Happy New Year WJ, SANs are looming larger everyday and in every way.
I'm starting to think that they will become larger than LANs and since they will carry the actual digital assets far more strategic. Go FC . Go SANs.
Last month many U.S. television viewers got their first taste of DTV with the launch of the
Public Broadcasting Service's special Digital Week programmingschedule. Part of PBS'
educational process included calling upon The Interface Group, a full-service Washington DC
facility, to create special promos and opens to explain different aspects of DTV. As Interface
CEO Tom Angell expalins it, the DTV transition is a brand new world.
Videography: As someone who's been in this business for several decades, how do you
view the current DTV revolution?
Angell: There's an old saying "You only have two choices in life: fear and boredom." This
DTV stuff can definitely be scary, but there's no doubt it's going to happen. We feel great that
PBS had the confidence in our company to do this project with us.
Videography: What did the promos and opens seek to accomplish?
Angell: It was all about the fact that somebody's got to go first. The pieces we did were to
introduce people not only to the concept of DTV and HD but also to ED (enhanced digital) as
well. One of the PBS shows, Ken Burns' Frank Lloyd Wright, enabled viewers to download all
sorts of sketches, biographical material, and architectural drawings, assuming they had the
necessary technology at home to receive this. The "marriage" of the Internet and television is
very exciting. You can put hypertext links inside the pictures or put data in the vertical interval
for direct downloading.
Videography: And of course, it's all just information.
Angell: The essential part about this digital transition is that there's a lot more to it than just
HD. There are alternative delivery systems, such as MPEG-2. And while everybody is
worrying about HD, other things are sneaking up, such as the Internet and video streaming.
What you really have to do is be "data-centric." The future really lies in being able to acquire,
process, archive, and deliver data in any form, and in any combination and permutation of
forms that the customer wants. That's really the business we're in now.
Videography: Can you provide an example of this?
Angell: Sure. For 20 years we've been shipping videotape--ground-up rust on top of
plastic--to television stations for them to play as spots. Then this past year we put in a DG
(Digital Generations) System for the political season, which was tremendous. We sent out
some 6,000 to 7,000 spots, 95 percent of which were delivered over the DG system. Instead
of FedEx packages containing videocassettes, all of this material was MPEG-compressed,
sent up over satellite, downlinked into some 700 V-SAT-equipped TV stations, stored on hard
drives, and played to the air by library management operations
So the PBS is just a huge video SAN?
Typical hardware behind a digital video production from DEC videography........
So! much [design] Goes Into MSG HD Promos
New York design boutique So! much [design] recently wrapped production on its first two
original high-definition on-air promos for MSG Network, including a network ID and a game
opening for the New York Rangers. Running on SGI workstations, the primary tools were
Softimage 3D and Avid Media Illusion; both are resolution-independent and capable of
handling requirements in a native HDTV environment. So! much [design] also employed
Ciprico's high-speed, Fibre Channel-based 7000 Disk Array, which played the role of the
central storage vault.
"We touched on all aspects of production in designing these two promos," offers Jennifer
Yeh, Executive Producer at So! much [design]. "The MSG ID open was produced and
designed completely in-house. Softimage 3D was used for the animation, .............
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