Silicon Graphics demonstrate latest digital solutions at NAB

Silicon Graphics have been showcasing a new range of IT infrastructures and interoperability at NAB 2004, which will help broadcasters and post-productions houses make the move to IT with all digital facilities. The company also demonstrated the SGI InfiniteStorage solutions that have been gaining momentum in broadcast and post-production facilities worldwide.
In one of the industry’s firsts, SGI demonstrated in a broadcast workflow, end-to-end compatibility with the Material Exchange Format (MXF) from ingest to play-to-air. Content sourced from a Sony XDCAM player was ingested on a SGI Media Server for broadcast system, wrapped in MXF and stored on an SGI InfiniteStorage CXFS SAN server. It was also interoperating with an Avid non-linear editor, automation from Harris Corporation and using software from MassTech for asset management , archive browse and EDL prep for the Avid system. Once edited on the SAN, the film may then be played directly to air, while maintaining its MXF compatibility for later use.
SGI also replicated a post-production workflow, incorporating leading applications all on different operating systems, from Alias, Apple, Discreet, Interactive Effects, mental images and Quantel. Multiple content creation seats on any operating system can now share SD, HD and 2K files in a truly heterogeneous SAN architecture by leveraging the unique capabilities of the SGI Shared Filesystem CXFS. The Silicon Graphics Tezro visual workstation, which makes 2K-resolution production ubiquitous, was the featured IRIX OS-based system and the new SGI Altix 350 64-bit Linux OS-based server debuted as the 64-bit Linux host platform on the SAN at NAB.
SGI InfiniteStorage solutions enable broadcasters and video/film companies to optimise their facility-wide workflows by leveraging IT advances. Enormous amounts of data may be shared by many without the need to make additional copies. InfiniteStorage solutions optimise dataflow through the facility by providing true file sharing at production speeds with a choice of both network attached storage (NAS) and SAN storage architectures. Broadcast material can be shared at 25x real-time rates and film resolution material can be accessed throughout the production workflow as data at real-time rates.
SGI InfiniteStorage Serial ATA (SATA) solutions also made their debut at NAB 2004. These solutions provide economical secondary disk storage for high-performance computing applications. Serial ATA is a new technology that brings much lower cost-per-megabyte storage to the market, greatly narrowing the price gap between disk and tape.
SGI, www.sgi.com
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