Minutes from Digital Video Producers Meeting on
Oct. 5, 2001

Report from Charles Soto (copied from Discussion Board posting):

Greetings, the plan is to build something resembling the following:

1) Video servers: A variety of solutions, including Kasenna Mediabase, QuickTime Streaming Server, Windows Media Server and RealSystem. You got a file type, we'll serve it up.

2) Asset Management System: StudioCentral Library will be used to store and keep track of all sorts of digital assets, from still images to audio files to videos. Asset "metadata" is entirely flexible and can be whatever we decide, from bibliographic data to instructor-supplied commentary. Anything. This will be tied into the ITS Oracle server for high-speed searching. The system can keep track of the assets stored and playable by Mediabase and can be accessed via a web interface.

3) Archive Storage System: All of the above will be hooked up to a local file cache of at least 760GB. However, our storage capcacity will be effectively infinite by tying this into the TACC Terascale Data Archive Server (http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/Information/Archive/). We'll be able to store between 30-70TB of data. In typical HSM-fashion, infrequently used data will eventually migrate to tape, keeping only "fresh" files on the local disks. In our tests, feature-length 1.5Mbps MPEG-1s made it from tape to our test server in about 10 minutes. That's on 100Mbps Ethernet. These systems will be Gigabit equipped.

4) Content Development Workstations and Facilities: Both housed within discreen academic units and at the CIT, we'll build "standard" media production workstations and develop workflows that make producing streaming video and other digital asset types a "commoditizable" process. Documentation will be shared online and there will be routine workshops to cover the latest trends. Everyone will be on the same map.

We have a fairly specific plan now for the current grant expenditures, and will use some of the most recently-awarded grant (see http://www.utexas.edu/computer/news/campus/0106/tif-grant.html) to build the 2nd phase, supporting even more users, more campus units and more files. There are even plans to add edge-serving capability at affiliated campuses, like UTEP.

Meeting Attendees: