Front Porch bets on AXF as the file format of the future

Front Porch Digital has announced at NAB that its DIVArchive V7.0 will mark the debut of the new AXF (Archive eXchange Format), an open digital storage format designed to revolutionize interoperability between systems, making the content processing flows of the future safer, more accurate and more efficient than ever.

Being the content and the technological storage agnostic, the new AXF format, for which, as has been evident at NAB 2011, it is strongly betting Front Porch, (Booth N5806) offers the world's most open, flexible, dynamic and protected mechanism for archiving, preserving and sharing files.

As a founding member of the SMPTE AXF committee in 2006, Front Porch Digital is strongly committed to working on open standards. In fact, the company will once again make its AXF designs available to the SMPTE committee to achieve the goal of standardizing the AXF.

Front Porch Digital has based AXF on an agnostic encapsulation approach for files and stored audiovisual content that abstracts away from file systems, operating systems, and storage technologies making the format truly open. The AXF object contains any type, any number, and any size of file along with structured or unstructured metadata, source and verification information, full indexing structures, and more, all in a single, fully self-describing encapsulated package. Since the AXF object itself contains a complete file system, all the complexities and limitations of underlying storage technologies, operating systems, and file systems are avoided and the same AXF object can exist on a current and future data tape, spinning disk, flash, optical device, or other storage technologies.

AXF's scalable ability to contain any number of component files of any size is a key advantage over the limitations of both older container formats and modern file and operating systems. AXF is a truly IT-centric implementation, allowing the encapsulation of any type of file, not only audiovisual elements but including database files, Microsoft Word® documents and image files. AXF offers complete support for the well-known OAIS (Open Archival Information System) model as well as extraordinary preservation features such as the origin of both objects and audiovisual content, inherent GUID/UMID support, geo-location marking, error detection down to the file/structure level, and data validity checking. Additionally, because AXF does not use current tape storage capabilities, such as partitioning, it works with both legacy and cutting-edge storage technologies, such as IBM and HP LTO-5, as well as Oracle's T10000C.

DIVArchive V7.0 represents a significant advancement with new properties and capabilities resulting in the world's most successful content storage management (CSM) solution and an ideal tool for a growing number of applications. In film production and post-production, for example, DIVArchive V7.0 drives the industry by enabling streamlined and automated DPX processing pipelines and video-like operations on film content.

COLUMN Solo

Front Proch Digital will take advantage of the occasion of the audiovisual industry's biggest and best forum, NAB 2011, to debut its exclusive SAMMAsolo HD migration solution, generated in the company's newly patented Samma video migration process. Visitors to Front Proch Digital's booth N5806 will be able to see a presentation of SAMMAsolo's HD technology, the industry's first solution that provides real-time, quality-controlled migration of HD content from HD tape to a secure and controlled digital environment, allowing for both ease of access and preservation.

Front Porch Digital's SAMMAsolo migration solution combines hardware and software to move archival-quality content from tape to multiple file formats in a single pass. Because SAMMAsolo automates repetitive steps and uses advanced signal analysis to evaluate tape quality and to monitor and document the migration process itself, the job can be carried out with minimal operator training and execution time. The process maintains the source's time codes as well as their associated indexing and technical metadata.

The SAMMAsolo migration solution includes SAMMAprep for accessing video tape libraries, SAMMAclean for cleaning the tapes themselves, and the SAMMAsolo device, which is responsible for performing digitization. A migration robot with between four and seven streams is also available. Designed with maximum flexibility, the SAMMAsolo HD allows users to customize their own resulting migration templates by specifying formats compatible with their storage and utilization objectives as well as maintaining tape library quality control requirements. Output files, stored locally on SAMMAsolo's cache disk, can be transmitted to any destination using an FTP link, or transmitted to Front Porch Digital's DIVArchice stored content management system, which facilitates storage, access and reuse.

Nirvanix

Front Porch Digital also announced at NAB 2011 that it has partnered with Nirvanix, the leading provider of enterprise-grade network storage services, to enable broadcasters, post-production companies, and movie studios to leverage the companies' network content storage management (CSM) and digital asset management (DAM). The two companies have integrated Front Porch Digital's DIVASolutions software suite with the Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network to create an infinitely scalable and cost-effective file access and network storage solution that streamlines cross-platform content distribution.