Broadcast

Creation, management & delivery of video content is a huge demand driver for storage device manufacturers. As image resolution increases storage requirements explode and with the development of HD TV and other high resolution devices in the home and in the mobile market we will see double digit growth in demand for digital content. To add to this we need to consider the large amount of historic analog content that is now being transferred into a digital format. This will be the single biggest application and challenge for the broadcast market over the next several years.

To really understand the demand for digital content we first need to look at the growth in data retained by all forms of entertainment and media companies. For all companies that participate in the entertainment and professional media markets, their assets are the rich content that they create and manage. A movie, TV program, advert, news story, piece of music and a video or audio file downloadable from the web all generate revenue for the owner of the content. They also contain large amounts of data that consume storage capacity and it is important to realise that the data collected to make these assets is far greater than what is actually used in the end product.

For example an animal videograp

her can shoot up to 10 hours of high resolution video over many months just to produce five minutes of edited footage in a wildlife documentary, this shows there is a huge investment needed in the capture and management of raw content as all footage is unique and can never be repeated again as time moves on. As a result the raw content is of inestimable value to the owner as it preserves a record of natural history that may never be repeated again.

To put the storage requirement into perspective it takes around 700GB of storage space to record 10 hours of raw content in an HD resolution. When you realise that content is continuously acquired and maintained in various formats you can see can start to see just how large the storage requirement is in this market.

One of the main drivers for the increase in storage capacity has been the move to higher resolution or HD content. As the resolution of video increases so does the storage and bandwidth requirements as shown in the enclosed table.

Broadcast Infrastructure

The broadcast market can be categorised in to four separate segments, each requiring differing levels of storage capacity, storage technology and network bandwidth.

Broadcast Scenario

Storage Broadcast Scenario

Creation – This is the basic capturing of the raw data for example live sports, documentaries, adverts and movies. The requirement here is for high performance durable media; this can be a small form factor HDD or SSD installed inside a camera or removable media solutions such as SD flash cards, external portable RAID solutions or DVD media. Once the content has been captured it can then be easily transferred back into a central storage system within a studio for further editing activity.
Data Management – When data enters the post production facilities it has to be stored securely and be available for editing. There are three levels of storage required within a post production facility, active storage or primary storage which is based on a combination of network attached (NAS) or SAN based technology, usually with FC or SAS HDD. Next there is a working archive or nearline storage which can be based on SATA HDD; this is used for back up of active projects before finally being moved off to the final level of storage for long term archive where data can be stored securely offsite on tape based technology such as LTO.
Editing – Once footage has been delivered back to the post production facility it needs to be manipulated and edited to produce the final product, this is done on non linear editing workstations and appliances. The users will access the data held on the primary storage and work on different applications such as graphics and text, colour correction and digital re-mastering. The workstations are required to have a high performance CPU and memory configuration in addition to a professional high performance graphics processor.
Broadcast – When finally complete the end product can be broadcast, this is carried out by bespoke playout equipment which can be unique to the type of data to be broadcast. For example films coming out of Hollywood are no longer viewed at the cinema on tape reels, the movies are loaded on to HDD which is secured within removable storage canisters and can be transported to the cinema theatre and installed into the projectors for viewing.

Summary

The broadcast market is one of the hungriest industries in terms of storage requirement. Between 2008 and 2014 it is expected to see a 12x increase in required digital storage capacity, around 85% of the total capacity will be for content archiving and preservation. This will rise to around 97% by 2012 due to ROI seen on converted content and the low costs associated with conversion and preservation.
Adoption of digital cinema is another driving factor for storage growth with an estimated 1,600 Terabytes being required for a complete digital production at 4K resolution. Additionally some production will be moving to 8K and stereoscopic production which will fuel further storage requirement.
Lastly when you look at Non-Linear editing of content this is a growing requirement for higher performance HDD, SSD, memory and network infrastructure with 10GbE now becoming a standard. Over a period of time we will see direct attach storage going away to be replaced with 8Gb FC SAN, FCoE and in some cases Infiniband. Other areas to note will be further adoption of SATA HDD as it becomes the mode of readily retrievable fixed content storage, whilst we expect to see tape remain and grow, specifically around LTO technology, as the archival media of choice.

Next steps:

Broadcast Infrastructure

The broadcast market can be categorised in to four separate segments, each requiring differing levels of storage capacity, storage technology and network bandwidth.