Abstract: In a video server, multimedia data for a production is archived with data blocks for a video disk file and data blocks for audio disk files and data blocks for auxiliary disk files all intermixed together in a single tape file, in approximately the same order required for producing a multimedia data stream. During restoring of the production, as the disk files are being copied to disk storage systems from the tape file, the data may be retrieved from the same disk files and played as a multimedia data stream as soon as enough information is available in the files to form the stream. Disk files are striped across a multitude of disk files systems, by a commutator and a multitude of input/output units share access to all the files in all the disk file systems, for example, using a periodically switching round robin scheme or more complex scheduling.

Abstract: In a video server, multimedia data for a production is archived with data blocks for a video disk file and data blocks for audio disk files and data blocks for auxiliary disk files all intermixed together in a single tape file, in approximately the same order required for producing a multimedia data stream. During restoring of the production, as the disk files are being copied to disk storage systems from the tape file, the data may be retrieved from the same disk files and played as a multimedia data stream as soon as enough information is available in the files to form the stream. Disk files are striped across a multitude of disk files systems, by a commutator and a multitude of input/output units share access to all the files in all the disk file systems, for example, using a periodically switching round robin scheme or more complex scheduling.

Abstract: In the multimedia network, in order to archive or play multimedia data for a production, a multitude of disk file blocks are retrieved from a multitude of files striped across a multitude of disk storage systems through a commutator to the input of an input/output unit. The disk file blocks are copied from the input into disk file blocks in a buffer of the memory of the unit. Then the unit creates a address-size list of data portions in the buffer for archiving the disk files of the production or for playing a multimedia data stream for the production. Then the unit executes a copy command given the address of the list which uses indirection for copying the specified portions of the buffer onto an output of the unit to store the data into an archival tape storage system or to play the production in a multimedia data stream. Also, using the above method, a production may be simultaneously archived and played by the same unit.