We are all saddened by the devastation and environmental damage caused by the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami. One of the unfortunate results of those events hitting home here is that the supply of video tape media, particularly Sony’s HD CAM SR, has been greatly disrupted. Many of Sony’s key manufacturing facilities are damaged or closed.
In the short to medium term, there is likely to be a shortage of many of these media types, which are used for acquisition, mastering and storage as reported by Television Broadcast (http://www.televisionbroadcast.com/article/115606) and Below the Line (http://www.btlnews.com/crafts/camera/sony-warns-of-media-shortages/). And prices have already risen in a true supply and demand cycle.
Numerous facilities, large and small, are trying to react to these shortages by coming up with alternatives and ways to re-use their existing SR tape libraries. In the short term, many are now going to their tape vaults and taking their SR masters and digitizing the content onto SAN and NAS storage so that they can degauss those master tapes for re-use.
This digitized content from the used tapes needs to go somewhere for archive; it can’t reside permanently their SANs.
We can help both for the short- and long-term. The LTO factories of Fuji, Maxell and TDK are fine, and Cache-A’s LTO-based archive appliances can be used both for archive and for content exchange between facilities.
The unfortunate events in Japan may provide a moment to rethink your workflows and your strategies for your entire workflow. If they do, we are happy to help.