediate marketplace as a scaleable NAS-based storage solution for such facilities that he brought in old pal, Dean Lyon, of da Vinci Systems, to join our chat this morning. (See my post earlier this week about what Dean told me da Vinci was up to at NAB 2009.)

Both men made the point that postproduction houses need to fundamentally restructure their technology, and their thinking, when it comes to the file-based world they have now, irrevokably, entered. Thus, such previously “mundane” or “expensive” propositions like file-based data protection procedures and tools are now central to their business. more

While we’ve handed the buzzword crown this year to “3D,” let’s not forget about old friend “workflow.” Solutions and improvements abounded this year at NAB, and the Vision Research people are no exception. They are addressing the issue as it relates to their popular high-speed digital camera technology.

The guys at Vision Research showed me their new 10gigabit Ethernet Phantom CineStation—a docking station for its hot swappable CineMag memory magazines designed to speed up the transfer of data from the magazine to the people who need it—both the transfer and the download of the data. When you consider, according to Vision Research, that the Phantom HD system gobbles up about four megabytes of memory for each frame shot, just a few seconds of material can suck up internal camera memory quickly. more

Press Release

Sonnet Technologies announced the Fusion RX1600RAID, a high-performance, high-capacity, direct-attached 3U rackmount storage system that provides data throughput speeds suitable for work with uncompressed HD video up to 2K resolution. Fusion RX1600RAID is designed to provide high reliability in demanding editing and content creation environments. With its drives formatted as a RAID 5 set, this 16-drive system delivers data transfer speeds up to 1,000MBps read and 750MBps write. An integrated SAS expander facilitates fast, easy expansion of the Sonnet system, enabling the user to connect additional 16-drive enclosures. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2009 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

Press Release

S.two Corporation will launch its new OB-1 on-board recorder with removable FlashMag solid-state magazines at NAB 2009. The compact, lightweight, and attractively-priced high-performance recorder brings unprecedented flexibility for filmmakers; freeing their budgets as well as their cameras. OB-1 is available now and will be showing on S.two stand SL-12005 in the Las Vegas Convention Center Lower South Hall, April 20-23. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2009 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

We got a look at the Nexto DI unit, a portable handheld device that dumps all sorts of P2, SxS, SD and flash media to a 500GB drive, and can even allow you to review dailies via a built-in LCD screen. We also stopped by the Rosco booth at NAB 2009 to check out its LitePad systems.

Here’s a must-see device and not just because you can control it with your iPhone: AJA’s ambitious little portable digital disk recorder—Ki Pro—attaches to virtually any camera (via SDI or HDMI) and records virtually any video (or audio) source directly (and losslessly) to 10-bit full raster Apple ProRes 422. Unplug it from the camera, plug it into Final Cut Studio via FireWire 800, and media is instantly available to edit. Or record to 35mm ExpressCard Flash. Ships in June starting at $4K with 260GB HDD storage module and an AC adapter.

You can see it on the JVC booth coordinating nicely with the brand new HM700 HD camcorder. Apple’s Richard Townhill and AJA’s Nick Rashby have the whole total world domination thing pictured for this device; if you’re hooked on ProRes workflow you’ll track their vision of a continuous ProRes stream from production to post. No one will miss digitizing. more

Globalstor CTO Scott Leif is two years into his Red workflow experience. Technology partner Assimilate worked closely with Red in the development process of the camera—Assimilate can deal natively with Red files. Now Globalstor debuts the next generation of its ExtremeStor-DI REDe video storage workstation. This is the first workstation to deliver native uncompressed 4K resolution, Leif says. Raw, DPX, and Cineon files are handled in real time at 24fps (it can also do stereo 2K). It’s built on the Intel Nehalem architecture, which Leif calls “nothing short of spectacular.” The system also incorporates Nvidia’s Quadro Plex 2200 D2. Core software is Assimilate’s Scratch.

Will be available in rack and tower versions at capacities from 1.4-9 terabytes.

The AJA Ki Pro portable digital disk recorder records files to the Apple ProRes 422 codec directly from camera. Watch the video.

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