A new section of the Information Highway was opened with the announcement that Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting Corp’s CNN News is using the The Network Connection NewsView video-on-demand system in the CNN newsroom. The SMP M2V Multimedia Video SuperServer and the Real Time Compression Station simplify the tasks for the writers, editors and producers, in that edited tapes that are generated for on-air broadcasts. The Network Connection NewsView offers the CNN news staff a way to preview edited clips and packages at their desktops, while continuing to write scripts in the Basys Inc database at the same time as they are previewing the video clips. The system also offers a video control panel for fast forward, pause, reverse and playback options within one of the three screens that are located on their computer monitors. NewsView is designed expressly to compress and decompress live feeds of various video formats in real time. Compression is accomplished on the fly and is available to the CNN local network in real time. The CNN local network access to compressed files creates opportunities for development of specific CNN applications. The M2V Video File Server uses Microsoft NT Advanced Server as the operating system. All files are compressed and run at 30 frames per second at near perfect broadcast quality with MPEG technology in the 1Mb to 4.5Mb per second range. The M2V supports Unix, Mac and Windows clients. It can store and retrieve PLV, Digital Video Interactive, JPEG and Wavelet standard files at up to 1,024 by 768 resolution under Windows NT and Windows for Workgroups. The M2V is configured with 36Gb of disk space for up to 60 hours of video storage. The M2V can also be rack-mounted for capacity of up to 86Gb. The M2V is a RAID 5, non-proprietary, symmetrical multiprocessing system offering fault-tolerant, hot swap drives and power supplies, the Network Connection notes.
