Digital Lifescapes

Driven by the increased adoption of products for digital video creation, there is an increased availability of enhanced, feature-rich, nonlinear editing solutions for digital media post production applications. According to the latest market study by Frost & Sullivan , that market had revenues of over $630 million in 2009 and is forecast to exceed $1.0 billion by 2016. "Software-based nonlinear editing products are quickly making the leap from nice-to-have to need-to-have competitive professional products for both high-end and low-end video segments," says Vidya Subramanian Nath, Global Industry Manager for Digital Media at Frost & Sullivan. The availability of highly competitive, economical, off-the-shelf products has ensured an increase in millions of professional and prosumer users for nonlinear editing software. In addition, with increasing efficiencies of PC processors, capture cards, low-priced storage, and networked workflows, popular nonlinear editing...

As I’ve mentioned before, I have utilized low-cost USB flash drives for my video content transport applications. Initially, the largest drive that I used had a 4GB memory capacity. Recently, I’ve been using a much larger 16GB drive and discovered that the benefits go beyond storage capacity. The developers of non-linear video editing software recommend that you store the video content that you are editing on a separate drive, to help improve performance. Typically, that meant adding a new hard disc drive to you PC configuration. Transporting in-progress video content requires that you either use an external hard drive designed for mobile apps, or a USB drive (also known as memory stick or thumb drive). In the past your applications were greatly limited by the USB flash drives capacity – and the relative high-cost per gigabyte of storage. As the cost of high-capacity flash drives decreased, that new development has opened up opportunities to apply these devices for more routine v...