Manage your assets

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Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited.Features and specifications are subject to change without notice.All non-metric weights and measurements are approximate.Sony, PetaSite and S-AIT are trademarks of Sony Corporation.All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

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An unmatched track record

At Sony we’ve got a quarter of a century’s heritage in understanding media workflows. We create solu-tions that help broadcasters and programme makers all over the world acquire, store, edit and distrib-ute high-quality audiovisual content with maximum flexibility, absolute reliability… and at the lowest real-world cost.

It’s this understanding of broadcasters’ operational and commercial needs that gives Sony an unparal-leled insight into the value of multimedia assets at every stage of the data lifecycle. And it’s through this clear insight that we’ve created a new generation of tape library solutions optimised for the real-world needs of broadcasters and programme-makers. Representing a new benchmark in capacity, per-formance, reliability and scalability, Sony PetaSite offers broadcasters an enterprise-grade near-line storage and archive solution that fits seamlessly into their core IT infrastructures.

Offering all the reliability, security, removability and attractive costs per Gigabyte of magnetic data tape, PetaSite is the perfect choice for today’s on-air operations where failure simply isn’t an option.

We’re already working on a wide range of major archiving projects throughout worldwide for broad-casters who need to store and retrieve content quickly and securely. PetaSite offers the ultimate performance-oriented solution that can be expand-ed easily as a broadcaster’s needs evolve.

See how Sony can help your business generate bigger returns

LONG TERM ARCHIVEThere’s a fast-growing global market for video library content to support the explosion of distribution channels – from digital multichannel television to the web and mobile devices. Sony PetaSite can slash the real-world costs of storing and managing large amounts of audiovisual material… while providing a reliable, scalable platform to generate fresh revenues from your content assets.

PLAYOUT ASSISTPetaSite provides the perfect medium for providing additional resilience and scalability to networked playout operations. High-resolution audiovisual content ingested from tape can be scheduled for transfer each day from PetaSite to a video transmission server to support 24-hour operations if required.

NEWS/PRODUCTION ARCHIVEIt’s seldom economic to keep large amounts of audiovisual content instantly accessible in an online environment. Digitising material from news feeds and other sources for storage on PetaSite provides an ideal solution for broadcasters who need rapid access to archived content to support their news operations. Journalists browsing low-resolution copies can pull clips directly from PetaSite into an online environment for editing without the need for manual intervention by video tape library staff – saving time and money.

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As a broadcaster or news-maker, audiovisual con-tent is your ultimate asset. Understanding how you can extract maximum value from your content is the key to maintaining competitive advantage.

In a competitive business environment, broadcast-ers are looking for new ways to respond quickly to market needs and generate fresh revenues from their content assets. And they’re doing it in the face of ever-increasing constraints on capital expenditure and operational costs. It therefore makes sense to invest in a storage solution that complements your organisation’s overall business objectives – today and tomorrow.

At the heart of an effective content management strategy is an understanding of your organisation’s data lifecycle. How valuable is a particular piece of content right now? How valuable is it going to be to you next week? And next year?

Keeping information instantly available in an online environment can mean an expensive investment in servers and disk capacity. But that’s seldom a practical solution when you’ve got thousands of hours’ worth of audiovisual content to manage.

Traditionally, broadcasters have depended on video tape libraries for archiving large amounts of content. This can be an inefficient and risky strategy if you need to identify a specific piece of content and pull it quickly into an online environment.-Unless it’s been catalogued, labelled and filed correctly it can mean wasting time and valuable human resources tracking the right tape down. And, when you’re rushing to meet deadlines, that’s a luxury you simply can’t afford.

As production migrates rapidly to file-based work-flows, it’s also vital to consider any storage, back-up and archive solution as an integral part of your organisation’s core IT infrastructure. And that means selecting a storage solution that dove-tails seam-lessly with other production, playout and media asset management systems as part of a complete networked environment.

Combining reliability, security and removability with

highly attractive storage costs per Gigabyte, mag-netic tape is the surest, most cost-effective medium for high capacity data storage.

Highly scalable and easy to manage, Sony PetaSite tape library solutions can help you protect your pre-cious media assets – and generate fresh sources of value for your business – for years to come. And naturally, PetaSite is HD-ready… so an investment in PetaSite today lets you embrace the opportunities of tomorrow’s High Definition world with confidence.

Scalable Tape Library Solutions for News Production, Playout and Archive

With Sony you can…➥ Store, access and use archived content

more efficiently and securely

➥ Generate fresh sources of value from your media assets

➥ Reduce the costs of archive management

➥ Simplify re-purposing and distribution of archive content to multiple users

➥ Integrate archive with your networked production and transmission infrastructure

MANAGE YOUR ASSETS.

Isn’t it time to unlock the real value of your content?

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ETERE

ETERE delivers an integrated broadcast product. This unique approach offers a single environment to manage all the activities of a media company. ETERE HSM offers a rich media-oriented product for long term storage of media files. The product has been designed for this scope and offers a unique set of media-oriented tools.

Front Porch Digital International

Front Porch Digital's award-winning “DIVArchive” technology manages the largest broadcast archives in operation for the world's best-known media brands. “DIVArchive” software enables interoperability between large digital media storage devices, video servers, editing systems and digital media workflow applications.

Kayser-Threde

Kayser-Threde “pro_trieve” empowers companies to organise, verify, archive, find and quickly retrieve large volumes of technical and scientific data. Organisations deploying “pro_trieve” benefit from the automation and simplification of data handling, significantly reducing the time and expense involved in managing data across its entire life cycle.

Pebble Beach Systems

Pebble Beach Systems is a privately-owned software company specialising in broadcast automation. With a strong commitment to technical excellence and customer support, the company is becoming one of the fastest growing automation and media asset mana -gement companies in the broadcast industry.

Software Generation Ltd.

Software Generation Ltd. (SGL) data mana-gement software, “SGL FlashNet”, provides the link between video stored as files on video servers, NLE and shared storage systems and the tape library that serves as the long term repository.

Sun Microsystems

Sun StorEdge “SAM-FS” software provides policy-based archiving services that help you manage your information assets based on business value. It provides a powerful, easily-managed, cost-effective way to access, archive, and protect your critical data over its entire lifecycle.

XenData

XenData software manages a Sony PetaSite on a Windows server to create a high performance archive. XenData’s Video Edition is ideal for highly scalable digital video archives, meeting the demanding requi rements of the broadcast industry.

The power of partnershipsSony tape library solutions aren’t isolated, stand-alone hardware entities – they’re an integral part of modern broadcast workflows. Sony works in close partnership with many leading application vendors to ensure efficient integration with today’s middeware applications… without compromising the unmatched power and performance of PetaSite.

More performance, more capacity, more reliability

Flexible administrationPetaSite System Controller (PSC) is a comprehensive tape library management system that provides an interface with third party archive and back-up applications. As well as monitoring tape usage and error rates, PSC provides operational information via SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). This data can be forwarded to other sites via email or accessed by Sony and other third party applications.

Fits in with your infrastructureWith a choice of native Fibre Channel and high-performance SCSI for data transfer plus Ethernet or SCSI options for library control, Sony PetaSite integrates seamlessly with today’s standard IT environments.

All the support you need PetaSite comes backed with the peace of mind that you’d expect from Sony – one of the world’s leading players in providing complete broadcast solutions.

Class-leading storage density in a compact footprintSony PetaSite offers a market-leading storage density of up to 400TB per square metre – so you can store much more data than other solutions in a smaller footprint. And, since it’s incredibly space efficient, PetaSite lets you enjoy significant savings in real estate and other plant costs.

High performancePetaSite teams high-performance robotics with ultra-fast data transfer speeds – for less time spent waiting before a specific piece of content is available online. A typical cartridge access time of 5 seconds allows up to 400 cartridge exchanges per hour. A choice of 4 Gbit Fibre Channel or SCSI connectivity supports data transfer speeds of up to 120MB/sec per drive.

Format freedomWith PetaSite you’re free to select the tape technology that’s right for you. Select SAIT-2 or LTO-4 formats according to your needs and existing investments. It’s easy to migrate between LTO and S-AIT at any time if you’re looking for higher native capacities, transfer speeds and reliability. You can even mix and match drive formats inside the same console for a totally heterogeneous storage environment.

Enterprise-grade reliabilityAs you’d expect from Sony, PetaSite has been designed with the rigours of today’s 24-hour broadcast operations in mind. Hot-swappable drives are complemented by fully redundant power supplies for robotic and library control units.

Scalable to meet your needs today and tomorrowPetaSite provides all the space you need to meet your storage requirements – now and in the future. Data capacity can be expanded at any time by adding more tape drives plus a simple software license upgrade… right up to an incredible 2.4 Petabytes. And, if that’s not enough, you can cluster systems for unlimited storage.

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1 UPPER DOOR2 LOWER DOOR3 DISPLAY/PANEL MENU

– Initialise the System– Check library configuration & status– Monitor hours meter & operating conditions

4 IN/OUT PORTS– Load/Unload up to 12 cartridges at a time using

the two six-cartridge magazines5 PETASITE GUI

– Enable Barcode Read– Monitor BIN Data– Get Data Logs– Get Drive I/F Status

6 DRIVE POWER SUPPLY– One in use and one redundant

7 DRIVE CONTROL INTERFACE BOARDS– Two interface boards are standard

8 ROBOT POWER SUPPLY– One in use and one redundant

9 AC POWER INPUT– Two 100-240 V inputs for the drive and library

power supplied– Two inputs are for the redundant options

!º 1/2 INCH TAPE DRIVES– Install up to 12 Hot-swappable drives

!¡ NETWORK HUB!™ PETASITE CONTROL UNIT (PCU)!£ 2U, 19" RACK SPACE

– Up to 2U rack space is available for additional equipment

!¢ REAR DOOR!∞ ROBOT ARM

– Cost effective single robot arm design with 400 cartridges/hr high speed cartridge exchanges

!§ CARTRIDGES SLOTS– Start with 60 slots at 48 TB– Expand up to 216 slots at 172 TB with the base console

Inside PetaSite

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Portugal’s largest commercial broadcaster SIC is working with Sony to install and integrate a digital archive into its main news production facility. High-resolution materials will be stored on Sony PetaSite, with low-resolution copies available online for journalists to search and access from their desktops without requiring support from core library staff.

“After years of manual archiving, tape-stock was showing signs of wear and tear, a definite indication of over-use. Without quickly taking preventative measures though robotic controls, we risked losing our greatest asset.”

Ana FRANQUEIRAMedia Manager, SIC

BSkyB has invested in two Sony PetaSite tape library systems as part of a project to move its Broadcast Centre to a server-based infrastructure. Providing a scalable platform for future transmissions in HD, the new file-based workflow will significantly reduce time-consuming movement of tape each day from library to the transmission suite. Adding resilience and redundancy to the networked system, each PetaSite is configured to store approximately 1.5 petabytes of live material from the last 18 months.

“The ability to ingest high-quality tape-based content directly onto the Sony PetaSite has changed the way we store and transfer programmes. Rather than pull hundreds of tapes from the library each day for the 24-hour schedule, we can now store data on the PetaSite, wait until the scheduled date and then move the content to the video transmission server for playout whilst simul ta-neously archiving content for future reference.”

Peter ESDAILEProgramme Manager, Engineering and Platform Technology, BSkyB

Working together with automation specialist IBIS, Sony is creating the largest ever Petasite server system instal-lation in Europe for ITN. The Internet-based access system provides desktop access to nearly 700,000 hours of content managed by ITN Archive, one of the world's largest commercial collections of moving imagery. ITN Archive's most popular content is digitised at both on-line and broadcast quality. Visitors to www.itnarchive.com can browse and order material for delivery via a choice of digital distribution channels or on tape.

“This technology forms a vital and intrinsic part of ITN Archive's future growth plan. It provides a scaleable infrastructure that will allow our customers to have a much better experience whilst researching and licensing our video content. We are very excited about the opportunity that Sony's solution gives us – both internally and externally.”

Sue THEXTONManaging director, ITN Archive

Who’s using PetaSite and why

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