Harris Debuts Nexio Volt Video Server

Harris Corporation is adding product introductions to its NEXIO video server portfolio, designed to help broadcasters accelerate time-to-air, reduce costs and streamline workflows in both playout and production environments.

Powerful, Space-Saving Integrated Storage Server
IBC2010 marked the European debut of NEXIO Volt, a small form-factor baseband video server equipped with 2TB of RAID 3-protected integrated media storage. Offering support for up to four mixed SD/HD or SD-only baseband channels in a 1RU package, the NEXIO Volt integrates into environments where space is at a premium. It reduces power consumption and lowers operating costs – without sacrificing functionality or flexibility.

NEXIO Volt is ideal for applications including disaster recovery, edge server, on-air cache, production playout and ingest-to-archive. Built on the same technology as the award-winning NEXIO AMP server, NEXIO Volt offers software-enabled license keying that allows customers to pay for only the channels and resolutions they need, and easily upgrade to more channels or HD at anytime. A simple software reconfiguration enables NEXIO Volt to attach to NEXIO shared storage as system requirements increase.

High-Performance, True Shared Storage
Harris introduced NEXIO Farad, a high-performance online storage system ideal for large-scale ingest, editing and playout for production, sports, news and live-event applications. Customers in today’s production environments face escalating storage and bandwidth requirements due to higher data rate codecs, more channels, more concurrent editing seats, additional camera feeds, 3 Gb/s and the overall volume of content. To address these challenges, NEXIO Farad delivers the highest levels of bandwidth and storage capacity to support even the most demanding multiplatform media delivery workflows.

NEXIO Farad is designed for customers requiring more than 10,000 Mb/s bandwidth and more than 58 TB storage capacity. NEXIO Farad makes building a storage system that meets individual needs simple, thanks to its scale-out architecture, which allows bandwidth and capacity to be accommodated independently of each other. Customers can achieve the system design they need, without compromising on performance, channel count, file-based I/O or their preference of compression technology.

Compatibility with NEXIO AMP and Volt servers, Velocity editors, Apple Final Cut Pro and an extensive range of media appliances are all assured for best-in-class performance. The system is equipped with inherent RAID-601 storage protection to maintain system performance and resilience, and provide complete redundancy and backup without degrading system performance. Coupled with unattended, fully automatic drive rebuilds and a system monitoring and notifications system, NEXIO Farad represents the state of the art for high-performance, online, true shared storage.

Advanced Codec Support
To help streamline workflows in today’s multiformat environments, Harris introduced ingest and playout support for two new codecs in its NEXIO platform: for playout, the H.264 video compression standard; and for production, the popular Avid DNxHD ‘mastering’ format for post-editing. Native playout support in NEXIO AMP and Volt servers means that no transcoder is required to handle H.264 or DNxHD; in many competing products, customers would have to buy additional hardware to support these codecs. Unique to NEXIO, all supported codecs can be played back-to-back in any order with all other supported codecs. As the new codecs are implemented in software, they are turned on via a simple software license key.

Fast-Turnaround Production Platform
Also making its European debut is the Harris Production Playout Center (PPC), an ingest, preparation and playout system designed to control NEXIO server channels in fast-turnaround production environments from scripted news, to sports arenas, to on-the-fly live productions. From a single 1RU platform, PPC controls up to 16 NEXIO channels, as well as up to eight routers. Onboard media preparation tools and built-in Fast-Cue technology enable users to get material on air in record time. PPC offers a number of benefits over other available systems, including a smaller form factor; access to true shared storage and on-SAN edit-in-place; and software-only modules that allow for cost-effective system scaling.

‘Citizen Journalist’ Applications
With the introduction of the Newsfish, Harris is enabling broadcasters to implement cost-cutting business models wherever a citizen is on-site capturing the action. Newsfish is an Apple iPhone app that allows iPhone users to capture video and send it to designated catch servers. Newsrooms receive fast content that is verifiable by GPS location and call-back phone number, and is fully searchable using the Harris Invenio asset management system. NEXIO servers manage the non-broadcast resolution of the iPhone material and ready it for broadcast via Velocity editors – taking the guesswork out of creating SD and HD broadcast content from cell phone footage.