This system is a distributed hierarchical storage system that can store many terabytes (TB) of digital material. Different storage systems are provided for specific types of data such as database, web, and streaming audio/video servers. Data is stored permanently on a tertiary storage system (e.g., robot tape or optical disk system), and it is moved to the appropriate on-line server. All material will be accessible through the web, and databases are being designed to support its use. Currently, BMRC operates a file server, web server, database server, and several streaming audio/video servers (e.g., a RealNetworks Audio/Video server, Microsoft NetShow server and MASH MARS server). Over time we expect to integrate more servers into the system to provide additional storage and streaming capability. BMRC researchers are working on algorithms and systems to manage digital media and to locate specific media elements.

Video on Demand System

The Berkeley Distributed Video-on-Demand (VOD) system is the product of a research project that is designed to provide access to a large quantity of video information over computer networks. Clients across the Internet can submit requests to the VOD system to view audio, video and graphical streams. Playback is accomplished by streaming data from a media file server through the network to the client's computer.

We are currently working on web-based front-end tools for the VOD System. These will include tools for on demand web playback, and a graphical user interface to the database for remote video content authoring. These tools will allow any user to add media elements to the storage system and access them later.

A large part of this project is the development of an asset management database that can track a variety of different data types (e.g. audio, video, animations, images and hypertext) with possibly multiple representations and versions through the authoring and editing processes. This database must provide version control functionality and handling of various meta-data associated with different representations and must also link seamlessly to several large media services, such as streaming media servers and archive servers. BMRC researchers continue to work on the storage systems, databases and interfaces to deal with these problems.

The Carousel tool is an authoring tool designed to allow the end-user to author web page video galleries. The video gallery web page has key frames and other information about the video layed out in a two-dimensional table. Users can view the collection and play selected videos by clicking on the key frame. With Carousel a user can quickly create web pages to access and display existing video content. Users can access a variety of templates and settings using dialogs and other GUI elements to create their custom video gallery pages. The system eliminates the complexity involved in handling a variety of different video formats.