ACADEMIA

With plans to offer media asset management services to all broadcasters in The Netherlands and to transform its post-production system to a digital workflow, Netherlands facility CIRIS acquired complete integrated storage and server solutions from Silicon Graphics in June. CIRIS customers will be able to store, search, browse and access video data and other content remotely using SGI and Ardendo technology. With facilities in Amsterdam and Hilversum, the center of the Dutch television production market, CIRIS also purchased the SGI server to facilitate the August launch of Talpa Television, a new channel broadcasting throughout The Netherlands. CIRIS is a privately-owned company, and is a member of the DutchView Group, serving most of the Dutch public and commercial broadcasters and production houses with a broad scope of video and audio facilities. "One of the main reasons we chose SGI servers and storage is because the system can work with several different editing interfaces and its scalable architecture means we will not have any barriers in growing our system and our business, and we expect the storage to grow rapidly," said Hans Blom, sales manager, CIRIS. "When we started to look for a company to partner with in this project, we primarily talked to two companies. SGI demonstrated that they have a lot of knowledge about the production and broadcast industry. The other company is basically a computer-oriented company and they don't have much experience in broadcasting. During the installation, Silicon Graphics Broadcast Europe showed they were very knowledgeable and understood our business, and that's what we needed to set us up for our digital storage and post-production environment." To provide a foundation for the CIRIS Dynamic Platform project -- the first phase focused on implementing the server and storage infrastructure and an asset management system -- CIRIS purchased a 30TB SGI InfiniteStorage TP9300S storage array with a 6GB SGI Altix server running the Linux environment with four Intel Itanium 2 processors, and a six-channel SGI Media Server for broadcast solution with an InfiniteStorage array. SGI partner Ardendo provided media asset management components, and worked with Silicon Graphics Broadcast Europe on custom integration and development. A Sony PetaSite system is connected to the SGI TP9300S array, allowing CIRIS to scale to one petabyte of storage capacity. ARDOME, the media asset management system powered by SGI and delivered by Ardendo, is designed to use the Ardendo browser, enabling television program and news producers to pre-edit on the Internet using Ardendo's EasyCut proxy editing system. Ardendo also provided ingest solutions ARDCAP and DART as part of the complete workflow. CIRIS plans to archive material that is used by the Dutch broadcasters, but is also exploring the possibilities of archiving for a variety of business markets. The DutchView group together with the NOB supported the launch of Talpa television at the Hilversum facility. Two Pinnacle editing systems at Talpa's own location are connected via Fibre Channel to CIRIS' new SGI InfiniteStorage TP9300S system. Talpa editors work directly on programs stored on the SGI storage system at CIRIS. With 165 employees, CIRIS, part of the DutchView group, provides nonlinear editing, linear editing, graphics, design services, duplication for all standard television formats, and film scanning and color correction services. About 80 percent of their business is post-production for television, including HD post, which was added a year ago; they are currently working on three or more HD productions, CIRIS also rents editing systems for location work throughout The Netherlands. The DutchView group delivers a broad scope of video and audio facilities: studios, OBVs, ENG, Graphics and post-production. "The SGI and Ardendo solution has been a tremendous success in numerous broadcasting and production facilities throughout Europe because it combines the dependable, robust and scalable SGI architecture with a media asset management system that is not only easy to learn and easy to use, but speeds production for a greater ROI," said Stephan Schindler, general manager, Silicon Graphics Broadcast Europe. "We are pleased that CIRIS chose SGI for their first phase of digital transition based on our knowledge and understanding of production and broadcast solutions and we anticipate a long and successful relationship as their business grows."