LTO-5 Ultrium with LTFS:Award winning combination for the

media and entertainment industry

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In a landscape dominated by increasingly high quality video capture, massive data volumes and long term asset utilisation and retention, tape is increasing in popularity.

In their 2011 report ‘Digital Storage for Media and Entertainment’, Analysts Coughlin Associates, estimate that between 2011 and 2016 the media and entertainment industry will experience a 7.7x increase in the required digital storage capacity, and a 5.6x growth in storage capacity shipments per year. Digital archiving, content conversion, and preservation alone will require around 61 exabytes of capacity by 2016.

Protecting this content through the various parts of the media workflow is becoming more crucial than ever. However, current storage options can be expensive and difficult to use, adding to production costs that are already soaring to record levels.

“ Our surveys show the highest percentage of true archived content is kept on digital magnetic tape. The most popular digital magnetic tape format for archiving (based upon our survey) is LTO tape (with 66% share).” Coughlin Associates, Report on Digital Storage for Media and Entertainment, June 2011.

“ For media producers, all this digital content brings with it at least two problems: storing it today for production purposes and then storing it forever – just because you may someday need it.” Brad Dick, Broadcast Engineering.

In a series of articles, Brad Dick, Editorial Director of Broadcast Engineering, endorses the use of tape to “reduce storage costs, protect your business and ensure a long life for your content”.

Why tape in broadcast media and entertainment?�

Post ProductionDistribution

Archive Production

Tape’s USP

•Low cost •Scalable capacity •Reliable and fast •Removable •Easy to use (LTFS)

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“The great content shift – the demand for content anytime, anywhere – has set in motionakaleidoscopeofinfiniteconsumption options with unlimited potential for businesses in the know, all enabled by shifting players, technologies, strategies and expectations. Extraordinary advancements have sent ripples of new paradigms across the broader-casting® spectrum, forever changing how content comes to life.” – Theme for NAB2012

The majority of digital video assets retain some level of value because they have often been captured at a point in time that cannot be recreated. These assets must be protected for many years both for cultural value and for reuse, as Brad Dick suggests “the long-tail of media offers the opportunity for long-lived revenue”. Digital assets need therefore to be stored for both long- term protection, and in a manner that enables their reuse when the opportunity arises.

However, with mounting volumes of high resolution digital video to store, this can lead to solutions that are both expensive and inefficient which has led Brad Dick to recommend the use of tape. His argument for tape-based active archiving is based on the following evidence:

• 90% of data stored is never accessed again, according to a study by the University of California, Santa Cruz. As Brad Dick explains;

“ What is it costing you to store 90% of your media that may never again be used? The only acceptable answer is free. If it costs anything to store that 90% of your data, the costs may be too high.”

• There have been numerous TCO studies performed, including those by the Enterprise Systems Group (ESG) and The Clipper Group which show that over time, tape is 15x less expensive than disk storage when storing data over a 12-year period.

• Power consumption should be a part of TCO storage calculations. The Clipper Group TCO report shows that the disk solution used 238 times more energy than the tape-based solution. And in fact the cost of simply powering the spinning disks over 12 years was more than the total purchase cost of the tape system.

Against this backdrop, LTO Ultrium tape is making its mark, and LTO-5 with LTFS functionality is proving to be a key workflow component for professionals engaged in the creation, management and delivery of broadcasting media and entertainment. A variety of new applications for LTO Ultrium tape have been developed to deliver ways to retain digital assets, both finished and raw, and permit online disk-like operation but without the cost normally associated with vast arrays of spinning disks.

What is LTFS?�The advent of Linear Tape File System (LTFS) with LTO-5 tape has come at just the right time for digital media – combining high capacity, low cost and ease-of-use in one interchangeable format. LTFS and associated products have already been recognised by the media and entertainment industry, winning several awards for the varying ways in which this ground-breaking technology contributes to the digital workflow, and culminating with a prestigious Technical Emmy® Award in 2011.

LTFS overview

Linear Tape File System (LTFS) is a multi-vendor open format and self-describing specification for storing data files on tape. It relies on the dual partitioning technology that was introduced with the LTO-5 format, storing a metadata index in one partition as a directory of the data stored in the other partition. HP combines this functionality with the HP LTFS software driver to extend operating system functionality, enabling the data on an LTFS tape to be accessed by a file system similar to that found on disk drives using commands like copy, move, and delete.

ThebenefitsofLTFS

The high data transfer rate and dense cost-effective storage of LTO tape have always been appealing to the media and entertainment industry, but tape remained difficult to use... until LTFS. LTO-5 with LTFS combines the traditional advantages of tape (reliability, longevity, portability and low cost) with the following features and benefits:

Openspecification – keeping data stored in an open format means that there are multiple providers delivering competitive products, so that users have a wider choice without compromising the ability to interchange data.

Interoperability – LTFS is self-describing, so there is no required connection with the software system that wrote the tape. This differs markedly from proprietary backup and archive storage management applications which usually require special tape formats or metadata transfers from the application to provide access to data on the tape.

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MediaandentertainmentworkflowexploitingLTFS

Post production

EditEffectsConform/DI

Capture/ingest

Dailies

LocalWIP

Archive

Distributionformatting

Distribution

WITH LTFSWITH LTFS

WIP(work in progress)

extended with

WITH LTFS

WITH LTFS

WITH LTFS WITH LTFS

WITH LTFS

Cable/Sat.DVDWorldwide Web

= Mainly interchange

= Significant penetration

= Increased potential with LTFS

= Movement of files by network, portable disk, tape (video or data) or

LTFS/LTO Role

WITH LTFS

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Ease-of-use – a modern familiar interface providing users faster, easier direct access to files on data tape, in a manner similar to disk drives, USB drives and data DVD’s.

Reliability – multiple copies of the index are stored in both the index and data partitions. Older copies of the index are retained so the tape can be ‘rolled back’ to a previous state with use of LTFS functions.

Low cost – while portable disk drives may have an initial acquisition cost advantage over the initial cost of a tape drive and cartridge, the total cost of ownership for moderate and larger storage applications is weighted in tape’s favour due to:

• Less expensive LTO media – at $35/TB, for example, $0.83/hr for 50 Mbps video.1

• Much lower energy costs because tapes require no power or cooling when idle.

Investment protection – LTO-5 tape cartridges will be readable by LTO tape drives two generations in the future (e.g. an LTO-7 drive will be able to read an LTO-5 tape with LTFS), helping to preserve investments and easing migration.

WheredoesLTFSfitinmediaworkflows?While LTO-5 with LTFS is useful for a wide range of applications, it is increasingly sought by the media and entertainment industry to store, manage and preserve vast amounts of unstructured data, especially rich media content (i.e. video, digital cinema, audio). LTFS directly affects two major trends having significant impact on media and entertainment companies and digital media producers:

1. Supportingtheshifttofile-basedworkflows.Historical workflows relied on physical video tapes and film clips as the medium for moving content from one process to the next. In the digital/tapeless workflow the digital file is the unit of work being moved, and LTO-5 with LTFS can play a significant role in providing a universal media for interchange across the workflow.

2. Reducing the cost of storing ever-increasing capacities. Today’s higher visual resolution and complexity (HD, 4K, 3D, etc.) has resulted in larger file volumes. Producers are faced with the need to balance the long-term availability of their media assets, with the prohibitive cost of keeping them online. LTO tape, especially with LTFS, can meet the challenge by delivering low cost storage with easy access to files.

Source – LTO Technology Provider Companies, February 2012

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ThebenefitsofLTFSLTO brings tangible benefits to the four typical phases of media work flows.

Production

The production workflow is concerned with on-set and on-location digital capture. LTFS is already offered by a number of vendors providing on-set solutions due to the following benefits:

Post-production

In post-production all the content elements of a project are assembled, repeatedly enhanced and reviewed: camera-captured content, digital effects, graphics and sound. Making these very large files available to multiple collaborators in the post production process can be assisted by LTO with LTFS in terms of both logistics and economics.

Compliance withinsurance mandates

Insurance companies mandate that all data content captured on set or location be archived to LTO tapeon a daily basis. With LTFS these tapes are more easily shared with a variety of participants, and theircontents viewed in archive.

Eliminating pre-processing time for digital capture

Productions shooting with digital cameras no longer require pre-processing or packaging of the filesas the existing digital files can simply be copied to the LTFS tape volume.

Saving money by reusingthe in-camera media

Digital cameras encode images directly to expensive SSD or removable disk media which is between 3xand 350x more expensive than LTO tape. The rapid transfer of content to tape with LTFS means that thisin-camera media can be reused, reducing the requirement to purchase or rent more media.

Fast and convenient viewing of proxy video

LTFS enabled applications can quickly load the proxy files and allow users to review the contentsof the tape without the latency associated with the much larger data partition.

Reducing the risk of data loss

LTFS facilitates backup, reducing risk and enabling small portable or independent systems to easilywrite daily content to tape.

Providing moderately fast file access

In a workflow where access to a file is expected to be fast but not instantaneous (for example stock footageor archive footage of an on-going news story), an LTFS tape is an effective and economical choice for storage.

Readily interchange filesacross the workflow

LTO-5 with LTFS is available across all the key platforms in media production – Linux, Mac andWindows. LTO-5 with LTFS can overcome complexities to provide a common platform for fileinterchange across production and post-production workflows.

Lower cost than networktransmission for large files

The data files for a film project can easily range from 10 to 100 terabytes of storage during postproduction. LTO tape provides the high bandwidth and economical storage density required,and LTFS makes it easier to locate and access the files stored on tape.

Blending disk and tape to reduce overall storage costs

A tiered storage solution where technologies are utilised appropriately at different stages can have asignificant impact on total storage cost. For example, media files are stored inexpensively on LTFS tapeand brought online ‘just in time’ for sharing, editing and further enhancement on disk. Once this work iscompleted, the new or modified data is written back to tape, leaving expensive online storage availablefor newer active data.

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Distribution

LTFS formatted LTO tape provides the industry with a common dependable exchange medium for film scans, video and other digital assets.

Digital archiving

Digital assets may be required for re-use at any time over a multi-year period. Coughlin Associates refer to this as the “long tail of ROI”, retaining digital video, in addition to the conversion of older analog materials to digital format, is driving the demand for economical long-term preservation. LTO tape has long been used to satisfy this demand, and the addition of LTFS makes LTO even more attractive for digital archiving.

Low cost distributionof large files

A single LTFS formatted LTO-5 tape can hold more than 60 hours of broadcast distribution, and makeit easy for the recipient to view the tape content and retrieve individual files.

Unconstrained by network bandwidths

LTFS formatted LTO-5 tapes can be used to rapidly transport large volumes of broadcast data around theworld. The US postal service charges $15 for a standard box that holds 28 LTO-5 tapes, the equivalentof 42 TBs or 1680 hours of broadcast. This box can be shipped anywhere in the US in about 3 days.Hypothetically, this represents a data transfer rate of 1.3 gigabits per second, or roughly the speedof a one gigabit leased line at a fraction of the cost.

Cross-platform interchange

The recipient of the LTFS formatted LTO-5 tapes need only a standalone LTO-5 tape drive attachedto a PC or Mac with LTFS in order to read the content of the tapes.

Secure data in transit Data encryption can occur before files are written to tape, or via standard LTO tape drive hardware-basedencryption which is compatible with LTFS.

It’s simple economics From a $/GB perspective, LTO-5 with LTFS is 8x lower cost than HDCAM SR tape, 37x cheaper thanXDCAM disc and as much as 350x less expensive than a P2 SSD card. On top of these savings, tapealso delivers further economies in terms of power and cooling requirements. These factors can significantlyenhance the total cost of ownership advantage in tape’s favour, particularly for long-term storage ofinfrequently accessed data.

Eliminate data accessdependencies

Access to data in long-term archive can be complicated by the system platform, software and processesused to store the data in the first place.

The self-describing nature of LTFS eliminates these dependencies. To access long-retained data, an archivistneed only install a current version of LTFS software to read the tape contents regardless of the original sourcesystem, operating system or version.

Easily scale the archive As the media used to transport data, and to archive it are one and the same, LTFS formatted tapes canbe easily imported into an LTFS compatible archive. Simply read the tape index and add the file metadatato an archive manager’s catalogue. There’s no need to transfer or copy the data to something else.

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HP LTFS solutionsUtilising HP LTFS functionality, HP StoreOpen reduces complexity in tape-based data management, while simplifying file sharing and dramatically improving file access times across Linux, Mac and now Windows platforms.

Whether using a single tape drive, or a complete tape library solution, the HP StoreOpen technology utilises HP LTFS with LTO-5 drives to enable easy file access, reliable long-term archive retrieval, and simpler transport between systems.

• HP StoreOpen for standalone tape drives: provides an intuitive GUI that steps the user through the process of using tape in a similar way to disk, from tape drive identification to OS mounting. Once mounted, the tape volume is listed in the same way as other devices as shown in the screenshots above.

• HP StoreOpen Automation for tape libraries: The HP StoreOpen Automation free application extends the LTFS functionality by presenting a tape library and its tape cartridges as a collection of folders for easy data access and management. All media movement is handled automatically by the application. Index data is cached for rapid access and tapes are loaded as needed to access data. It also allows tape-to-tape operations when more than one tape drive is present – that is, you can copy or move files from one tape to another using drag-and-drop.

Already supported on Linux and Apple Mac platforms, HP StoreOpen will soon be supported on Microsoft Windows.

HP LTFS in actionHP partners in the media and entertainment market space are taking advantage of the increasing demand for economical digital storage, and the growing buzz around LTO-5 with LTFS, to announce a raft of new products and solutions. Here are some of the exciting ways in which HP LTFS is being put to work in solutions that improve media workflows.

StorageDNA releases DNA Evolution 2.0 for improved media asset management

DNA Evolution™ is StorageDNA’s flagship workflow product, for LTFS LTO-5 archive and retrieval. In response to feedback from their customers, version 2.0 includes significant feature enhancements for improved media asset management, broadcast integration, digital camera masters and Thunderbolt™ support for PCIe expansion devices. In addition, the new release offers improved workflows with multi-target archiving to LTFS LTO-5 and disc, as well as user- definable templates and distribution formats for LTFS LTO-5 ‘with the touch of a button’. DNA Evolution 2.0 will be available in the second quarter of 2012 with a free upgrade for existing customers with a support contract.

TOLISGroupbringaffordablebackupandarchivetotheApple OS X space

Working in partnership with HP, ATTO Technology and Sonnet Tech, TOLIS Group is bringing affordable complete LTO-4 and LTO-5 Thunderbolt solutions to the Apple OS X space. The bundled solutions include all required hardware and software and will allow users of Apple’s Thunderbolt-enabled laptops and workstations to access LTO tape technology directly for archival and backup operations. Additionally, a standard BRU PE 3.0 inclusion is an LTFS graphical interface that allows users to manage LTFS functions easily, without the need to enter numerous characters into a command line.

Both standalone and library solutions supported by their BRU Producer’s Edition (BRU PE) and BRU Server solutions are immediately available.

Cache-A demonstrates award winning LTFS products

One of the first companies to demonstrate LTO-5 with LTFS in a media and entertainment archive appliance, Cache-A has subsequently deployed the technology with HBO, Safeway and Offhollywood. All of the Cache-A LTO-5 based products include enhanced LTFS capability, including the company’s flagship product and award-winning Pro-Cache5 which won the prestigious Creative COW Blue Ribbon award for best archival product at NAB 2011. The Pro- Cache5 was demonstrated at NAB 2012 alongside the high-performance Power-Cache and the quiet, desktop Prime-Cache5.

According to Broadcast News, leading Los Angeles (LA) post houses are increasingly choosing LTO-5 Ultrium based archive appliances, such as those from Cache-A, to preserve and protect the massive amounts of data they generate daily. Digital media professionals are using these appliances to create source masters in acquisition workflows. At the same time, they get the benefit of long-term archival storage that delivers fast, easy access to their content assets at every stage of production and post production.

Some of the LA post houses now employing this approach include All Media Post (for Castle Rock, DreamWorks, Miramax, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros.), Lussier (for ABC, Fox, NBC, Sony, TBS), Nomad Editing (for Apple, Gillette, Pepsi, TD Bank, Visa), and The Post Group (for The Amazing Race, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, House M.D., Miami Medical, Numb3rs).

Delivering an archival solution for Japanese television

In Japan as in other parts of the world, the Fuji Television Network Corporation was seeking ways to manage the archival of high volumes of video footage and computer graphics production. The network was particularly focused on ensuring that non-IT staff – including camera and production engineers – would be able to easily archive their own work.

HP LTO-5 Ultrium with LTFS proved to be the ideal solution, delivering ease of use and simple file handling. It also provides the network with high capacity storage with a low cost per gigabyte.

Under the new system, the Fuji TV graphic designers are able to perform backup and restore operations themselves, dragging and dropping directly to a tape from a file server or vice versa. Fuji TV has made the system even easier by customising user icons on the desktop, making it possible for anyone to mount, un-mount, and format a tape cartridge without the need for special training. By copying files directly to the tape drive, designers are able to perform archiving operations on their own, freeing system engineers from the burden of archiving.

“ When archiving or retrieving data, the users aren’t conscious of the tape drive at all. This is the biggest change. I think the designers also feel a little less stress too. I’ve heard them say that things have become more convenient and easier,” Yosuke Nakayama, computer graphics system engineer, Fuji TV.

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Fotokem–improvingpostproductionworkflow, archive and costs

FotoKem is a large film lab and post production company with facilities based in Burbank, Hollywood, Santa Monica, and San Francisco California. The company handles all kinds of post production work, including digital intermediates (DI), home video mastering and restoration, TV finishing, audio, dubbing, file encoding and much more.

One of Fotokem’s reality TV customers needed to recycle HDCAM-SR and XDCAM disks as new ones were not available. Using LTO-5 Ultrium with LTFS, FotoKem was able to create systems to back up the data, create the database, perform checksum data, and then back up to LTO-5 with LTFS as follows:

• Read the files from XDCAM disks using a Mac system.

• Copy the files onto a Linux server.

• Make a database of file information.

• Check for data integrity with the standard MD5 checksum algorithm, and track writing onto tape – there were no issues found with checksums.

• Create two copies of the LTO-5 tape, one for local use, and one for offsite disaster recovery purposes.

• Used LTO-5 with extended attributes such as tape ‘tape fullness’ and the universal unique identifier code (UUID).

This approach resulted in a number of benefits, including:

Save money and storage space – with the ability to store 100 XDCAM disks on one LTO-5 tape. This solution also enables reuse of the more expensive XDCAM disks.

Enhance reliability and data protection – no checksum issues, improves essence protection, inexpensive to prepare two copies of the LTO Ultrium tapes (keep one copy offsite).

Easy to use, script and support – with open tools, and much easier to use than scripted TAR solutions.

DigitalFilm Tree accelerates Hollywood’s transition to LTO-5 with LTFS

DigitalFilm Tree is a post-production, consulting, creative and software development company specialising in the design of post-production workflows for the media and entertainment industry. Based in Hollywood, California, DigitalFilm Tree clients include television and motion picture studios, independent film makers and IT organisations. Popular films and television shows worked on by the company include Cold Mountain, Dinosaur Train, Napoleon Dynamite, NCIS: LA, Scrubs, and Where the Wild Things Are.

In 2011, DigitalFilm Tree was faced with a significant challenge; the Japanese Tsunami had resulted in a massive shortage of Sony HDCAM-SR tape media, the industry’s preferred master recording medium. Prior to the shortages, HDCAM-SR was the predominant media for acquiring and delivering finished product to clients, as well as the standard archiving medium for finished movies and television programs. Like other post production companies, DigitalFilm Tree was forced to look for alternatives.

After conducting side-by-side comparisons with several different solutions, DigitalFilm Tree chose the HP LTO-5 tape drives with LTFS for their reliability, ease-of-use and excellent price versus performance. The business deployed six HP LTO-5 tape drives with HP LTFS and a directly attached HP tape library, with results shown in the table above.

Ramy Katrib, chief executive officer, DigitalFilm Tree explains:

“HP LTO-5 with LTFS technology is a critical breakthrough and was a key development to preventing one of the biggest archiving challenges in Hollywood history. LTO-5 with LTFS has become a widely adopted alternative to SR-tape for archiving and is here to stay for the foreseeable future. The technology has performed incredibly well. The world has changed and some people are missing the opportunities that go with that change.”

Objective and approach IT improvements Business outcomes

• Move to ‘video tapeless’ workflow in wake of HDCAM-SR tape shortages.

• Deployment of HP LTO-5/LTFS to backup all camera raw files (NEGATIVE) and final online finishing assets.

• Simple backup and archive process due to self-describing LTO tapes with no application dependencies.

• Accelerating workflows with high capacity and fast storage.

• Works seamlessly on multiple platforms within existing storage infrastructure, supporting post production workflows.

• Lowers tape media costs by $120,000 per season (compared to SR tape).

• Cuts tape hardware costs from $100,000 (SR deck) to $4,000 (LTO drive).

• Supports both immediate on-set backup and near- set processing, satisfying demanding deadlines.

• Preserves studios most valuable assets.

DEEPSEACHALLENGE:LTO-5withLTFSenablesfilming of the deepest place on earth

StorageDNA has recently announced that DNA Evolution™ was selected as the archive workflow solution for Digital Pictures’ customised RANGER Data Cart for the National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence, James Cameron’s DEEPSEA CHALLENGE. Digital Pictures chose the LTFS LTO-5 backup solution for this challenging archive and retrieval project based on their experience with DNA Evolution. The performance and speed of the DNA Evolution gave them the confidence to put two systems on a ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with Cameron for approximately three months.

The DEEPSEA CHALLENGE project is a historic solo dive to the deepest place on earth, the Mariana Trench, and the RANGER Data Cart is designed to manage the demands of a production in a mobile or remote location. By empowering the cart with DNA Evolution, Digital Pictures gives their clients a fast tapeless pipeline, combining dailies and post. The customised mobile cart for Cameron’s DEEPSEA CHALLENGE includes two DNA Evolution systems running in parallel, each with dual LTO-5 drives, allowing the production team to run four archives simultaneously. As a result, they are able to process massive amounts of data at impressive speeds; archiving at speeds of over 500 MB per second.

ConclusionThe media and entertainment industry is increasingly aware that LTO-5 Ultrium with LTFS can deliver a solution to the expense and complexity involved in today’s digital media asset retention. Together with its technology partners within the industry, HP is developing and launching a range of hardware and software applications that make the most of HP StoreOpen, LTFS and LTO-5 technology to deliver reliable, inexpensive, and easy to use archiving solutions. With rapid take-up by production houses large and small, an industry is rapidly being transformed.

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For full tape media specs, visit www.hptapecompat.com For specifications of all Ultrium media products, please go to: http://www.hp.com/go/storagemediaFor more about HP LTO tape drives and tape automation, visit www.hp.com/go/tape For more about HP LTFS technology, visit www.hp.com/go/ltfs

© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

4AA4-2023EEE May 2012

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