Collaborative Workflows and Storage Objects
June 24, 2014, Creative Storage Conference, Culver City, CA—Tom Coughlin from Coughlin Associates opened the conference with some observations and general trends in content storage. From CES, some hot topics included: object-based workflows, digital storage needs for cameras, active archives and archive technology (Tape,
HDDs, Optical Storage), flash memory in M&E, fast direct storage connections—Thunderbolt and PCIe, SATA and SAS Express. In addition, there are issues related to the role of HEVC and RDMA in content distribution, the growth of shared storage in modern workflows, and the use of cloud storage to augment collaborative
workflows and archiving.
Cinema is rapidly changing technologies from those of film. High frame rates from 40 to 300 frames per second are coming online, and the overall resolution is going to 4k to 6k to 8k and beyond. Some very forward thinkers are considering 16k resolution to future proof the assets. Some experimental work on “stitched” images using from 4 to 30 cameras is ongoing in Europe, and light-field imaging could allow even more immersive 2-D and 3-D video at the cost of three times the storage capacity. In other areas, high dynamic range will add equivalent amounts for storage requirements.
As video resolution and frame rate increase, camera image complexity increases and stereoscopic projects multiply, the storage capacity and bandwidth performance requirements becomes staggering. Within 10 years we could have pro-video projects generating close to an exabyte of data. Beyond cinema, other display technologies like holographic and virtual reality advanced displays could enable displays that put you into the other world and within the action.
The creation of new content requires lots of storage. In a recent survey on professional camera media, 4 percent is film, 12 percent mag tape, 26 percent hard disk drives, 18 percent optical drives, and 40 percent flash memory. In the editing spaces, direct attached storage is staying relatively flat and is over 1TB of DAS. Almost a quarter of the respondents had over 50TB of DAS and over 6.8 percent had over 500TB. In addition, three quarters of the respondents have NAS OR SAN of which almost half had 50TB or more and 11 percent had more than 500TB of NAS/SAN. The storage is not all local. Over a quarter of the respondents use large amounts of cloud storage in post.
Architectural trends in storage are for more solid-state storage for apps like content delivery and post production. Currently, hot storage is on flash devices while cold goes on HDDs and tape. Across the board, storage is moving to higher speed interfaces like Thunderbolt, PCIe/SATA and SAS Express, 12Gbps SAS, USB 3.2 and 100/40/10GbE and 16Gb FC. The cloud could emerge as a viable contender for central storage for post. The remote direct memory access (RDMA) technologies used in high-performance computing provide low latency and high bandwidth.
Content distribution is moving to H.265 which costs 2-3X in processing overhead at decode and 100X at the source to provide a 50 percent improvement in compression. Adaptive dynamic streaming over HTTP (DASH) allows for variable bit rates in the transmission channel. The jury is still out on whether the pipes are sufficient to deliver UHD content even with the two technologies.
Digital archive media continues to grow at an average rate of over 6 percent. Tape and HDDs dominate long-term archival media, with some backup to the cloud or local network storage. Unfortunately, a quarter of survey respondents never update their digital archives.
