Storage and content management has become a pressing issue for broadcasters and post companies dealing with tapeless workflows.

The Farm's David Klafkowski cites this as the area he will be focused on at IBC. He notes Omneon's ProXchange transcoding solution as particularly interesting because of the way it integrates with the company's Media Grid Storage solution. A ProXchange upgrade will be at this year's event.

Omneon also plans to shout about its new MAM (media asset management) enabler, which adds a management layer to its workflow solutions that will track and label content in a facility. Although a number of facilities have created software management tools, Omneon advanced integration manager Graham Collins argues that when ongoing support is considered, Omneon solutions are more cost effective.

Broadcast automation specialist On-Air Systems will be showcasing the latest version of Playkast, its “channel in a box” playout solution, as well as challenging other exhibitors and delegates to come up with a more effective product via a competition.

Global challenges
Roland Brown, non-executive director at Quantel and high-end VFX outfit Imagineer, anticipates a number of workflow solutions emphasising labelling and image handling for live sports action following the Olympics. He also argues that with a plethora of companies in the post industry outsourcing to India and other countries there will be more solutions assisting with the challenges of international production management.

Pinewood group director of technology Darren Woolfson will also be looking for new content management solutions. “At Pinewood we have such a wide range of clients and types of content that the core infrastructure needs to be extremely versatile,” says Woolfson, who singles out storage system Isilon, DVS and Bright's SAN systems as worth a look. Like Brown, Woolfson is interested in looking at new ways of providing remote access to digital dailies.

Olympic task
Storage provider Studio Network Solutions will be showcasing Evo, a shared storage system that offers 24 Terabytes of file sharing per system. Evo's integration of SAN and NAS
enables members of a workgroup to edit, share and review content using the most appropriate connection type.

In addition, EVS will showcase new networking features this year, including its XNet [2] media sharing network, which can handle live and near live workflows.

EVS marketing and communications director Nicholas Bourdon says: “The number of hours broadcast at this year's Olympics, which used our IP director and XT2 production server, was double that of content broadcast from Athens, which illustrates the growing demand for near-live broadcasting as well as the challenges that technology manufacturers face.”

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