The Digital Fact Book - Quantel

Fibre Channel (FC)An integrated set of standards developed by ANSI designed to improve data speeds betweenworkstations, supercomputers, storage devices and displays while providing a single standardfor networking storage and data transfer. It can be used point-to-point, switched or in anarbitrated loop (FC-AL) connecting up to 126 devices.FPlanned to run on a fiber-optic or twisted-pair cable at an initial data rate of 1Gb/s, 2, 4 andnow 8 Gb/s (8GFC) have become available. There is also a road map to 16 Gb/s. These arenominal wire speeds but 8b/10b encoding is used to improve transmission characteristics,provide more accuracy and better error handling. With every 8-bit data byte for transmissionconverted into a 10-bit Transmission Character, the useful data rate is reduced by 20 percent.Because of its close association with disk drives, its TV application is mostly, but not always,in the creation of storage networking. It can interface with the SCSI disk interface, which iskey to its operation in storage networking such as SAN.See also: SANWebsite: www.fibrechannel.orgFile-based (media)‘File-based’ generally refers to storing media in files rather than as continuous streams– like video tape. The term is more widely used to describe IT-based environments for handlingand processing digital media. Many see the future of media production as being file-based.File transferA discontinuous transfer process which treats each transferred item as a single block, neitherdivisible into smaller, independent elements nor part of a larger whole. As the transfer processhas a recognizable beginning and end (unlike streaming) it is possible for the complete transferto be checked and any errors corrected. This is not possible with a streaming process.File transfer requires material to be complete and clearly identifiable. When handlingtime-based material, such as video and audio this the complete file has to be available beforetransfer can start. If the whole clip is a single file, this cannot be transferred until all thematerial is complete. However, if the clip is sub-divided, for example into frames, the transfercan start immediately after the first frame is completed. This becomes important in timesensitive applications such the live editing of highlights while the event is still taking place.See also: StreamingFilm formatsUnlike pre-HD television, which had only two image formats, 525/60I and 625/50I, 35 mmfilm has many. Of these the most common are Full Frame, which occupies the largest possiblearea of the film, Academy and Cinemascope. The scanning for these is defined in the DPXfile specification as follows:84