SGI Enables Broadcasters to Increase Productivity and ROI

New SGI Digital Content Management Solutions For Production and Archive To Showcase at NAB 2007: To deal with soaring amounts of data in an industry where accessing, moving and monetizing content is key, SGI is helping broadcasters and leading production facilities efficiently manage massive amounts of data. SGI is extending this capability beyond the media industry to the enterprise and government agencies facing daunting data content management challenges. Leveraging its IT expertise, high-performance server and storage arrays and integration with third party hardware and application software, SGI is providing customers with digital content management solutions for production and archive that increase productivity, accelerate time-to-air, time-to-screen and result in greater ROI. At NAB 2007, April 16-19, in Las Vegas, SGI server and storage solutions for digital content management for production and archive incorporate high-performance databases, multi-tiered storage and tools to manage filesystems, digital assets and archives in open-standards environments. The company will debut new SGI Altix XE server and InfiniteStorage products and with third party partners, highlight customer case studies to demonstrate performance and interoperability for collaboration and productivity in Booth SL4920. Digital Content Management for Production Solutions
  • The new SGI Altix XE server systems based on quad-core or dual-core Intel Xeon processors will be showcased in a number of applications. SGI will be demonstrating Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, which provides enterprise-class high-performance computing capabilities. Ideal for production facilities and government agencies that use Microsoft applications, this solution accelerates workgroup productivity and collaboration.
  • PipelineFX Qube! render management software on Altix XE, debuts at NAB as an SGI Professional Services Workflow Ready Solution, accelerating render and job builds by managing all render farm resources. More iterations mean greater productivity and a higher quality product. Easy to install and upgrade, this solution directly interfaces to leading 2D, 3D and rendering applications.
  • DataFrameworks Filesystem Management on Altix XE increases production workflow productivity by 25% through better utilization of resources. Installed at facilities such as EFILM, the system easily monitors project status, storage and filesystem utilization and workflow progress. Multi-tiered client licenses provide security access privileges and savings for facilities.
  • SGI InfiniteStorage products including Workgroup SAN, a new low-cost production SAN complete with SGI InfiniteStorage 220 array, SGI Altix XE metadata server, five SGI InfiniteStorage CXFS Filesystem licenses and Application Manager, an easy to use GUI that monitors NAS and SAN systems. Ideal for hybrid SAN and NAS production environments, the solution is easy to install and upgrade.
  • SGI Altix XE310 server features the innovative "Atoka" motherboard design, developed in a collaborative effort between SGI and Intel Corporation. The Atoka board allows the Altix XE310 server to accommodate up to four Quad Core Intel Xeon processor 5300 series into a single 1U chassis. That equates to eight cores per node, or a total of 16 cores per chassis. The Altix XE1300 cluster combines multiple XE310 compute nodes with an Altix XE240 head node in a preconfigured, ultra-dense package for superior performance density and lower total cost of ownership.
  • SGI Altix 450 with SGI RASC RC100 Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). RASC (Reconfigurable Application-Specific Computing) blades can be programmed for codecs and image processing, watermarking, motion estimation, and data conversion. It gives developers another path for accelerating key time-consuming algorithms for Digital Intermediates or transcoding for broadcast.

Digital Content Management for Archive Solutions

  • Front Porch Digital's DIVArchive works with SGI to create a unified storage solution for all media assets using IT disk and tape technology. With direct interface to broadcast, editing and newsroom systems, users can search and browse valuable media assets from any desktop.
  • VideoBank Digital Media Management System is a complete suite of tools for encoding and managing digital content. VideoBank features an easy-to-use touch screen interface and central management for rapid re-purposing of content.
  • Hitachi Content Archive Platform powered by Archivas, a Hitachi Data Systems company, is a scalable active-archive application suite with integrated index/search across hundreds of document and media asset types. Ideal when combined with SGI InfiniteStorage 10000, ultra dense, high-performance storage for archive or in a multi-tiered storage architecture with SGI InfiniteStorage Data Migration Facility (DMF) with Sun StorageTek SL500 Library System.
  • Silex Media Hydrogen application suite for media lifecycle management, archive management and accelerated production. Used for partial file restore at the NBA and developed by the former Silicon Graphics Broadcast Europe business unit, Hydrogen Archive Catalyst assigns timecode to drive and tape sector translation allowing users to bring back only the specific piece of content they need, resulting in significant time savings.
  • CIC — enVision Interactive Presentation is a highly interactive kiosk product available through SGI Japan and SGI Professional Services. It provides browsing and full screen viewing of many high-resolution videos simultaneously. Its zooming and panning interface enables quick access to documents with special effects, such as 3D page turning. Implemented with touch screen displays, it is ideal for stadiums, corporate lobbies, airports, museums, tradeshows, and other venues where instant access to offline or online content and compelling visuals are required to guide, inform and entertain.
  • SGI InfiniteStorage NAS 4550 is high-performance NAS appliance that can be put into production in a matter of minutes, as opposed to hours.
  • SGI InfiniteStorage 6700 is a 4Gb Fibre Channel high-performance storage system that provides 2.5GB/s throughput, making it ideal for digital cinema applications and SAN-based digital content infrastructures. The 6700 provides industry-leading streaming data delivery in real time.

SGI Systems Integration for Customer Workflows Also in the booth will be a number of interactive kiosks that provide an in-depth look at SGI Professional Services implementations—real world examples of the Collaborative Management systems. These presentations include business cases and results, workflow, implementation details and the role of SGI products and professional services for broadcasters and post-production customers. SGI has helped these customers implement their vision as they transition to digital workflows, providing them with solutions and expertise which enable them to manage multiple projects simultaneously and get their content to air or to cinema release even faster.

  • Advanced MXF Content: Completely scalable system for growth and flexibility with true MXF based workflow. The system connects digital islands, enabling content sharing.
  • Ascent Media: SGI server, storage and networking technology are at the heart of Ascent Media Group's state-of-the-art Digital Media Distribution Center (DMDC) facility in Burbank, Calif. SGI products, solution design and services specifically address the problems of faster turnaround in a 4K data-centric media environment.
  • CIRIS: By leveraging SGI server and storage solutions with Ardendo technology, CIRIS customers are able to store, search, browse and access video data and other content remotely. SGI's scalable architecture allows CIRIS to rapidly grow their storage without any barriers.
  • Crawford: A complete digital workflow: from ingest to uplink. System can track assets any time, any place
  • EFILM: has hundreds of terabytes of SGI InfiniteStorage for color grading and dust busting for up to twelve 2K resolution films simultaneously. SGI systems enable 2K and 4K content to be shared by multiple artists without costly and time consuming copying of files.
  • EuroNews: SGI InfiniteStorage Data Migration Facility (DMF) data life-cycle management software on a NAS 2000 manages 50TB tape, providing a reliable, cost-effective integrated infrastructure supporting ingest, editing and broadcast archives.
  • National Geographic: A hybrid SGI SAN/NAS storage architecture integrated with asset management enables National Geographic to create an active content archive which includes encoding of an entire library of video/film programming for Intranet and Internet customers.
  • NBA Entertainment: SGI InfiniteStorage solutions allow NBA Entertainment broadcast engineers to catalog and store all the action from every NBA game as it occurs as well as access content from the NBA archives for programming on their cable network, stadium delivery or mobile distribution.
  • ProSiebenSat.1: Extends production storage; Integrates with leading Media Asset Management systems and non-linear editors.

SGI products will also be found in various partner booths including Qbit and DDN. NAB Digital Asset Management Panel On Thursday, April 19 at 11:00 am, Floyd Christofferson, SGI Business Development Manager for Media and Entertainment, will participate in an NAB panel, "Scaling the Project Across Business Units" moderated by Kevin Sanders. This panel will look at the practical realities involved in developing a Digital Asset Management implementation that will work across operating units that may have a wide range of requirements and issues.