The end-user’s first decision will normally concern which editing package to buy, as this component dictates the primary creative and operational parameters for the system. Issues such as which digital video standard will be applied, as well as the actual editing, graphics and effects functions offered, will have a direct influence on the broadcast customer’s decision.  A major issue is that of training operating staff, so a non-linear editing system that offers immediate functionality and rapid learning curve for editors is vital.

Audio, and especially video editing, is a storage intensive application, therefore the choice of a hardware platform and storage solution will be the next priority for the end-user. The availability of appropriate storage solutions – at the right price – will usually have a deciding influence on the choice of the workstation and associated hardware.

Because of such factors, it is rare that a broadcast user will design a production facility on the basis of a chosen workstation and storage supplier.

With the advent of Windows NT, and more recently, Windows 2000, PC based workstations are finally achieving performance and reliability which can match the dedicated operating systems such as Silicon Graphics and Mac – systems which until recently were the preferred choice for creative media professionals. The W2K/PC solutions available today offer substantial savings on hardware and an increasing choice of software applications.

But to harvest the benefits of this technology and integrate such systems into broadcast environments demands that the end-user understands the many issues related the design of high-end workstations with mass storage devices.

Today’s PC hardware market is divided between two technological philosophies – the “clone” components, which can be inexpensively combined by the user at will, and the brand-name platforms, the components of which are based on stringent compatibility testing and compliance with standards dictated by the manufacturer of the operating system. Compliance and compatibility is a trade-off between total freedom of choice and the confidence that the chosen components will function properly when installed together in a given system.

For the user of Windows based applications, the advent of Windows2000 implies that it is the Microsoft compatibility standard – the so-called WHQL certification - that has become the benchmark for compatibility. Whilst of overriding benefit to the majority of users, the introduction of WHQL certification brings certain new problems to the broadcast television environment, in which currently available hardware and software products, previously developed for earlier Windows operating systems, now face new compatibility issues.

That a given hardware or software product is not fully compliant with the WHQL standards, does not necessarily imply that the product is sub-standard. It merely implies that the manufacturer of the product may have chose to develop it in ways which differ from Microsoft Corporation’s perception, of how hardware or applications should work with their operating system.

Media applications such as video editing have traditionally been limited by available hardware resources, processing capacity or available storage, so it is no coincidence, that manufacturers of such systems have pushed the available technology to its limits, to achieve better and more competitive products.

For the major brand-name computer manufacturers – including Dell computers – the adoption of standards for compliance and compatibility is an essential aspect of their ability to sell reliable systems. But it is precisely due to such manufacturers strict adherence to these standards, that many non-linear editing systems are sold without a workstation platform – the choice of such being left to the regional distributor or end-user – which usually implies the use of a clone based workstation.

In the first decade of non-linear editing, the end-user had to accept a host of configuration and compatibility issues, which were usually outweighed by the immediate technical, economic and creative advantages of migrating to digital post-production technology. But as non-linear editing becomes the industry standard, many broadcast professional have come to recognise the shortcomings associated with running a post-production facility comprising several hundred thousands of dollars worth of broadcast hardware, which relies solely on a thousand dollar clone workstation for its functionality.

Through the pioneer manufacturers such as Marconi, Sony, Tektronix and Ampex, the broadcast industry has a long established tradition for excellent documentation, on-site service and after-sales support – none of which is available for clone based products. Paradoxically, as the industry becomes more dependent on computer technology, the level of technical expertise in the individual production environments is reduced, thus increasing the need for external service and support expertise – a requirement which implies the need for a brand-name workstation manufacturer.

In the spring of 2000, Channel 6 Television started on exactly this route, choosing the Silver. non-linear editing system manufactured by FAST Multimedia in Germany. In terms of technical innovation, operational simplicity, data integrity and cost-of-ownership, the FAST range of digital editing products are without doubt amongst the best available world-wide. FAST’s open architecture and regular product updates are attractive incentives for the end user, and the quality of the edited product is on a par with anything produced on any competitive NLE system.

Silver. was originally developed for Windows NT 4.0  Within a few months of commissioning our system, we concluded that the regionally supplied clone workstation and storage solution was both inadequate for the job and lacking in quality and service support. We wanted a level of manufacturing quality and service expertise for our workstation, which would be comparable to that which we were accustomed to with our broadcast video equipment.

In surveying our options, we discovered that few – if any – computer manufacturers had addressed this growing market. We were looking for a high-end workstation with powerful processing and graphics capabilities, combined with the reliability and design quality associated with mass storage servers.

 It was a natural assumption that the quality we needed lay in server technology – though we soon realised, that few servers offered the processing and graphics capability of a high end workstation, and that workstations in general were approaching and exceeding the speed and performance characteristics of servers. However, there were few workstations, which were capable of handling mass storage on the scale that we envisaged – 1 terabyte in RAID5.

With limited economic resources and a heavy production schedule, which demanded immediate solutions, we contacted Dell, whose staff immediately recognised that the solution to our requirements would need to be a combination of their workstation and server products.

The first step was to establish the non-linear editing system on a Dell Precision 620 workstation using a 500GB Power Vault storage array configured in RAID5.

At the time this configuration was set up, Windows 2000 had come onto the market, and we could see a number of advantages of migration to Windows2000, providing that the FAST silver. hardware and software would work on the new operating system. FAST were in the process of developing their Windows2000 software upgrade, and as this was not yet available, we had to rely on Windows Service Pack 2 to handle the original NT4.0 based silver. software.

It was at this stage that we encountered the first issues relating to WHQL compliance. Our silver. NLE codec is a PCI device which uses a 32-bit slot, and which requires all four IRQ channels on the PCI bus in such a way, that the card uses 4 hardware IRQ’s, which, ideally, should not be shared with other devices.

Many NLE systems require a large number of dedicated IRQs, making the parallel integration of NLE hardware and other useful devices such as network adapters, audio devices and intelligent SCSI controllers on a typical PCI motherboard difficult, and in some cases, impossible. In earlier pre-plug and play Windows systems, such configuration could sometimes be accomplished with hardware jumpers, but with the release of Windows2000, which effectively assumes control of motherboard BIOS settings and allocates IRQ’s according to Microsoft standards, user-definable IRQs have become a thing of the past. Future hardware and software releases from FAST Multimedia and other NLE manufacturers will surely address this problem, but we were in need of an immediate solution using currently available NLE hardware.

The professional broadcast technician is accustomed to systems suppliers being able to solve such configuration problems. When the system is a marriage of hardware and software from several suppliers, each working to different industry standards, the situation may prove impossible – or at least time-consuming and expensive to resolve for the end-user.

Given such a scenario, many computer manufacturers would diagnose a third-party hardware incompatibility and retreat from the issue, leaving the user without hope of resolving the issue. Dell quickly adopted a more positive approach, and assigned specialist staff to study the issues and recommend a solution. Dell engineers from Ireland and Sweden visited our studios in Denmark and performed, together with our engineering staff, a series of tests. Further tests were conducted on duplicate systems at Dell’s design facility in Texas and at their manufacturing facility in Ireland.

The test results indicated that a completely stable configuration would require 4 dedicated IRQ channels for the NLE card. With Windows2000 taking control of IRQ allocation, this would be almost impossible to accomplish without some element of IRQ sharing. Dell had just released a new workstation – the Precision 530 – which is unique amongst workstations in that it has eight IRQ channels and a PCI device bus structure which enables the installation of the FAST silver. card without the card sharing IRQ channels with other system devices.

To gain the benefits of the Precision 530’s unique IRQ system, as well as the superior processing power of its 2 x 1.7GHz Pentium 4 Xeon processors, we decided to migrate to the 530. At the same time, we decided to upgrade the PERC2/DC RAID controller with the new 64bit PCI PERC3/DC controller, which like its predecessor would be fitted with 128MB cache RAM. At the same time, our original Power Vault was supplemented with an identical unit, bringing the media storage capacity up to 1 terabyte.

The remaining issues were mainly mechanical in nature. In the broadcast television environment, almost all equipment must be 19” rack-mountable to enable tidy physical integration with other studio equipment. Finding a 19” rack-mountable brand-name workstation is almost impossible – Dell’s Precision series for example are based on mini-tower cabinets, which do not lend themselves easily to rack mounting. This is yet another reason why many NLE manufacturers and system integrators employ clone platforms, as there are many generic 19” cabinets available.

The rack-mount issue is another example of the way in which the broadcast workstation market straddles the divide between traditional server and workstation product ranges. Server products are almost always rack-mountable, and due to the critical nature of server applications, servers are also usually furnished with redundant power supplies and cooling devices – another plus in the broadcast environment.

With the help of Dell, we have since re-housed the Precision 530 workstation components in a Dell 6400 Power Edge server chassis. The resulting hybrid is an extremely powerful high-end workstation, with all the electrical and mechanical advantages of a high-end server, fully integrated with mass storage devices that offer superior data security and operational reliability. SCSI media drives in many clone cabinets operate at temperatures approaching, or in some cases exceeding the manufacturer’s recommended maximum temperatures. In contrast, the Dell Power Vault is so well designed, that the drives run with a typical working temperature of between 19°C and 25°C – well below the ambient temperature of the studio environment and well within the drive manufacturer’s specification. For large capacity high-speed media drives, operating temperature is the greatest factor influencing drive reliability and service-life.

Several decades ago, the broadcast engineering marketplace was dominated by few state- or commercially- owned networks, whose traditional technological approach and culture was similar to that of the military, avionics and telecommunications industries, in which the customer could specify the exact product configuration in detail. Deregulation and technological progress has ensured that such days are over, but the price for the end user – including smaller broadcast production houses such as Channel 6 Television – is a growing dependence on the standard products which are available from equipment manufacturers. In developing markets, such as the high-end mass-storage workstation market, the level of choice will always be limited. That a small company such as ours, has successfully developed a systems solution, is primarily due to the ability of Dell to support its customers in the pursuit of better systems.

The Dell approach is a direct challenge to prevailing market trends, according to which the end-user is often lost in the void between computer manufacturer and third-party hardware and software component suppliers. This approach demonstrates that at least one major computer manufacturer has recognised the responsibility to address specialist markets with the requisite level of flexibility and specialist knowledge, and to enter into a direct dialogue with the end-user to that end.

All those involved in this project – both Dell’s and Channel 6 Television’s engineering staff – have learnt more about the issues involved than is necessary to solve the immediate problem. Such is the nature of good systems development. From an initial sluggish system that had difficulty delivering the required data access, we have arrived at a solution with sufficient resource overhead to allow expansion in the future.

The immediate opportunities for expansion are the integration of a rack-optimised server to handle the mass storage, connected to the existing and additional workstations via a Gigabit network, so that additional workstations may be established at a far lower capital cost, utilising common media storage. For a broadcast production house this implies the ability to equip several edit suites, studio control rooms and sound recording studios with a common user interface, a common storage system and file format standard, and a high level of operational redundancy. Dedicated broadcast systems manufacturers worldwide have invested huge resources in the pursuit of these goals, many never achieving the quality and reliability which Dell have been able to offer on this project.

It is interesting that the solution that we finally arrived at, could be supplied using standard existing products and components. The only innovative aspect of the project was that of combining products from separate product ranges and support departments, which traditionally have been viewed as distinct areas of technology. This project offers Dell many lessons, which hopefully will lay the foundation for further progress in this exciting marketplace.
 

Adrian Redmond
Head-of-Production, Channel 6 Television Denmark
August 2001