Dalet, DataDirect, Quantum and SeaChange Team Up

Dalet Digital Media Systems announced that DataDirect Networks, Inc. (DDN), Quantum, Corp. and SeaChange International will be showcasing at the NAB2009 exhibition an enterprise media asset management-based workflow solution that accelerates how broadcasters prepare and deliver television programming. Through efforts to closely integrate their respective technologies, the four broadcast vendors have developed an enterprise solution that answers the production and playout needs for news, sports, media asset management and content repurposing.

“Unifying our forces with SeaChange, DataDirect Networks and Quantum is a strategic move,” said Stéphane Schlayen, chief operating officer, Dalet. “With more than 60 systems deployed we have come a long way. Our goal has always been to build solutions on open IT platforms and to integrate transparently with the latest best-of-breed technologies. The storage, file system and video infrastructure combined with our powerful Dalet Enterprise Edition MAM and workflow engine will provide a cost effective, flexible and scalable platform for large-scale, fast-paced broadcasters looking for better efficiency, reusable assets and operational cost savings.”

The seamless workflow is book-ended by SeaChange’s highly flexible MediaClient ingest and playout software codecs. In between is DDN’s high-bandwidth, high-capacity Silicon Storage Architecture (S2A) storage platforms and Quantum’s StorNext File System for centralized, real-time access to content for highly concurrent editing and playout operations. The workflow is driven by Dalet’s powerful enterprise asset management solution, DaletPlus, which facilitates critical functions such as station-wide browsing and logging, simple desktop editing, and fast collaborative production via seamless integration with editing applications.

“In today’s hyper-competitive entertainment marketplace, broadcasters need the ability to be innovative in their programming and accelerate workflows to adapt to the drastic shift in viewing habits, while still keeping operating expenses in check,” said Chris West, vice president of worldwide broadcast sales, SeaChange. “This solution solves what has historically been a cumbersome process by employing proven, scalable technologies to ingest and prep virtually any form of content for playout to any type of stream.”

The Dalet, DDN, Quantum StorNext and SeaChange solution is a highly scalable infrastructure that can support thousands of users. SeaChange ingest and play-out video servers connect directly to the StorNext- managed DDN storage, which eliminates cumbersome transfers and makes the content available for users almost immediately after the recording starts. The integrated solution gives near real-time ingest and real-time playout performance without the traditional hardware requirements, a configuration that is ideal for fast-paced news operations and sporting events.

“As the leading data infrastructure provider for content-rich markets, DDN delivers award-winning storage solutions that have enabled workflows in more than 400 media production facilities worldwide,” said Jeff Denworth, vice president of marketing, DataDirect Networks. "DDN’s broadcast solutions are enabling the next generation of intelligent media streaming, scalable to thousands of concurrent megabit streams, and able to provide extreme levels of performance consistency for predictable media ingest and delivery. Our work with Dalet, Quantum and SeaChange has already seen rapid customer adoption and we look forward to expanding on that success with this highly scalable tapeless production-to-playout workflow.”

DDN provides a high end, solid SAN infrastructure that supports many connections, with high bit rate HD formats. The SAN configuration, managed by the Quantum StorNext File System, enables Dalet application servers that manage media operations such as conversions to be directly connected via fiber channel and thus to drastically speed up the process. The combination of StorNext with DDN guarantees robustness, outstanding performance and high availability.

“We are committed to providing partners and customers the most scalable, high performance workflows in the industry. The StorNext File System seamlessly enables Dalet applications and SeaChange applications to share assets transparently,” said Lance Hukill, vice president of Software Sales for Quantum. “Partnering with Dalet, DDN and SeaChange will allow customers to decrease their time-to-market, thus increasing revenues.”

Core Dalet, DataDirect Networks, Quantum and SeaChange workflow components:
The workflow addresses how consumers today are viewing their content, not only in high definition (HD) and standard definition (SD) through terrestrial, cable, satellite and IPTV services on traditional television sets, but also on the web, through video-on-demand and on mobile devices.

SeaChange MediaClient Series standard and high definition codecs powered by Dalet: Enabling simultaneous ingest of a wide range of content and formats, and simultaneous creation of multiple file formats and varying bit rates. Playing out multiple formats for air, studio, video-on-demand or IPTV distribution.

Dalet enterprise asset management platform: Dalet manages assets and workflows in the largest and most complex media organizations with large number of users across departments using different and concurrent workflows. The built-in SOA compliant Web Services API provides a high level of interoperability to straight-forward integration with third-party broadcast and corporate systems and applications. The enterprise workflow engine manages contextual workspaces, production tools, access to media for each user profile. Metadata sets are displayed per profile, and tracked across the entire workflow.

DataDirect Networks’ S2A data infrastructure platforms: DDN’s eighth generation S2A platforms provide extreme performance and scalable capacity, with the ability to manage 1.2 petabytes, over 40,000 hours of high-res digital archive at 50Mb/s, in only two floor tiles and deliver sustained throughput of up to 600 concurrent IMX 50 streams with only one appliance. DDN’s xStreamScaler S2A9900 combines award-winning storage with high-speed shared file storage technology to deliver scalable bandwidth, unbounded capacity and performance consistency for media workflows. DDN xStreamScaler technology is designed to simplify media storage environments by enabling system consolidation while ingesting multiple data streams, supporting real-time concurrent editing and scalable play-out streaming.

Quantum’s StorNext File System and StorNext Storage Manager: From content acquisition to distribution Quantum solutions are used throughout the world to centralize content, enable faster sharing across applications, and build cost-effective digital archives for long term storage and data protection. The world-renowned StorNext File System supports Windows, Linux, UNIX and Mac platforms for transparent shared access for the most demanding streaming-media applications. StorNext Storage Manager migrates assets from primary disk to lower cost storage tiers including tape, disk, and de-duplication storage.

The production workflow will shortly be available to broadcasters worldwide and will be on display during NAB 2009 at Dalet and SeaChange.