Archive of the Storage Category

Serendipity on the show floor makes for impromptu sessions. Tuesday I ran into cinematographer Bill Bennett in front of the Sony F35 parked on a dolly in front of Brand Pro’s booth. Not much to say about the F35–35 means its newly developed single CCD is the size of a Super 35mm film frame–except that it’s as impressively thought out as last year’s F23 on which it’s based, and like its double first cousin, Panavision’s Genesis, did once, it sets a new highwater mark in 4:4:4 RGB high-end digital cinematography cameras.

Well, for $250,000 without lens, it ought to. A lot to pay in weak dollars for tighter depth-of-field and better dynamic range than the F23, plus 1-50 fps variable speed in 4:4:4 (compared to F23’s 1-30). But you do get every pixel you pay for. This is a full-on 1920×1080 RGB image—no Bayer interpolation of phantom R and B pixels here, no sir. Leave that to lowly CMOS cameras like the REDs, Silicon Imaging 2Ks and Minis, and Arri D21s (at NAB upgraded from D20 with new 2K RAW data output mode). more

Monday’s dharma at NAB was about bigness and smallness, and I’m still thinking about it.

Yesterday Tim Robbins gave the keynote speech. Ever since FCC Chairman Newton Minow gave his famous “vast wasteland” speech at NAB in 1961, it seems NAB has played it safe. Past keynotes I’ve attended have featured Ronald Reagan (attacked on stage by an ice sculpture-wielding assailant, yards from where I was sitting), Barry Diller, Richard Parsons of Time-Warner, James Cameron and the like. Safe Republican choices, not likely to get former NAB CEO and good ol’ boy Eddie Fritts in any Washington hot water.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Convention Center this year.

How Tim Robbins got invited to give the keynote is anyone’s guess. But there he was, on stage, facing a large morning audience of radio and TV broadcasters, cable owners and mixed-media types. more

Back from the show. I like taking a day or so after my last postings to look through everything I’ve collected, selecting some last items to include in a final wrapup. While that’s not a lot of time for deep reflection, I am at least far enough away from the hype of the moment to enable a bit of perspective.

At the NAB press office earlier this week I overheard an NAB official talk to the editor of one of the leading trade mags. He was asked about what he thought would be among the most exciting developments of the show. Instead, he begged off answering, stating that as far as he was concerned it was all just a rehash. He could find nothing new or interesting worth commenting on. more

Last quarter, Studio Network Solutions started shipping an ambitious unannounced product that you can see for the first time at NAB. Inside the EVO box is up to 10Gb iSCSI SAN and NAS, and multiple (up to eight) 4Gb Fibre Channel ports, designed to bridge your existing storage. Up to 24TB per enclosure, and your choice of RAID 0, 5, or 10 per volume. Oh, and two ports of Ethernet. Six TB for $1707; completely blown out at $24TB for about $30, add another 4-ports and still just under $40K, says SNS VP Eric Newbauer.

More news on the ongoing struggle to bring enterprise IT storage into our world. Eric Newbauer, VP at Studio Network Solutions describes the company’s adventures working with IBM and EMC to bring Mac connectivity to the big storage boys including LSI, EMC, IBM, Hitachi, HP, and Sun. “They have certain features within their storage arrays that can’t be taken advantage of without our driver,” Newbauer is saying. That’s a diplomatic understatement of the technical and cultural challenges involved in bringing IT and content creation together.

The SNS’ approach takes the form of Ellipse Enterprise, and I’ll describe it just the way they do: An enterprise-class, high-availability 4-Gbps fibre channel host bus adapter for Mac OSX. Can be PCIe or PCI-X. Single-, dual-, or quad-port, claiming up to 800 MB/s per part in full duplex mode. Supports Intel-based Macs and PowerPC Macs in case you were wondering

A key competitive feature is failover support for all controllers in enterprise arrays.

Sonnet Technologies announced a price reduction for the company’s award-winning Fusion line of high-performance SATA storage solutions for professional content creation and editing. Price reductions of up to $1,200 give users in the broadcast and post-production industries the opportunity to invest in the speed and capacity they require without compromising quality or performance. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

EditShare unveiled their new product line at the NAB 2008 Exhibition. Complete Collaboration introduces breakthrough turnkey solutions for managing and storing media from acquisition to archive. Complete Collaboration includes EditShare Flow, EditShare Storage Series, EditShare XStream Series and EditShare Ark. Visitors to the NAB 2008 Exhibition, held in Las Vegas, NV from April 14th through 17th, 2008, can view the new Complete Collaboration product line at booth SL9820. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

One of the coolest products I saw at the show came to me by chance as I was hurrying across the North Hall, that almost always deserted-as-a-ghost-town hall. Maybe it’s not something a journalist would, or should, admit to, but when walking across such halls I sometimes feel sorry for the companies that have booths there. The booth employees make longing glances at your press badge as you hurry by. I usually find myself mumbling something like “Oh boy, really late again…” as I shuffle past looking for the exit.

(Hey, it just struck me–it might be helpful to someone who has never been to the show that one way to get a sense of it is to begin by thinking of a really huge amount of enclosed space. Okay? Divide that up into three big spaces/buildings, but not evenly: have each one gaining on the next. Good. Now think of these as having personalities. Maybe something from Goldilocks and the three bears could work. For example, North Hall seems a little too quiet at times, but it really is the smallest of the three in floor space, so that fits. Next, move on to Central Hall–yes, it’s laid out right in the middle of the three halls. Central Hall usually seems just about right; whether it’s crowd size, said crowds attendant caffeine levels, or amount of shouting needed to make yourself heard in the hallways, everything comes out about average. But now walk into the last of the three, the very oversubscribed South Hall. Here, just think of those over-crowded, sweaty fairgrounds you’ve encountered, or maybe a dangerously over-packed subway platform, something you might not want to navigate on a regular basis, but with everyone running. Yes, even in Las Vegas too much, it turns out, is really sometimes too much.) more

There was something of a Yogi Berra moment at the Hard Rock Cafe on Sunday when Avid’s new executive VP and then the new CEO took the stage to pledge that this time we’re going to get it right.

Oh no, I thought, not another set of promises about working well with others and thinking outside the box. Well, we got those promises again. And yes there were some snickers around the floor of Hard Rock’s music venue (Avid’s traditional space over their years at NAB) at inappropriate times from the hundreds in the audience of users along with a smattering of press.

After all, neither CEO Gary Greenfield nor Kirk Arnold, executive vp and gm of Avid Video, have any video industry experience. (Give Avid’s board credit though–both of these very recent hires have solid reps for turning around high tech companies.) more

Adobe’s Mark Randall accurately pointed out that this NAB was the “year of plumbing”. So it’s a good year for ATTO to celebrate their 20th anniversary. This is my 14th NAB, so I’ve seen the lion’s share of their evolution, from the days when fibre channel networks were held together with spit and string (when they held together at all), to the present when enterprise-level IT storage is starting to play in our world, through industry-appropriate gateways, provided by companies who know us well, like ATTO.

It’s a measure of how much has changed in 20 years to see the list of 31 NAB booths that are using ATTO host/RAID adapters, appliances and/or software on the booth–21 of them with live demos. This includes a large scale joint project with Facilis, projects with Rorke, Matrox, HP, Boris, Digital Rapids, EditShare, Harris, Autodesk, AJA, Adobe, da vinci, Bright, to name just some of the lineup.

The most eye-catching thing at the ATTO booth is an 8-Gb fibre channel host adapter. It’s on display with a handly clock so you can acutally see the bandwidth range from 3000Mbps to as high as 3500. The other standout display is a giant block of HP enterprise storage tethered to Mac workstations, hardly a plug and play proposition. For more www.attotech.com.