ICSJHH@ASUACAD.BITNET (Jim Howard) (02/01/91)
Has anyone heard of a jukebox version of a videodisk system, or of anyone attaching a videodisk to a system to act as a server for images or data from video disks. I know you would need a high bandwidth for full motion type images, but I am looking at creating a server that would have standard magnetic, CD-ROM, Magneto-optic read/write media and perhaps videodisks as resources available. With the appropriate video cards in both the server and workstations and a fiber or FDDI type high speed link an "image server" could be developed. Any research or practical work in this area?
bsmith@linus.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Smith) (02/02/91)
In article <91031.160311ICSJHH@ASUACAD.BITNET> Jim Howard writes: > Has anyone heard of a jukebox version of a videodisk system, or > of anyone attaching a videodisk to a system to act as a server for > images or data from video disks. I know you would need a high bandwidth for > full motion type images, but I am looking at creating a server that would > have standard magnetic, CD-ROM, Magneto-optic read/write media and perhaps > videodisks as resources available. Well, there are a lot of imbedded questions here, so I'll try to do my best. First off, it's unclear to me when you say "videodisks" whether you mean optical WORM discs for digital storage, or analog CAV/CLV video discs that you can buy at The Wherehouse. For the latter, I know that Pioneer offers the "LC-V330 Industrial Laserdisc Autochanger" which provides jukebox like capabilities for their LD-V2200 and LD-V4200 Laserdisc players. Both these players are computer controllable laserdisc players, and cost in the $1K range. I don't know the cost of the LC-V330, but it can hold up to 72 discs. The MIT media lab did a system called Galatea that used this type of storage for video. If you're talking about WORM drives and the like for digital storage, Sony produces a jukebox that holds about 3.5 TB of tertiary storage. I doubt the bandwidth of the jukebox will be high enough for multiple readers of real time video. As far as other devices go, some people are looking at 4mm DAT tapes as tertiary storage devices. I heard of a device that costs $25000, and stores 75TB of information in a carousel of DAT tapes. Talk about lots of cheap storage! The problem of this tertiary storage is access time. With DAT tapes, it could take minutes to get to the data. The obvious answer is to use secondary storage (magnetic disks) as a cache for the tapes. This secondary store would have to be large (1 hour of video, compressed, is in the 1-5 GB range), but I expect that amount of storage to be not uncommon in the next 5 years or so. > With the appropriate video cards in both the server and workstations > and a fiber or FDDI type high speed link an "image server" could be > developed. Any research or practical work in this area? A lot of people are doing research in this area (myself included). A good starting point for research is to look at the "IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Volume 8, No 3, April 1990". The issue is devoted to Multimedia communications, and will give you a dozen or so relevant articles. ----- Brian C. Smith arpa: bsmith@postgres.Berkeley.EDU University of California, Berkeley uucp: uunet!ucbarpa!postgres!bsmith Computer Sciences Department phone: (415)642-9585 ----- Brian C. Smith arpa: bsmith@postgres.Berkeley.EDU University of California, Berkeley uucp: uunet!ucbarpa!postgres!bsmith Computer Sciences Department phone: (415)642-9585
danapple@kalao.Eng.Sun.COM (Daniel I. Applebaum) (02/03/91)
In article <10697@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> bsmith@linus.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Smith) writes: >In article <91031.160311ICSJHH@ASUACAD.BITNET> Jim Howard writes: >> Has anyone heard of a jukebox version of a videodisk system, or >> of anyone attaching a videodisk to a system to act as a server for >> images or data from video disks >The MIT media lab did a system called >Galatea that used this type of storage for video. I worked on Galatea when I was at the Media Lab. If you are interested in information regarding this project, I can send you some information and/or source code. >----- >Brian C. Smith arpa: bsmith@postgres.Berkeley.EDU Daniel I. Applebaum Sun Microsystems, Inc. danapple@sun.com