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The Videoguys' Insider Vol 2 Issue 2
Videoguy: Medea was the pioneer in utilizing IDE (or EIDE, or ATA, or UDMA, or whatever you want to call them) disk drives in a RAID for video editing. Don and I go way back, in fact I've still got my invoice for VideoRaid #1, shipped back in September of 1997, hanging on the wall in my office. The cost of storage was a major portion of a Non Linear Editing system back then, and thanks to Medea it became significantly more affordable. |
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Don: One of the beauties of technology in general is how affordable it becomes over time. Disk drives are no exception, and today we are able to offer unheard of prices for undreamed of capacities that perform at unimaginable data rates. Videoguy: You're right about that, storage has never been so affordable. We're now offering the Medea VideoRAID SCSI 160GB drive for under $1,000!! We're recommending these units to our customers with real-time NLE systems and who want to get into DVD production. They're big and fast enough to allow working on multiple projects at the same time.
Don: Right, Gary, and along with the obvious editing benefits of real time capability and multiple stream support comes the need for more storage space. To paraphrase a law of physics, “Data will expand to fill all available space!” The good news is that Medéa's products are getting bigger while still staying affordable. However, with these huge capacities it's time for editors of every ilk, from DV to HD, to consider a new dynamic: data security. If an editor has 24 hours of DV footage on a 320GB RAID 0 array, and the array looses a disk drive, ALL THE DATA IS GONE! Backing up massive amounts of data is a problem for two reasons. First is cost, and second is time, which can also be construed as cost in most cases. Medéa's answer to the need for data integrity is VideoRaid RTR and RTS, fail safe storage subsystems that protect the user against a single disk drive failure. With this technology, a disk drive can fail and the user not only retains all his data, but he retains all his data rate, meaning that regardless of the application he can keep right on editing as though nothing had happened.! Videoguy: That's cool! I get asked all the time about backup solutions for video. Until now all I could recommend was an expensive and slow tape back up system or backing up to a second hard drive. Now you can get a 320GB RTR or RTS drive and save over 24 hours worth of DV footage on it. Or if you are producing DVDs, that's sixty-eight 4.7GB DVDs. Your media is always protected by the fail safe VideoRaid and even more importantly it stays on a super high speed drive array. So even if a drive fails, you can just keep on editing. You don't loose anytime waiting to restore your data.
Videoguy: I think many of my customers have wanted the security and protection of a fail safe storage solution, but the price was far too prohibitive. With Medea's new RTR and RTS line of products, Medea has once again destroyed the price barrier for digital videographers. Don: That's right Gary, Medéa continues to supply the lowest cost products of their kind to the content creation industry, and that includes the fail safe RAID product line. I think our VideoRaid RTS is the perfect fit for most of your customers. It provides the protection they need to allow them to sleep at night at a fraction the cost of comparable products or any other form of backup. VideoRaid RTS sports a SCSI 160 (160MB/sec) interface and sustains nearly 100MB/sec of data rate. This is sufficient to support everything from single or multiple DV streams with products like the Pro-One, RT2500, DV Storm & Xpress DV up to a couple of uncompressed streams from boards like the Targa 3000, Cinewave, DigiSuite & Toaster. However, remember that the performance of the product is not what is important here, it's the protection from a failed disk drive. RTS is a fixed drive subsystem designed to provide fail safe operation for the absolute lowest cost.
Videoguy: I think that professional editors will want to invest the extra money for the faster, swappable component RTR solution, but most of our customers would get the biggest bang for their buck with an RTS. If one of the drives in an RTS system should fail, what is the procedure for the end user to get back it replaced. Don: We offer several options here, Gary. First, as with all our products, if something should happen to the RTS in the first 30 days of use by the customer, you are authorized to replace it from your inventory with a new product. Secondly, for the remainder of the 3 year warranty, our policy offers factory repair, where the unit would be returned to Medéa, repaired, and returned directly to the customer. No middle man. Finally, if the user cannot be without his storage for a couple of days, we offer a “cross ship” program whereby Medéa ships the user a like product of equal or higher capacity, the user copies the data from the failed unit to the replacement and returns the faulty product to Medéa. This requires some form of security and there is an administrative fee involved, but it provides the user with the fastest return to redundancy. And that, of course, is what they opted to pay for.
This may be an opportune time to mention that Medéa offers unlimited free telephonic tech support to our customers, and that means The Electronic Mailbox's customers. We are praised regularly for the quality and responsiveness of our tech support team, and they are a great source of pride. Videoguy: That's very important, and you don't have to lose a single second of down time while you are editing. Without getting too technical, can you explain to us why your fail safe storage solutions are superior to a “do-it-yourself' RAID. Don: Well Gary, it boils down to a few points that we've found to be very important to users:
Don: Gary, this list is basically the “Who's Who” of the content creation world, starting with the industry leader, Pinnacle Systems. Medéa is proud to say that the VideoRaid RTR product is certified with the highest performing products in the Pinnacle line up, including Cinewave SD, RT and HD. They also support Targa 3000 and the entire compliment of DV and MJPEG capture boards from Pinnacle. Matrox, DPS, etc. Videoguy: That's a pretty impressive list. Speaking of impressive, we like to make a special offer to all our readers at the end of each Videoguys' Insider interview. What do you think we can offer our customers if the purchase a VideoRAID RTR or RTS before June 30th?
Videoguy: WOW! That's got to be the best offer we've seen to date on the Insider. Just use coupon code MEDEADVD when you place your order and we'll include the FREE DVR-A04. Way to go MEDEA!!! |
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Don: Right on the money Gary! Since you can lose a disk and not lose you data, VideoRaid BECOMES your back up system! There is no need to spend money on a seperate backup device, or to take the time to create unreliable backups that many times never work anyway.
VideoRaid RTR, on the other hand, has a 30% higher data rate, running at 130MB/sec, and incorporates all the removability and on-site repair features that are required by the world of post. It will support three streams of uncompressed video in a single box, and two striped together will support HD data rates….the ONLY product in its class on the market to accomplish this in the RAID 3 mode!
VideoRaid RTR offers much more convenience in this area. When a disk drive fails, the customer simply calls Medéa and we send a replacement. When the customer replaces the disk drive, a very simple task requiring neither tools nor muscle, the VideoRaid automatically rebuilds itself to the fail safe mode and he can continue right on working. To rebuild a 120Gb disk drive takes only about an hour and a half. Just send the failed drive back to Medéa and you're back in business….without ever having been out of business!
Don: Well, we know that most digital videographers today are very interested in burning their own DVDs. So how about we offer them a FREE Pioneer DVR-A04 with the purchase of any VideoRAID RTR or RTS over 300 GB!!