Video screens are common sight these days, even in the most traditional of church sanctuaries. For many churches, the decision to use video in worship is long since past, and the video editor questions-of-the-day are: “What am I going to do with the overwhelming amount of video content I have?” and “How am I ever going to be able to find that one specific video that the pastor has decided at the last minute that he really wants to use to perfectly illustrate his message?” With ever-increasing video integration into all areas of church life, and the rise of high definition video (with the resultant increase in digital file size), the need for archiving and storage solutions quickly is moving well beyond the “just burn it to a Blu-ray/DVD” mindset.
With digital as the reigning king, as well as plummeting costs and a strong increase in the memory capacity of hard drive storage, functional day-to-day archive and retrieval has turned a corner, and is now within the possibility range of the average church. However, increased file sizes make loading (and finding) multiple large clips a long and often tedious process.
Enter the SoleraTec Phoenix Firebird video storage appliance powered by SoleraTec's Phoenix Video Content Management (VCM) software. With an MSRP in the $10,000 range, the first reaction of our review team was, “I'm sure it's great, but what church would ever want to invest scarce budget dollars in content management at that level, especially given the comparatively low cost of the aforementioned hard-drive storage options?” After looking into things a little deeper—and asking the same question to the good folks at SoleraTec—we became increasingly intrigued as our paradigms shifted a bit. Here's what we found….
What it does
Why would a church invest scarce budget dollars in content management with an MSRP of around $10,000? After looking into things a little deeper we became increasingly intrigued as our paradigms shifted a bit.
SoleraTec bills the Phoenix Firebird as the only unit currently available on the market that offers media asset management (MAM), archive management, and multi-tiered storage management in a single package. The general function of the Phoenix Firebird is as a video storage system, but that's where the similarity to standard hard drives ends. The true power of the system is that it provides a way to archive footage, with searchable descriptions and metadata.
Without a doubt, this is a huge leap forward from the days of Excel spreadsheets. The device “ingests” your digital content, and then creates smaller proxy files that allow for quick search and playback when looking for a particular segment.
The Phoenix Firebird is multi-platform and is designed to fit right into any video production workflow with easy integration with Avid, Final Cut Pro, and Adobe Premiere. By creating MXLs or EDLs with low-resolution files, an editor can work quickly to create a product, and then export it, and Phoenix Firebird will pull the original files from LTO tape to composite the final video. This is a massive timesaver—for instance, in our own workflow, we have found ourselves going back to archived video materials on a regular basis whenever we create video material dealing with the history of the church, and the potential man-hours saved could be a significant time-saver in the long run.
Conventional wisdom has moved away from media-based storage towards hard-drive options, but SoleraTec has taken the opposite approach for security of the archived material. Phoenix Firebird has four terabytes of internal storage, but takes the user's large original video files and creates H.264 proxy backups on Linear Tape-Open (LTO) tape. LTO tapes provide high-capacity/long-term storage for a relatively low price point. Similar to hard drives, LTOs come in varying sizes. For example, LTO-6, released this past year, boasts a 2.5-terabyte capacity uncompressed at a price tag of under $100 a tape, effectively creating the opportunity for infinite archiving. Tape may appear to many as an outdated technology, but SoleraTec was very intentional in its choice. LTO tape has a shelf life of 15 to 30 years (depending on the tape and amount of use). This is significant compared to consumer hard drives with life spans of (optimistically) five to 10 years, and significant vulnerability to power fluctuations.
Setup of the device would not fit into the category of what we would call “plug and play,” but is consistent with a device of its capability and complexity. It would probably best be installed with the assistance of an IT professional (since it technically is a server). Like any piece of high-powered gear, it will take some time to delve into all the features of this unit, once configured.
The aforementioned features are great and can improve the workflow for any video department, but, as the old adage goes, you get what you pay for. With an MSRP of $10,000, Phoenix Firebird has a high initial buy in. However, when looking at what the unit offers, in comparison to a four terabyte hard drive-based Storage Area Network (SAN) storage (roughly $4,000 to $5,000), the workflow integration and search-ability features of the Phoenix VCM software have the potential to quickly make the unit well worth the money.
