Accelerate: HD Broadcast

SPEED’s broadcasting infrastructure is a perfect example of a highly-efficient, file-based broadcasting workflow. The complete workflow incorporates a number of diverse, heterogeneous applications and devices, fully leveraging the performance of the DDN storage system to perform tasks concurrently and in real-time. Fox selected DDN as the central storage for the Dalet-driven workflow because it was robust and DDN could deliver the sustained performance needed to run the workflow efficiently, especially the ability to ingest, clip, edit, transcode and play-out in parallel. When Fox decided to build a completely new facility, they also decided to use this opportunity to transition SPEED from a conventional, SD tape-based workflow to an all-HD digital, file-based workflow, very similar to a newsroom environment. The DDN storage system, SPEED is able to ingest new content, digitize analog content and perform any transcoding that needs to be done concurrently. Now, the only things delivered on tape to the facility are from suppliers or tapes that come out of the archive. Editors are able to quickly access content, share and collaborate on content and move content through the facility without ever going to tape, thus giving the producers the power to make decisions at their desktops, which was a key deciding factor.