초록 ▼

In a video server, multimedia data for a production is archived with data blocks for a video disk file and data blocks for audio disk files and data blocks for auxiliary disk files all intermixed together in a single tape file, in approximately the same order required for producing a multimedia data

In a video server, multimedia data for a production is archived with data blocks for a video disk file and data blocks for audio disk files and data blocks for auxiliary disk files all intermixed together in a single tape file, in approximately the same order required for producing a multimedia data stream. During restoring of the production, as the disk files are being copied to disk storage systems from the tape file, the data may be retrieved from the same disk files and played as a multimedia data stream as soon as enough information is available in the files to form the stream. Disk files are striped across a multitude of disk files systems, by a commutator and a multitude of input/output units share access to all the files in all the disk file systems, for example, using a periodically switching round robin scheme or more complex scheduling. Also, during restoration, the same input/output unit of the server that is copying the data from the tape file to the disk drive may be is used to play a multimedia data stream for the production and simultaneously other input/output units of the server are able to play multimedia data streams for the same production from those portions of the disk files for the production that have already been restored.

대표청구항 ▼

1. A multimedia storage system with archiving, restoring, and playing, comprising:a network for multimedia data; one or more disk controllers for receiving disk formatted multimedia data from the network and transmitting disk formatted multimedia data onto the network; a multitude of disk units for

1. A multimedia storage system with archiving, restoring, and playing, comprising:a network for multimedia data; one or more disk controllers for receiving disk formatted multimedia data from the network and transmitting disk formatted multimedia data onto the network; a multitude of disk units for storing disk formatted data from one of the disk controllers, striped across a plurality of the disk units, and for retrieving disk formatted data from the plurality of disk units to the one disk controller; a tape controller for receiving tape formatted data from the network, and for transmitting formatted data onto the network; a group of one or more tape units for storing sequentially formatted data from the tape controller onto removable tape in a process to archive the data, and for retrieving sequentially formatted data from the tape to the tape controller in a process to restore the archived data; and a multimedia network server including: stream recording means for receiving a stream of multimedia data into the system in real time for recording the multimedia data; stream playing means for transmitting a stream of multimedia data out of the system for playing the multimedia data for a production in real time; stream to disk means for converting a stream of multimedia data into disk formatted data; disk to stream means for converting disk formatted data into a stream of multimedia data; archiving means for converting the disk formatted data into tape formatted data in a process for archiving the data; restoring means for converting the tape formatted data into the disk formatted data in a process to restore the archived data; formatted output means for transferring disk formatted data and tape formatted data onto the network; formatted input means for receiving disk formatted data and tape formatted data from the network; and archival playing means for converting tape formatted data for a multimedia production into data for a first stream of multimedia data as the stream playing means simultaneously transmits the stream to play the multimedia production in real time, and as the restoring means simultaneously converts the tape formatted data for the multimedia production from sequential access storage formatted data into random access storage formatted data for restoring the multimedia production.