P2 Archiving Solution shown at IBC

D

Dan Montgomery

Active member
Yes, it's true, Quantum and Imagine Products collaborated to demonstrate a P2 archiving workflow at IBC.

The Quantum SDLT600A is a stand alone Gigabit FTP box that can hold 300GB per tape. Being MXF aware, the drive builds a mini-index to any MXF files dropped onto it. This allows for easy partial restores--in other words, you can extract just a few frames of a clip by timecodes. And, the P2 Volumes are preserved in original Contents folder forms.

The files you drop onto the drive are available to anyone on your network without proprietary software, since the files are in original form. You can also connect directly to a single Mac and the drive is small enough to be reasonably portable.

The SDLT600A is very fast too, writing to the tape at 288 Mb/s -- or about 3 times faster than real time P2 video. And the tapes have a certified 30 year shelf life.

Imagine demonstrated upcoming Mac solutions that directly control the tape drive and seamlessly builds a low resolution QT proxy database of all clips (whether P2 or not) for fast searching, full textual cataloging, and managing the storage and recalling clips.

Because the SDLT600A can build new P2 Volumes of selected clip segments, it fits perfectly with Imagine's "asset managment" solutions for P2 users. Look for Q4 software releases.
 
lpcvideo1 said:
This sounds interesting! How much?
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The SDLT600A retails for $6999. Tapes are about $100 each and hold 300GB.

Imagine's HDLog Gold is $699 (for single user control).

Quantum also is rolling out a SuperLoader that holds up to 4.8 TB (16 tapes). Due out 4Q for about $12k.
 
Eeesh...Bare hard drives on a shelf still seem like the better and cheaper option. What we need are 50gig Bluray discs that cost under $10 bucks a piece.
 
Well, if you do the math the tapes work out to 30 cents per GB, substantially cheaper than any other format. And, the cost of the tape drive is about half what a Blue Ray deck runs (or older Beta equipment). Plus is a 30 year life. Few hard disks last more than 5 years.

From where I stand it depends on if your serious about archiving or just living for today.
 
Dan Montgomery said:
The SDLT600A retails for $6999. Tapes are about $100 each and hold 300GB.
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But one can get a 300GB hard drive for $100 on sale these days. And with that, you don't need a $6999 drive to host it. The SDLT600A doesn't seem like much of a value except for big companies with money to burn.
 
Neopics said:
But one can get a 300GB hard drive for $100 on sale these days. And with that, you don't need a $6999 drive to host it. The SDLT600A doesn't seem like much of a value except for big companies with money to burn.
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However the biggest difference here is that the tape is a better solution in that, it doesn't have to spin up on occasion. It can sit on the shelf for years and then be pick up and used. This is not true for HDD. They have to spin on occasion or the won't in the long run.

The Quantum is a very nice solution as it does make archive on tape easy and very accessible.

Best,

jan
 
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"However the biggest difference here is that the tape is a better solution in that, it doesn't have to spin up on occasion. It can sit on the shelf for years and then be pick up and used. This is not true for HDD. They have to spin on occasion or the won't in the long run" dixit Jan
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Jan,

why HDD have to spin occasionnally ?

If they're stored vertically, they should be OK for long periods of time ?
 
For higher end users of P2 (think news, corporate, advertising), this archiving solution makes a lot of sense ... and really isn't very expensive when compared to digi decks, and P2 cards, for that matter.

I've no doubt that it will sell well, but the majority of the dvxuser crowd are hardly its core market- most can hardly afford the HVX, let alone expensive archiving.
 
A few questions mulling around in my head here...what kind of tape this is...what makes it good for archival use, for instance--how big is one of the cassettes, how much would a pack of 'em cost you, if it's a hard drive/tape deck system or does it just write directly to the tape, and when I say tape I'm thinking DV tape or something similar to it, am I off base there? I'm kinda confused, and you guys' site was slightly unclear. In any case it seems like a step forward for the P2 workflow, if the tapes or whatever are cheap and don't artifact (much) and store well. So yeah, hopeful...but ever-so-slightly confused.
 
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I agree the message from Quantum may not be that honed yet. As we finalize our integration with the tape drive hopefully our marketing spin will be a bit cleared in P2 terms.

I spent 5 days with these guys in Amsterdam and learned a lot. To get a 30 year shelf life the tape isn't your run of the mill stuff. Also, the deck has smarts when it comes to cueing a file--very fast.

I can't answer the pricing issues at this point. Quantum uses only select dealers for this product at the moment.

What's very cool is the "MXF aware" feature....being able to retrieve only snippets of needed material rather than forcing original file sizes. Also being application independent means the files look just like any hard disk in Finder or Explorer.

The physical size of a cassette is about that of a BetaCamSP. There is no hard disk involved. But, the drive builds an index on each tape for the file listing.
 
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HappyGobo said:
A few questions mulling around in my head here...what kind of tape this is...what makes it good for archival use, for instance--how big is one of the cassettes, how much would a pack of 'em cost you, if it's a hard drive/tape deck system or does it just write directly to the tape, and when I say tape I'm thinking DV tape or something similar to it, am I off base there? I'm kinda confused, and you guys' site was slightly unclear. In any case it seems like a step forward for the P2 workflow, if the tapes or whatever are cheap and don't artifact (much) and store well. So yeah, hopeful...but ever-so-slightly confused.
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The way that the Quantum Drive works is that it saves blank space at the front of the tape to record the MXF information, this makes for speedy retireival of single clips. The tape is a metal particle tape, unlike DV tape which is Metal Evaporated tape. Quantum does have a white paper on their website about the archival nature of one type versus the other with the conclusion being that Metal Particle tape is vastly superior in the long haul.

When determining the price of the tape you need to bring it down to how much per GB. As I recall the 300GB tape was about $100. This means that your cost of storage is 30 cents a GB. When comparing that to DV tape, DV tape is about 16 cents a minute and unreliable and of course is not HD. DVCPRO HD tape is about $1.00 per GB, so I am sure you can see the savings in the SDLT archive and you have a random access ability that is just not possible on tape.

Hope this helps,

Jan
 
Hmm...30 yr life
Sorry and all, but 30 yr aint archival. To me "archival" means min 100 years. In fact, can it be said that any purly electronic system of data storage be called archival? I think not, but that's a topic for another thread.
 
"MXF aware" and the way this works is pretty cool, almost overcomes being a linear storage solution. I think I'm going to trudge along with my $750 (bought used on eBay 5 months ago) LTO-2 drive and $20 tapes.

Now if I were a TV station this would be the cats meow . . .
 
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