At the 2009 NAB Show, Marquis Broadcast and Bycast will demonstrate Bycast’s integration of Marquis’ Medway media transfer and format conversion software with its StorageGRID storage virtualization software. This integration enables users to achieve improvements in the speed and efficiency of file-based workflows when transferring media between a variety of post-production and broadcast applications. It also allows users to create highly efficient workflows across multiple remote sites.
The companies will demonstrate a post-production and broadcast workflow by moving media seamlessly between capture, edit and distribution sites, all connected to a global StorageGRID repository. Medway will capture digital content from cameras in popular formats such as P2, XDCAM and DVCPRO HD. From this content, Medway will create multiple editable formats for a range of editing systems, including Avid and Apple Final Cut, storing them in the StorageGRID repository. StorageGRID will make the content immediately visible to edit systems at a second site, while protecting the content against corruption and loss, and ensuring 100 percent availability. Upon completion of the edit, distribution masters stored in StorageGRID will be transcoded into multiple distribution formats and distributed to a third site. In addition, archive masters will be created in MXF, allowing viewing and partial file restore from multiple sites directly from the StorageGRID repository.
Medway handles media and metadata transfers by rewrapping and streaming the data, allowing it to flow freely between editing systems, asset management solutions and video servers without incurring bottlenecks that may otherwise occur due to file incompatibilities between systems. StorageGRID provides an enterprisewide view of media and metadata wherever it resides, while protecting against loss, media obsolescence and unauthorized access. This enables users to have uninterrupted access to all their media assets across multiple sites and heterogeneous storage environments within a single virtualized system that spans Tier 1 through deep archive platforms from multiple vendors.
Bycast StorageGRID provides a unifying object store that preserves, protects and secures media assets over multiple decade time frames and across many sites and tiers, presenting applications with a global view of all assets through standard file system interfaces. The combination of Bycast StorageGRID and Marquis Medway provides a platform for media and metadata interchange that eliminates the challenges of multivendor workflows.