Post Magazine

igital storage is a key technology for media and entertainment. It is where we capture content, where we access it for editing, where we ingest and play out media and where we preserve it for future use. With the widespread changes in the media and entertainment industry to support IP workflows, 4K and eventually 8K con- tent, high dynamic range and 360-degree video, the industry will require larger quantities of ever faster performance as well as lower-cost digital storage. Data capacity and communication speed increas- es, changing form factors, lowered product prices are key components in the continued growth and development of entertainment. Key milestones for future workflows will support 8K video at the Korean and Japanese Olympics and multi-camera VR video workflows. Information used in this article has been extracted from the 2017 Digital Storage for Media and Entertain- ment Report published by Coughlin Associates (www. tomcoughlin.com). Note that the 2018 industry storage survey is now open for M&E professionals at: https://www.survey- monkey.com/r/NXRN5SL. MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT TRENDS Media and entertainment professionals are becoming more comfortable with using cloud storage for vari- ous parts of their workflow and some major studios and broadcasters are moving some of their content into the cloud. In particular, collaborative workflows, rendering and archiving are applications that are attractive for using cloud storage and services. Coughlin Associates has conducted a survey of storage used by media and industry professionals for several years. One of the questions was whether participants used cloud-based storage for editing and post production. In 2017, 41.9 percent of re- sponding participants said "yes" and out of those respondents, 43.7 percent said that they had 1 TB or more storage capacity in the cloud. The introduction of digital technology has made digital content capture and production less expen- sive and more efficient. This has led to directors capturing more content since there is little addition- al cost. Figure 1 shows the hours of content shot FIGURE 1: CONTENT SHOT FOR AN HOUR OF COMPLETED WORK 11-50 hours 15% 2-5 hours 51% 6-10 hours 24% 51-100 hours 4% >100 hours 3% 1 hour 3% 1 STORAGE SOLUTIONS MARCH 2018 D A LOOK AT THE M&E STORAGE INDUSTRY TODAY AND IN THE 2020'S BY TOM COUGHLIN STORAGE SOLUTIONS

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