Customer Reviews

Video Systems in an IT Environment: The Essentials of Professional Networked Media

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a professional who serves the pro-video and broadcast market, I've been eagerly awaiting my copy of Video Systems in an IT Environment. I just received my order a few weeks ago from Amazon.com and I've now had a chance to absorb several chapters -- with more to come.

First impressions: Wow! Substantial. Meaty. First of its kind. When you receive this book in the mail, the first thing you notice upon opening the package is the sheer weight and tasteful abstract art on the front cover. This is a hefty 600-page volume packed with hundreds of detailed illustrations and lots of examples. When it comes to understanding principles of modern networked media for video and audio, this Focal Press work deserves a prominent place in any serious video or IT engineer's reference library.

Although this book is oriented towards the professional media or broadcast systems engineer (as opposed to a video consumer building a home media network), the author does a nice job of weaving together the essentials of networked media from "A to Z" including a handy glossary of terms for those of us who can't keep our acronyms straight. I've known the author, Al Kovalick, who's a well regarded figure in the broadcast community. His breadth of knowledge is evident throughout each chapter, yet he writes in a witty, practical style that's both educational and fun to read (including some pretty subtle humor that will make an engineer chuckle). Without sacrificing depth, this book takes a complex technical subject and brings it down to earth, making it suitable even for less technical (but motivated) readers. I like the "It's a Wrap" section found at the end of each chapter that summarizes the salient points of each chapter.

Bottom line, this book is for you if you're seeking a solid overview of key engineering considerations when designing or recommending networked video architectures, including networking fundamentals, virus and firewall protection, video servers, NSPOF (no single point of failure) storage design including RAID and RAIN methods, as well as other innovative architectures. Several real-world case studies complement the teaching benefits including specific examples by leading-edge media companies and broadcasters.

Chapter Highlights:
Networked Media in an IT Environment
The Fundamentals of Professional Networked Media
Storage System Basics
Storage Access Methods
Software Technology for AV Systems
Reliability and Scalability Methods
Networking Basics for AV
Media Systems Integration
Security for Networked AV Systems
Systems Management and Monitoring
The Transition to IT: Issues and Case Studies
A Review of AV Basics

Last year at a Hollywood Post Alliance meeting a senior technical production executive said to an audience of technical professionals, "If you don't have a strong foundation in video, networking and IT....you will not work in our business any longer."

What he was really saying is, go out and get Kovalick's book and read it. And then read it again.

I liked this book a lot. I am not a video engineer - however, I need high performance hardware and I need to understand how to connect it all. I needed to understand what it takes to put together a networked high performance system of relational databases (emphases on high performance and databases) - SAN's, NAS's, RAID's, etc. This book describes it at the correct level.

I was looking for a general overview of SAN's, NAS, DAS, and other high throughput fast storage and networking descriptions. This book has it without overwhelming you with 8B/10B encoding and modulation nonsense.

As a systems integrator in the broadcast and professional video industry, we face issues associated with the converging IT and professional AV media environments on almost daily basis. To date, we have had to build our own knowledge base to address these matters and have found no one source that appropriately deals with these merging industries - well this book addresses these issues head on.

Personally, I found this book really "hit the spot" as it relates to the broadcast and media industry as it stands today (as well as in the near future). I found this book to be up to date and topics discussed exceedingly relevant. Although this book tackles a broad array of topics, from media network deployment and management to video system fundamentals and architectures, the information covered was well presented and logically organized which made it a very comfortable read.

This book is a must for anyone (IT managers, as well as network and video engineers alike) who have an interest in producing, managing, and distributing video media.

This book is of interest to any technical professional working with video. In the past, we could view the world of IT as of increasing value but not central to a video system. No longer. This book comprehensively lays out the myriad of technologies and issues to be considered as we incorporate the power and economy of IT servers and networking ever more broadly into our broadcast and production facilities.