Ocarina Adds Flash Video and MPEG2 De-Dupe

Ocarina Networks expanded the number of file types it can reduce to more than 900, to include support for Flash video for Internet distribution, and MPEG2 for broadcast workflows.

Michael Davis, senior director of marketing at Ocarina, will be speaking about the company’s video capabilities at the 2010 NAB show in partners’ BlueArc and Isilon booths in the Las Vegas Convention Center April 12-15.

Ocarina has developed a platform for data optimization, providing reliability, scalability, and a complete array of advanced data-reduction algorithms in a fully integrated solution. Ocarina’s ECOsystem includes over 100 algorithms that have proven effective for more than 900 file types, including ones that had been considered previously uncompressible. Ocarina’s fully lossless optimization technology has already gained widespread acceptance as an online archival solution in film production studios including Starz, Rainmaker Entertainment, and ZOIC, Inc.

Now Ocarina has enhanced its Native Format Optimization (NFO) workflow to support Internet video workflows. The NFO workflow introduces non-visible compression to image and video files, allowing customers to capture data-reduction benefits in storage, bandwidth, and web-site responsiveness. Ocarina’s addition of Adobe Flash video formats to the NFO workflow ensures the best possible video compression of various file types (FLV, SWF, F4V) and data formats (Spark, VP6, h.264) while preserving original image quality. Ocarina has also added lossless compression support for MPEG2 video in broadcast video archives.

Ocarina’s NFO workflow delivers the best possible video compression while preserving image quality as well as the native encoding format. By reducing file size across large video repositories, media companies are able to keep files online longer, reduce storage capital and operating costs, reduce the cost of distribution including CDN and ISP bandwidth fees, and reduce the page-load times for video-intensive web sites, and improve audience penetration into marginal broadband markets.

"Ocarina NFO is the only enterprise-class data reduction product that is effective on video content. This is content that doesn’t present redundancies for a dedupe algorithm, and generic compression algorithms such as LZW really add no benefit," said Davis. "What’s different about our NFO compression is that we’re really getting into the video encoding to align it with what the human eye can perceive. Our post processing algorithms will seek out opportunities for spatial optimization, inter-frame optimization, better motion compensation, improved bit-rate control, quality normalization and hot-spot detection. Our video-aware optimization allows us to deliver up to 40% or more savings where traditional de-duplication technologies deliver no benefit."

Ocarina’s new video NFO workflow appeals to media companies concerned with bandwidth costs including social networks, user-generated content sites, video advertisers, news outlets, and other ad-supported video sites.

Ocarina’s ECOsystem is deployed as an appliance co-processor that works with existing storage systems, and uses a policy-based interface to align data-reduction with application workflows. ECOsystem enhances tiered-storage architectures by multiplying available storage in secondary storage tiers.

Comments

There is a lot of activity around de-dupe being currently a technology that end users are demanding, not only to reduce their storage capacity but also their bandwidth to transfer data, as both usage can be done with the same technology.

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Just today, we noted five interesting company's announcements, including this one (see other press releases):

Ocarina is adding an impressive technology: the possibility to de-dupe data already compressed, and with relatively good results. When you ask a vendor about the product's de-dupe ratio, he almost always answers:" It depends on the data". The main problem concerns files that have been compressed generating poor or no storage reduction at all. Ocarina - probably the best start-up to be acquired in de-dupe but the price could be high - has worked on the subject. The firm doesn't use the usual way of its competitors that have just one algorithm for all kinds of data. It develops a lot of them (more than one hundred) for each kind of file types and integrated them into its appliances. And the company just announced new algorithms for Adobe Flash video and MPEG-2 files. Of course the saving here is lower - only up to 40% according to the company -, but it's better than nothing. Ocarina is also one of the few actors with de-dupe for primary storage.

Like Ocarina or Riverbed, EMC Data Domain offers de-dupe based on appliances, but at the highest level and prices, and continues today to enhance once more the performances of its engines for large enterprises. The new DD880 now supports 7.1PB of backup storage, up to 180 concurrent backup jobs for up to 180 remote offices! And for higher speed, the appliance can be configured in disk arrays with new multi-controller extension reaching throughput up to 12.8TP per hour, but the RAIDs work currently only with Symantec NetBackup and Backup Exec through backup server-based OpenStorage plug-in software, only later with NetWorker from parent company. Data Domain also now offers the possibilities to encrypt data at rest on de-dupe storage and to send multiple copies of de-dupe data to different DR sites.

Much smaller company AppAssure, a start-up founded in 2006 by former storage veterans of Veritas and Precise, has de-dupe based on software - which is slower but less costly. What's interesting here is the use of de-dupe AND compression for better results.

Last today's announcement in de-dupe came from Barracuda Networks that integrates it directly into a (24TB) backup server, and with the possibility to get offsite backup storage in the cloud. Remember that Barracuda entered into storage by acquiring Yosemite Technologies last year.