Industry Gets Serious About 4K Workflows at NAB

Last year at NAB we talked about 4K, this year we're making it work. Studio Daily reports on how lower cost shared storage solutions, cloud archiving and high speed conectivity are combining to make 4K workflows a reality.

Studio Daily by Bryant Frazer Storage and networking were hot topics at NAB, as content creators who had successfully shrugged off questions about 4K workflow in previous years suddenly found themselves facing real demand for a 4K-capable pipeline. High-capacity, high-bandwidth storage solutions were being tweaked and targeted to become more affordable to a broader range of users, and workflow was extended to become as efficient as possible during every step of the process, from ingest to archiving. Entry-level collaborative storage systems making their debut at NAB 2015 included the Avid ISIS | 1000, aimed at smaller video facilities such as independent studios, corporate media departments, and houses of worship. In a blog post, Avid benchmarked the new ISIS for delivery of five streams of Red 5K with 8:1 compression, two streams of Apple ProRes 422 HQ or Sony F55 raw in 4K, 30 streams of Avid DNxHR LB (offline quality) or three streams of DNxHR 444 (finishing quality) in 4K. A 20 TB system starts at $18,000 and is expected to ship in the third quarter. read more...