sochi games wrap-up

Webinar: Sochi Games Wrap-Up

March 20, 2014

Introduction

• John Tkaczewski, President and Co-Founder

• Chris Bailey, CEO and Co-Founder

• Check out our blog: http://www.filecatalyst.com/blog

| © Copyright FileCatalyst, 20132

Overview

• Accelerated File Transfer Introduction

• Challenges of Live Sports Production

• Accelerated File Transfer as a Solution for live sports production

• Demo


What is File Transfer Acceleration?

• File transfer acceleration technology allows large files, or “big data” to be sent quickly over large geographical distances without being impeded by network impairments such as latency and packet loss

• This is accomplished by transferring files using the UDP protocol instead of the TCP protocol, the protocol used for FTP

• The main difference between UDP and TCP is that UDP wastes no time communicating about the receipt of a block of data so that regardless of network latency, data transmission remains constant, thus overcoming the peak and valley effect that occurs with TCP based protocols on links with high latency

• Reliability and congestion control is added to UDP at the application layer thus it doesn’t sacrifice its other desirable properties


Growth of “at home” concept

• Explosion of equipment required to be shipped to a live venue

• Centralized production team (like OBS) does much of the camera and event production work

• Our planet is very well connected; you can provision a fast network connection to almost any venue around the world, this link can then be used to transfer video and all other data really fast back to the studio at home.

• Having file based video available to you in a central studio in real time will help you to minimize the amount of gear required at a venue.

• The only hiccup is that even the fastest connections cannot reach full line speed with traditional file transfers using HTTP or FTP.


Speed Gains with Acceleration vs. FTP


Challenges of Live Sports Production

• Video files tend to be very large in size, up to 100 GB for a full resolution video file making file transfers lengthy

• Geographical distances when editing from remote locations further slow file transfers

• Non-standard MXF (Material Exchange Format) files are extremely difficult and unreliable to transfer using traditional file transfer methods

• Large sporting events often require multiple files to be transferred simultaneously from multiple camera feeds or events

• Transferring dynamic file sets (transferring video files as they are still being recorded) – growth files


Challenges of Live Sports Production

• MXF is a “container” that supports many formats, MXF files can grow in many different ways:

– Growing in the tail – new content is appended to the tail of the file

– Growing within – the initial size of the file is set in the beginning and the file is then “filled” (like a water pitcher)

– Essence is written and only headers change – in this condition the content of the file does not change but only the headers are updated. This occur every time the file grows a little (as essence is added) or it could simply happen at the very end as the file is finalized.

• During a file transfer a software solution has to be able to handle all those use cases


Accelerated File Transfer Software as a Solution

• MXF issues encountered:– File is growing for long periods, and needs to be followed during

growth so that it arrives as soon as it finishes writing to disk on source.• Transfer growing files feature. After every transfer, transfer checks for

growth and restarts transfer until file does not change.

– Multiple growth files in progress. Don’t stop transfers while tailing a specific growth file.• Multi-client transfers allow tailing of multiple concurrent files while still

allowing static contents to go through. (Extreme concurrency transfers feature)

– Proxy file (low res) are slow to grow compared to network throughput, meaning growth file may be interpreted as static file.• Provide a file filter (ie: for all *.mxf files) and a pause duration, where a

transfer will wait to see if the file grows before considering the file to be static and complete.



• MXF issues encountered:– Headers in MXF file are updated after completion of the file.

This causes issues, as headers are found in the first few blocks of the file, and have already transferred across when they are modified.

Two solutions are provided to resolve this issue:

• Wait until a file is completely written to disk before transferring. Provide a file filter (ie: for all *.mxf files) and queue up files until the timestamp sufficiently old enough before starting a transfer.

• Transfer the file using progressive (tailing the file), wait a specified interval (ie: 60 seconds), then initiate a retransfer using Deltas (RSYNC feature) to capture all binary changes in the file. While computationally more expensive, it allows for any types of header changes to be performed and properly captured, while minimizing network utilization.


Screen shot of HotFolder under load




Challenge Solution

Video files tend to be very large in size, up to 100 GB for a full resolution video file making file transfers lengthy

Standard accelerated and managed file transfer solution & high connection speed

Geographical distances when editing from remote locations further slow file transfers

Standard accelerated and managed file transfer solution & high connection speed

Non-standard MXF (Material Exchange Format) files are extremely difficult and unreliable to transfer using traditional file transfer methods

Special rules to handle growth files which have non-standard behaviour.

Large sporting events often require multiple files to be transferred simultaneously (ex: multiple camera feeds)

Extreme concurrency transfers feature

Transferring dynamic file sets (transferring video files as they are still being recorded)

Transfer growing files feature

FileCatalyst at a live sport event

Partial deployment for major sporting event


About FileCatalyst

FileCatalyst technology is developed by Unlimi-Tech Software Inc., a world leader in file transfer solutions. Founded in 2000, the company has more than 1000 clients with a user base of over 1 million. FileCatalyst provides software-based solutions designed to accelerate and optimize file transfers across global networks. Being immune to packet loss and latency, FileCatalyst can send files much faster than methods such as FTP, HTTP or CIFS, while adding security and reliability.

To learn more visit www.filecatalyst.com


http://www.filecatalyst.com/

Upcoming Events

- JB&A Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada (April 5-6) at MGM Grand

- NAB Show, Las Vegas, Nevada (April 6-10)– Don’t miss our NAB session “Accelerating Olympic Winter Games Footage from Sochi,

Russia to Stamford, CT”.– Date: Tuesday, January 21 Time: 11 am EST

- IBC 2014, RAI, Amsterdam (September 12-16)

And of course don’t forget our monthly webinars...


Thank you!

Questions?