New Capabilities for Front Porch Digital DIVArchive V7.0 2

Front Porch Digital announced DIVArchive V7.0 with new features and capabilities that render the content storage management (CSM) solution a fit for a number of applications.

In film production and post-production, for example, DIVArchive V7.0 propels the industry forward by enabling streamlined, automated DPX workflows and video-like operations on film-carried content.

DIVArchive V7.0 implements the new open Archive eXchange Format (AXF) technology developed by Front Porch Digital to protect, preserve, and facilitate the exchange of content among storage systems. This new open AXF implementation represents a step toward replacing outmoded legacy formats like TAR with an open and storage-agnostic approach ensuring long-term accessibility to valuable content. In support of the company’s open approach to technology and as a founding member of the SMPTE AXF initiative back in 2006, Front Porch Digital is committed to contributing their work back to the SMPTE and the community in hopes of accelerating the standardization of this advancement.

"Today’s enhancements to the DIVArchive CSM solution extend its applicability to media operations of every kind – broadcasters, educational and heritage institutions, the film industry, and government entities," said Mike Knaisch, president and CEO of Front Porch Digital. "With its unique ability to interconnect every element of operations from archive to production to transmission, DIVArchive V7.0 becomes the highly effective foundation on which to base cost-effective, seamless file-based workflows. Now, for the widest variety of users, a single investment in a flexible, scalable CSM solution yields a protected, transparent, centralized repository for the world’s most valuable content – their own."

DIVArchive is a software-based middleware solution that interfaces via 1/10G Ethernet and 4/8G Fibre Channel networks to connect diverse media infrastructures with NAS, SAN, and data tape storage systems. At film production studios, post-production facilities, and film archives, DIVArchive V7.0 supports complex DPX packages with as many as 1 million individual files per DIVArchive object; frame and path-based partial-restore operations; and desktop browsing of DCP and IMF-formatted files.

The latest release also marks a re-architecture of the DIVArchvie database, modernizing it and making it capable of supporting the girth and growth of the largest film studio, archive, or other media operation. To ensure that storage management capabilities keep pace with the growth of storage volume – DIVArchive V7.0 supports Oracle T10000C tape drives with 5 TB of native data-tape capacity and 240 MBps throughput. The new release serves enterprises with multiple locations by incorporating connectivity to as many as four additional, discrete DIVArchive facilities via integrated DIVAnet, to enable advanced, rules-based content distribution for disaster recovery or other purposes.

DIVArchive V7.0 looks different – featuring a new graphical user interface for either Windows or Mac desktops, with a dashboard that provides at-a-glance monitoring of trend and resource utilization, among other system operations. To enable third-party control, DIVArchive V7.0 also adds new Webservices (WS and RESTful) and Java interfaces.

Finally, the company has further broadened the appeal of its product by enhancing DIVArchive to support generic file system (IT-centric) data archiving, enabling data stored in Windows, Mac, and Unix-based computers to be managed within the CSM environment along with video and film-derived files.

Front Porch Digital showcased DIVArchive V7.0, part of its DIVASolutions line of products that migrate, manage, and monetize media content, at the 2011 NAB Show.

This last incarnation of DIVArchive is set for release to the marketplace later this year.