……

With the gradual maturity of analog television technology since the 1950s, people's pursuit of digital video and non-linear editing has never stopped.

While some of the most powerful players are launching their own digital video solutions, there are also landmark developments in the field of nonlinear editing.

One of the most striking results came from George Lucas's Lucasfilm Ltd., which has a system called EditDroid — an editing robot with a laser disc similar in size to a 12-inch vinyl record with a surface similar to that of a music disc, and a database. Combined with other means, a certain degree of non-linear editing function is realized.

Founded in 1922, the National Association of Broadcasters, the National Association of Broadcasters, held its annual meeting in April this year, and also hosted the world's largest exhibition of radio and television equipment, the "NAB Exhibition".

EditDroid and another competitor, MontagePictureProcessor, the Montage Picture Processor, were unveiled at the same time, which attracted a lot of attention.

In fact, it is difficult to commercialize these solutions into full-fledged products, because they are non-generic solutions made by "local steelmaking".

In Tang Huan's view, among these pioneers in the field of digital video and non-linear editing, although traditional manufacturers have technical strength, they lack a little creative spirituality; And users like George Lucas, who come from the front line, have the creative spirituality. As a result, research and development were carried out spontaneously, but they did not have sufficient technical strength.

But then again. Even if they have both technical strength and creative spirituality, they may not be able to catch up with Tang Huan, who still has industry vision and resource integration advantages.

Whether it's digital video or non-linear editing, it needs to combine the results of multiple aspects before it can enter the practical stage. It developed passively and naturally in the original time and space; And now it is being prompted in advance by Tang Huan with the resources that have been rapidly accumulated in recent years.

For example, the D-VHS camera, which is responsible for video capture, has a lens and an imager that is not much different from other types of cameras. However, in the recorder part, the technical achievements of analog-to-digital converters, digital signal processors, instant lossless compression, videotape formats and so on are condensed.

If the collected digital video information is not compressed, the bit rate will reach 173Mbit/sec, which is 21.625MB/s.

Thus. In order to store the data on a 94-minute D-VHS tape and prepare for the next post-processing, any of these elements are indispensable.

The Digital-1 system provides both digital video and non-linear editing. It's even more of a whole. It is equivalent to an extremely complex Fangyuan server, which has been endowed with a lot of high-end microcomputer system technology by Tang Huan.

For example, the system bus, Digital-1 adopts the latest InterconnectStandardArchitecture designed by Fangyuan Computer, which is the 32-bit version of ISA-32.

The system bus of Fangyuan computer architecture officially started with the second-generation Fangyuan personal computer, and even collided with the system bus of IBM-PC developed at the same time in the abbreviated name, the latter is called IndustryStandardArchitecture - industry standard structure, abbreviated as ISA.

As part of the business war, the two companies have spat on each other's patents. In the end, due to the early advent of the "interconnected standard architecture", the blue giant foolishly abandoned the name "industrial standard architecture". In the next generation IBM-PC/XT, it is directly called XT bus, and in the current flagship IBM-PC/AT, it is also called AT bus.

In addition to the same bus abbreviation, the "Interconnect Standard Architecture" and the "Industry Standard Architecture" also have some similarities in technical specifications, such as the original version, which is eight bits wide and runs at the same frequency as the CPU.

However, the difference between the two is also quite obvious, the "interconnected standard architecture" supports a certain degree of "plug and play", while the "industrial standard architecture" does not have this feature.

In addition, since the CPU used by IBM-PC is an Intel8088 with 4.77MHz, the frequency of the "industry standard structure" is also 4.77MHz, and the bus bandwidth is 4.77MHz * 8 bits/8 = 4.77MB/s.

The CPU used by the second-generation Fangyuan personal computer is 8MHz Intel8088 and MC68000, and 12.5MHz MC68000, etc., so the bus bandwidth is at least 8MHz*8 bits/8=8MB/s

This gap cannot be ignored, because the slots connected to the modem, network card, sound card, graphics card and other expansion cards are connected to the system bus at the other end, and then the operation of network applications, games and other software has a significant performance improvement.

In the era of the third generation of Fangyuan personal computers, the "interconnection standard architecture" and IBM's XT bus and AT bus have become more and more distant, and Gai has further improved the "plug and play" function and launched a 16-bit version of the ISA-16.

This means that the data throughput is doubled with the same bus frequency, which means that the computer performance is doubled.

Due to cost constraints, ISA-16 has limited application in Fangyuan's personal computer product line, and its field of display is Fangyuan workstation and Fangyuan server.

With the advent of the fourth generation of fully 32-bit Fangyuan personal computers, as a part of technical preparation, the ISA bus has also evolved to the 32-bit version - ISA-32 one step ahead of schedule, and was first deployed to Fangyuan servers and Fangyuan workstations in high-end product lines.

There are a number of changes to ISA-32, such as the increase in data width to 32 bits. As a result, the bus throughput is at least double that of ISA-16, and it no longer runs at the same frequency as faster and faster CPUs.

In other words, the "frequency doubling" mechanism was introduced.

The bus between the CPU and the northbridge with the memory controller. It's called FrontSideBus – the front-side bus is the FSB.

From now on, the operating frequency of ISA-32 and CPU is split by the FSB, the speed of the CPU is determined by the FSB and the frequency multiplier, and the ISA-32 is linked to the FSB.

This is the case with the Digital-1 system, which is equipped with a RISC-based processor, Holder, running at 40MHz and a frequency multiplier of 2. Both the FSB and ISA-32 buses are 20MHz, so the bus bandwidth reaches 20MHz*32 bits/8=80MB/s, thus laying a solid foundation for digital video processing.

Holder processor, ISA-32 bus, large memory, digital signal processor dedicated to hardware encoding and decoding. and other chips, just to ensure that the Digital-1 system is powerful enough to handle the huge data streams.

However, there is another area that is prone to bottlenecks that needs to be addressed. That's hard drives, CD drives, D-VHS videotapes, and other mechanical external storage devices. High-speed electronics that are already ready cannot be held back.

The hard disk used in the Digital-1 is a 10.5-inch hard drive made by Fujitsu in Japan, and Tang Huan has added a lot of his own technology to form an enterprise-class storage system that can provide a capacity of up to 1338MB.

Among them, there are two main technologies, one is RedundantArrayofIndependentDisks, which is a redundant array of independent hard disks, or RAID, and the other is SmallComputerSystemInterface, which is SCSI.

As the name suggests, RAID is the use of controllers to connect multiple hard disks together. In order to provide better indicators in terms of capacity, speed, and security, the 1.338GB hard disk capacity of the Digital-1 system is a good application example.

It's not enough to have a "big belly". It is also necessary to have sufficient data transfer speeds. SCSI is designed to solve this problem.

It is a system-level interface standard used between computers and peripheral devices such as hard disks, floppy drives, optical drives, printers, scanners, etc., which defines a set of commands and communication protocols for data transmission through independent processors, which has the advantages of fast and stable speed, low CPU usage, etc.

In fact, these technologies have long been applied in the high-end field of Fangyuan servers and Fangyuan workstations, otherwise why would they launch a fierce challenge to IBM's mainframe and DEC's minicomputer?

At present, the SCSI standard has evolved to the second version of SCSI-2, compared with SCSI-1, the indicators are doubled, 16 external devices can be connected at the same time, the data width is 16 bits, the frequency is 10MHz, and the data throughput is 10MHz*16 bits/8=20MB/s.

The ISA-32 bus, with a bandwidth of 80 MB/s, also provides enough space for SCSI-2 to exert its strengths.

On the Digital-1 hardware platform, the most powerful and stable operating system in the Fangyuan computer system, Vientiane, can seamlessly drive a variety of hard encoding and hard decoding processing chips to provide the best real-time response performance for video processing software.

Of course, a user-friendly graphical user interface is also indispensable, and the directors in the TV station can operate intuitively through the mouse only with their own professional knowledge and work needs.

Digital video is the foundation of non-linear editing, allowing you to access any video frame by directly entering timecode or other descriptive metadata, rather than having to look at the entire clip to find the desired video frame.

This will involve a "random access" mechanism, memory, hard disk, and optical disc can all be "random access", while videotapes belong to "sequential access".

Fortunately, compared to non-digitally stored videotape formats, D-VHS tapes can also gain speed from descriptive metadata such as timecode when performing data retrieval.

After non-linear editing using Adobe's video processing software, the finished program is stored on inexpensive videotapes or some expensive discs in accordance with the BT.601 standard issued by the Radiocommunication Division of the International Telecommunication Union in the resolution of 720×486 in NTSC or 720×576 in PAL format.

However, the latter has the obvious benefit of being completely "randomized" without being limited to "sequential access".

Obviously, this mechanism can bring great flexibility to the broadcast of TV programs.

During the Olympic Games, the audience certainly hopes to be able to watch in time which athletes won gold medals that day, as well as various wonderful moments, and the editing workload of the program can be imagined.

In addition, the western part of the United States, where Los Angeles is located, is about 4 hours away from the eastern part of the United States, the traditional political and economic center.

This also inevitably affects how the major American television networks across the country present the program to the audience in the first time.

It's clear that with the support of the Digital-1 system, CNN is one step ahead of all its peers. Although everyone stays up late and works overtime to catch up with the program tapes, CNN has an advantage in speed and quality.

Just like Carl Lewis won four Olympic track and field gold medals, CNN was the first to launch a retrospective of his debut to the present, with the help of special effects provided by video editing software and a majestic background music, the whole show is a Hollywood blockbuster that has left a deep impression on all audiences.

The quality of CNN's Olympic televised broadcasts is definitely the best in the world, and after other television organizations were helplessly stealing the limelight, they naturally sent out scouts to find the secret of their victory.

Finally, at the end of the Olympic Games, the Digital-1 system, which was evaluated by the National Federation of Broadcasters as a fanatical combination of technology and art, was presented to them.

Seeing the joy of hunting, major TV organizations that are not short of money have asked the price, how can they get a set of Digital-1 system?

Tang Huan's answer is that it starts at $500,000, and the cost elasticity of the Digital-1 system is still very large depending on the configuration.

In addition, from the Digital-1 system that provides video non-linear editing functions, a set of products specializing in audio non-linear editing functions can be derived logically and naturally. (To be continued.) )