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Digital Inspection Video Storage
Considerations When Planning to Convert to Digital Video...
By Cobra Technologies™
MPEG Video is rapidly replacing videotapes in the video inspection industry. It has tremendous benefits over the videotape if captured with elapsed time codes allowing random accessing of defects in a database. If the video is not time coded to the defects in the inspection database, it is little more useful than the existing videotape.
Digital Video is compressed into a MPEG1 format. Some Users are compressing to MPEG2. The use of MPEG 2 compression has little or no advantage in the pipeline inspection industry and it requires twice the space for storage. A new format (MPEG4) has emerged and will be used in the industry now that it can be played back on the new Windows Media players.
Initially users planned to store MPEG files on CDs and possibly DVDs. However, storage on CD/DVD media has proved to be not particularly flexible and has limitations similar to that of videotapes in that it cannot be easily moved around and is limited to one user having access to the information at a time.
Cobra Technologies™ carefully researched the video storage market to determine how to overcome the limitations. Cobra then developed a Video Server system for use by Municipalities to store and access video files. This Video Pipeline Server system has terabytes storage drives designed specifically for the storage of video. Additional drives can be daisy chained to the server making the video server completely scalable. A 1 TB drive will hold approximately 1000 hours of MPEG 1 video.
All the video drives in the Video Pipeline Server use self-healing RAID 30 technology assuring data integrity without the need to make back up tapes. The Video Pipeline Server allows access of video files to users throughout a network for playback on CIMS™ or any other database application.
The first installation was January 2002. The system was up and operational on an existing network in less than a day with 10 CIMS™ users on a mixture of 2000 &XP clients. All were able to access the video files from the Video Pipeline Server. The Video Pipeline Server stores the video files on a single drive system allowing simple and fast video accessing.
The development of the Video Pipeline Server to provide streaming MPEG video has eliminated all the storage limitations permitting users instant access to video files over suitable networks. Depending on the network requirements, the cost of installing a Video Pipeline Server on an existing network is approximately $40,000.00 with 1 TB of video storage. Additional drives can easily be added to the server to accommodate increased storage requirements as required by the Client.
If you are considering upgrading to Digital Video from videotapes, contact Cobra Technologies™ to discuss the use of the Video Pipeline Server to store and archive your MPEG files. Once you convert to DV, you should not get caught without the necessary storage system for the files.
For information on this technology, contact Claire Hanson in Atlanta, GA. Tel 800.443.3761 or make the request by E-mail to clairehanson@cobratec.com
For technical discussions on video compression or storage, contact Alan Grant at Cobra Technologies, in Atlanta GA Tel 800.443.3761 or E-mail to alangrant@cobratec.com.
