Security Dealer & Integrator

SEP 2013

Find news and information for the executive corporate security director, CSO, facility manager and assets protection manager on issues of policy, products, incidents, risk management, threat assessments and preparedness.

Issue link: http://sdi.epubxp.com/i/172392

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 59 of 119

VIDEO SURVEILLANCE The side effect is an enormous amount of extra video. Here's an examination of two areas that Hollywood has gotten it right with regards to video management and video storage: metadata and LTO. Metadata The challenge for many in the video surveillance and security industry is that when they see the word 'tape' their minds immediately jump to VHS... Holding onto that notion will cause you to miss out on all of its benefts. Metadata, or "data about the data" enables each user to add information about a video that can be later used to easily search and review the video. "Airplane flyover of Golden Gate Bridge at sunset" is a great example of a clip of video that a production company could easily reuse for any movie about San Francisco. "Airplane," "Golden Gate Bridge" and "sunset" are all metadata terms that would significantly help an editor quickly find this scene and use it again. Think of the cost savings metadata creates, as the other option is to send out another film crew to shoot another airplane flying over the same famed bridge. Similarly, being able to pinpoint the specific clip of video in a video surveillance environment becomes easy using metadata. In fact, its cost-effectiveness makes metadata worth its weight in gold. Implementing sound metadata to recorded surveillance video enables more relevant search results and provides a way to find the proverbial needle in our ever growing video storage haystack. Tiered Storage using LTO The other area that Hollywood has learned how to do it right is in the use of multiple tiers of storage for recorded video. Just as in the video surveillance marketplace, video is not frequently reused or viewed after initial recording; and, just like the video surveillance market, this rapid expansion of video assets is a relatively recent change and these newer solutions are now maturing. What existing digital storage technologies are trustworthy enough to store our video assets and ensure they will be there when we need them? Enter LTO digital computer data tape. LTO storage has been available since 2000 and has become the de facto standard in computer data tape storage, and is heavily used 56 in the Hollywood marketplace. The challenge for many in the video surveillance and security industry is that when they see the word "tape" their minds immediately jump to VHS. Although tape is indeed a four-letter word, if you continue reading this article holding onto that notion, you will miss out on all of its benefits. IBM, HP and Seagate developed LTO to counter other data tape technologies, thus introducing a more open format. Much of the technology is an extension of the work done by IBM at its Tucson lab during the previous 20 years with more than 80 percent of the world's data residing on data tape. Around the time of the release of LTO-1, Seagate's magnetic tape division was spun off and eventually acquired by Quantum. Today, IBM, HP, Quantum, Spectra Logic, Oracle and a number of others manufacture LTO data tape libraries, with IBM and HP manufacturing the LTO drives. The latest generation, LTO-6, began shipping in December of 2012 in 2.5-Terabyte cartridges with a retail price of about $90 per cartridge. Adoption of LTO is already firmly established in the Hollywood media production environment. One of the driving forces behind this adoption is a mandate to many feature motion picture productions by insurance companies that content (video) captured on set or on location be archived to LTO tape on a daily basis. LTO meets the dual needs of the studios and the insurance bonding companies. The bonding companies feel more at ease because the content is archived on LTO, the same tape-based platform that banks use. LTO is rated at up to 30 years archival shelf life. It provides for 5,000 cartridge loads/ unloads and it allows for approximately 260 full file passes — with one full pass equal to writing enough data to fill an entire tape cartridge. With the sequential data structure format of video, LTO data tape becomes an ideal storage medium. LTO for Surveillance Video An appropriate surveillance video workflow must be put into place to properly use www.SecurityInfoWatch.com | SD&I; | September 2013

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Security Dealer & Integrator - SEP 2013