Video Servers..................................
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HP also offers a cost-effective HD package that gives broadcasters leverage with existing technology. It uses HP's MediaStream 700 and 1600 servers with two external components: DiviCom's MediaView MV400 HDTV encoder and JVC's new DM-D4000 HDTV decoder.
Date Posted: 5/28/1999
Video servers unravel tape
Computer-based record/playback devices enjoying growing acceptance, uses in TV facilities
By Karen Anderson
Video servers are a powerful example of how computers are changing the landscape of broadcast technology. This equipment, which records, stores, and plays back video using computer disks, has in just a few years developed from an unproven, expensive technology to being a standard item on every broadcasters' shopping list. And servers are quickly replacing tape as the medium of choice for everyday broadcast applications such as commercial playout, time delay and news production.
The inherent advantage to video servers is that their storage is nonlinear and digital, allowing users to quickly access material and use it over and over without generational loss of quality. The computer disk drives used to store video also eliminate the mechanical components used in tape machines, parts that frequently need to be replaced due to intensive use. So servers can bring efficiency, improved picture quality and lower operational costs to a television station.
But how have servers come so far so fast? In the simplest terms, like other computers, they have followed Moore's Law--a reference to Intel co-founder Gordon Moore--which says that microchip technology develops so quickly, that the amount of data a chip can store doubles every 18 months. With video servers, this exponential increase in computer-processing power and data storage has been matched by improvements in compression algorithms, which allow more video to be stored on less disk space. These combined forces have resulted in servers that can store hours of high-quality video at a price stations can afford.
Many broadcasters have already replaced mechanical cart machines with entry-level servers for spot-playback. Some stations have even begun to automate programming playback with robust systems that hold hundreds of hours of compressed video. And station groups are now starting to network remote video servers so that stations can access shared material throughout the group.
The Ackerley Group, for example, is restructuring its business model by linking its operations with SeaChange servers that are controlled by Sundance automation software. Sinclair and Tribune station groups are also working to streamline their operations by using file transfers with their remote servers. Examples like these, experts say, are proof of the potential of video servers when compared to traditional tape-based systems.
"Before they buy tape, everybody now has to ask the question, 'Do I really want this tape recorder or should I get a server-based system?' " says Al Kovalick, Hewlett-Packard's director of technical strategy. "At the last NAB I think there was more than ample proof that everybody who's serious about video in the business has a server."
That wasn't the case back in 1992, when a handful of companies began offering prototype, short-duration uncompressed disk recorders for post-production. After achieving limited success with these uncompressed recorders, companies began offering the next generation of servers--digital disk recorders with Motion JPEG compression [M-JPEG]. Tektronix was the first, followed shortly by Leitch's ASC.
Initially, broadcasters used the JPEG-compressed disk recorders to cache spots directly from their cart machines for playback. Later, Hewlett-Packard became the first to develop and ship an MPEG-2 compressed system. (KOLD-TV, in Tucson, Ariz., first went on-air with an HP MPEG-2 server in late 1995.) MPEG-2 compression, and later, DV compression created more storage capacity and allowed broadcasters to begin using servers for long-term storage and program playback.
David Folsom, technology vice president of Raycom Media, is one of many broadcasters looking to convert tape-based spot and programming playback to servers. "We have servers in many of our stations now, but we still have quite a few of the traditional spot players," Folsom says. "We have the ongoing question of story playback for news. Of course as servers become more efficient, they become far more viable."
Servers are also becoming more viable by becoming cheaper, even as their hours of integrated storage increase. The price of video servers now ranges from about $35,000 for a small, single-channel system to upwards of $150,000 for a robust, multichannel system. More powerful servers that can handle multiple station operations with huge amounts of internal storage, however, still cost well over $250,000--but an entry-level playback server cost more than $200,000 in 1995. Data storage companies like Ampex, StorageTek and Excalibur are also offering more competitively priced external storage and archiving products, which are the most expensive components for stations investing in full-blown server architecture.
Just a few years ago the video server market was relatively small. However, it recently exploded with manufacturers looking to cash in on broadcasters moving into digital television. In its April 1999 report, Frost & Sullivan valued the "hardware" video server market--including compressed and uncompressed video servers for broadcast and cable as well as intranet/distance learning--at $422.6 billion for 1998. The report cited the FCC's digital broadcast mandate as the reason for increased demand for video servers.
Riding the market
As the server market grows, with more companies trying to get in on the action, Tektronix Profile continues to hold its position at the top, followed closely by Hewlett-Packard's Media Stream and Leitch's ASC line of servers. Broadcast giants Sony and Philips hold a smaller share of the market, but industry experts point to them as strong players because both offer complete broadcast systems. Quantel also takes a "systems" approach with its different applications-based production and on-air servers. SeaChange, which has been a recognized name in the cable market, also has installations in several broadcast television stations. Both Fox and CBS networks are seriously looking at SeaChange's products.
Among the newer companies to the video server market are Pinnacle and Accom, both of which have traditionally focused on editing and post-production equipment. Compression firm Vela Research has built an MPEG-2 server called RapidAccess, based on its broadcast encoders and decoders.
"There are an awful lot of companies in this business and, of course, many of them didn't even exist a few years ago," Folsom adds. "[Some] companies have come out of nowhere and are doing a pretty good business. But you wouldn't have heard of them two or three years ago, like Pluto."
In 1995 Pluto was formed to create disk-based replacements for tape machines. But according to the company's chairman and CEO, Mark Gray, the market is really just beginning. "Although the market for spot servers is still quite good," he says. "The market is growing rapidly because of the implementation of servers into other parts of the facility."
Another example of the kind of growth Folsom refers to is that of Hewlett-Packard, a computer giant that's carved out a successful niche in the broadcast marketplace.
But Mike Wolschon, director of marketing for Philips' video server division, warns that computer-based companies may not find much success in the broadcast server realm, or at least not the success they are used to because the broadcast market is relatively small compared to the computer market.
"The expectations of those big corporations in the computer world are that they have double-digit growth every year and their margins are increasing dramatically," says Wolschon. "The broadcast spectrum in the entire world is such a small business when you compare it to the computer business. Some people tag the entire broadcast capital spent every year around the world to be somewhere between $6 [billion] and $7 billion. [Hewlett-Packard reported $47.1 billion in revenue last year.] You've got to look at that and say this is a real small marketplace."
Hewlett-Packard's Kovalick admits that the company's video-communications division, which markets the MediaStream server, is a very small part of HP's total business. In fact, HP is spinning off its noncomputer and nonconsumer divisions into an independent $8 billion company, and the video communications division will come under the new company's communications solutions group.
"We're a little division compared to HP and now we'll have a lot more significance in a new company," says Kovalick. The company will be named next month and begin marketing the new brand until it is spun off next year.
Kovalick adds that he is excited about developing the video server line within the new company, as servers are going to be an integral part of repurposing material in the "500,000 channel universe" that will emerge as the line between the Internet and traditional broadcast blurs.
Applications and media convergence drive servers
EMC, a 20-year-old enterprise storage company whose revenue topped $4 billion this year, also feels the broadcast server market is an important one to tap as media segments converge. It has begun marketing its Celerra Media Server, a large-scale system with huge amounts of integrated storage, to the broadcast and cable markets. The high-end multichannel media server is based on its Symmetrix storage system. Celerra's capacity is robust enough that it can be used as a central server storage system to handle multiple tasks and allow multiple users to access information on the server.
"Broadcasters are facing the challenges of, strategically, 'What are we going to do with our bandwidth?' " says Doron Kempel, general manager of EMC's media group. " 'Are we going to multicast or are we going to high definition?' 'How many inputs and outputs will I need?' 'How do I converge the business part of the facilities for billing with post-production with the news environment and with the play-to-air environment?' 'How do I stream over the Internet and what do I do about the Internet?' There is tremendous uncertainty now. As different media converge, it is very important for us to take a leadership role," says Kempel. "We think that we have the capability. And we think that it is a great market to offer our expertise in."
HP's Kovalick believes that new broadcast server manufacturers that focus on applications and solutions will succeed over those that manufacture "steel boxes." "They can't squeeze the Sonys, the Panasonics, the Philips and the Tektronixes of the world out of this market just yet," he says. "The broadcasters all want to feel comfortable that they are making an investment in a company that has a future."
That sentiment is supported by the Frost & Sullivan report, which concludes, "Video servers are uniquely poised to deliver digital video media in broadcast, cable, intranet and Internet environments." The report goes further, stating, "Winning companies will be those that can provide a complete solution in a short period of time."
In the face of increasing competition, some wonder whether Tektronix can continue its video server reign. "[Profile] really led the way," Pluto's Gray says. "It's now, in my opinion, an obsolete product, although it's still on the market."
Gray says that servers, like Pluto's SPACE platform, are designed to integrate with all major automation products and a number of editing systems. "Our goal is to drop into almost any application for broadcast and work with any application. Whereas companies like Tektronix generally have to focus on their own application, their own little editing package," he says. "We work with everybody."
On the contrary, says Ray Baldock, director of product strategy for Tektronix. "Not only have we developed relationships with 60 developers who are all writing software for Profile, we don't have a lot of our own applications. We supply applications with Profile that enable application developers to do their job more easily."
For example, Tektronix has developed an API (Application Program Interface), a protocol that allows developers to create software that is "very tightly integrated to the server" for recording or playback. The new ContentShare platform, an extension of the Profile API, addresses the problem of asset management by allowing software developers to create programs that give Profile users access to material anywhere on the network, including material stored in other manufacturer's servers. Fifteen applications developers support ContentShare including automation and digital asset-management firms Pro-Bel, Louth and Virage.
It is this ability to work with multiple vendors that will further drive servers into the broadcast plant, experts say. "Networked servers are the total future of the broadcast facility, and the key is getting interoperability for the data formats," HP's Kovalick predicts. "[DV and MPEG] will have to co-exist across acquisition, contribution, distribution and editing." DV compression has the advantage of high speed or "faster-than-real-time" tape transfer, while MPEG-2, with its slower transfer rate, has a higher compression rate allowing for more efficient storage.
Raycom's Folsom points out that most manufacturers, like Tektronix, Sony and Pluto, have begun offering their servers in "different flavors"--MPEG-2 and DV--"rather than falling into one area or the other and essentially closing out their possibilities or running in dual paths."
Serving up news solutions
Broadcasters now are looking for new, creative ways to use video servers and to maximize their potential for production.
As interoperability among different formats increases, manufacturers see another big trend: selling servers to streamline operations in feed rooms and newsrooms, places where material comes into a plant in various formats. Manufacturers say broadcasters are getting serious about using automated server systems for news. "This year at NAB--from all other trade shows we've been to--there have been more people who came to our booth looking at what's available for digital newsroom systems. We believe that these people are starting to budget for these systems in the upcoming fiscal year," says Leitch Business Program Manager Charlie Bernstein.
In the news environment, some say, servers will handle specialized tasks including acquisition, edit and on-air material. "You wouldn't want to build a doomsday server, there's just too many different needs and requirements that make a doomsday server impractical and expensive," says HP's Al Kovalick.
"Today you see tape as a means to dub things, to make copies; that's going to disappear altogether," he says. "Maybe you've got an acquisition server that's recording six feeds a day of news and syndicated material--that will stay on the server and be moved through a network to edit," he says. "That will be moved to on-air, all under automation control."
Pushing the trend of servers for news, Panasonic offers its integrated DVCPRO news automation system, DNA, based on SGI's Origin 200. KYW-TV in Philadelphia is using DNA with six NewsBYTE nonlinear editors and redundant Origin200 GIGA Channel servers working on a Prisa Fibre Channel network. A Ciprico FibreSTORE online disk array provides 24 hours of online storage. KYW-TV Director of Broadcast Operations and Engineering Jim Chase says he chose DNA for its ability to simultaneously handle 4X dubbing inputs or outputs and 6X Fibre Channel transfers from edit, while playing out on up to three simultaneous playback channels.
Vibrint also offers specialized automated news systems, NewsEdit and FeedClip, that are designed to manage incoming feeds and on-the-fly news editing and playback and are based on Vibrint's MPEG-2 server. WMUR-TV Manchester, N.H. and New York City cable news station NY1 are taking advantage of Vibrint's automated server-based systems to give their small staffs the ability to handle multiple daily newscasts.
Vibrint has also begun working with HP to allow network transfer of MPEG-2 video files from FeedClip and NewsEdit to the MediaStream server. "For years broadcasters have been forced to live with closed, proprietary systems that are impossible to upgrade and limited in terms of interoperability," says Vibrint Vice President of Marketing Roland Boucher. Boucher believes the Vibrint/HP relationship is one more step toward open systems in the broadcast facility.
Plus, Kovalick says, "There's no generational loss when you transfer files; there's no quality check to be done because it's always perfect. So it just saves time. It's a process improvement in every way." (See sidebar, "Networking servers.")
Sinclair has just agreed to order HP servers for 18 of its stations, and the group plans to make file transfer part of its everyday operations. "They are very big on group dynamics," Kovalick says. "They are finding ways to do things once rather than 18 times and I think that is one of the great advantages of networked video."
Sinclair will install HP's MediaStream 700 MPEG-2 servers at its stations beginning in the third quarter of this year. The stations will use the seven-channel servers for spot insertion and will enhance them later to manage satellite feeds and programming playback.
Let's go to the video (server)
Sports broadcasting is another area where server manufacturers see big opportunity, mainly because of instant replay and slo-mo capabilities of servers. "[A server] gives random access to any clip and with the proper applications and with a scalable server, you can have five different camera angles and choose any one of those camera angles and play it out immediately," Leitch's Bernstein says. "If you have the non-linear editor capabilities that we have built into our server, during the course of a sporting event we can build a highlight reel and show it up on the scoreboard or [play it] directly to air."
Panasonic is targeting its new DVCPRO-based production server, the AV-SS500, for the sports production market.
"You have the ability to control eight channels independently," says Panasonic Vice President of Product Development Tore Nordahl. "If you are doing a multi-camera shoot at a baseball game, you can have three or four cameras shooting the game and continue recording on four channels. You have four channels available for slo-mo as the action is happening."
The AV-SS500's ability to hook up with editing stations for file transfer over 100-base Ethernet allows users to edit packages for playback during the broadcast, Nordahl adds.
As servers take on new roles in news and sports, manufacturers are beginning to add more integrated production functionality. Pinnacle and Accom, for example, offer video servers with integrated effects software and editing capability. Accom's new Abekas 6000 MultiFlex DTV multichannel server offers VTR-type editing via a hardware control panel, and the finished product is ready to air on the server. Pinnacle's new Thunder with clip-and-trim and integrated browser offers up to 4 video channels with a built-in transition engine that performs cuts, wipes, and dissolves between back-to-back clips. A built-in keyer allows the Thunder user to record an element over an external background.
Demand for hi-def servers
HDTV is also upping the ante for server manufacturers. Pluto has built a strong HD business with the HyperSPACE HD disk recorder, winning customers such as hi-def pioneer WRAL-HD, Raleigh, N.C, and CBS' early digital O&Os. The company has just introduced the AirSPACE HD multichannel server, which offers up to eight hours of HD storage and works with Sony's HDCAM or Panasonic's HD D-5 codec.
"We think that there's another generation or two in standard definition tapeless products. Of course, the big market for us in addition to standard definition is high definition which is going through the same cycle," says Pluto's Gray. "We're selling a lot of high definition servers for high definition spot play, because that's the only thing they need right now because a local station is going to upconvert their local daytime programming and it's going to do network pass-through at night. But it does need the ability to play back real high-definition spots locally under automation control."
Tektronix offers its multichannel Profile in an HD version to support 1080i and 720p formats using MPEG-2 compression.
HDTV, with its high-bandwidth requirements, makes for expensive servers. In response, Leitch developed an HDTV server package in which its VR300 server feeds 4:2:2 video clips into its Juno upconverter for 1080i or 720p broadcast. The server handles about 2:1 compression on the server and feeds video into the upconverter for HD playout. Leitch's Bernstein says, "Terrestrial broadcasters are still doing standard def as well as high def and by doing it this way you can provide both signals out of the same equipment." He adds that uncompressed systems offer less storage than compressed servers do and the storage is more expensive.
HP also offers a cost-effective HD package that gives broadcasters leverage with existing technology. It uses HP's MediaStream 700 and 1600 servers with two external components: DiviCom's MediaView MV400 HDTV encoder and JVC's new DM-D4000 HDTV decoder.
Philips is ready for HDTV with its Media Pool server, based on uncompressed storage. According to Philip's Wolschon, stations can buy the server today with Panasonic's DV compression and reconfigure it later for full-bandwidth HD as a "future-proof" solution. Philips also offers a mezzanine-compressed model for HDTV production. Another uncompressed system is Sierra Design Labs' HD1.5 uncompressed digital disk recorder, which can record and play back up to four streams of uncompressed 8- or 10-bit 4:2:2 video, and offers 10, 30, 60 or 120 minutes of uncompressed HD recording.
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