Behind the Scenes: The Importance of Data Storage in Modern Event Venues

Whether capturing the play on the field or ensuring the safety of spectators and employees, AI-enabled video analytics are a big part of both security and entertainment at large event venues.

There’s a close play at second base. A slow-motion video replay appears on the scoreboard. The moment in question approaches and the video pauses and then zooms in on an image of the runner’s foot touching the bag a split second before the ball arrives. The view rotates 90 degrees, providing another angle that confirms the call. The home crowd cheers as the umpires convene and uphold the play – he’s safe.

Meanwhile, in a command center next to the press box, a team watches a bank of video monitors streaming live footage from hundreds of security cameras situated around the facility. Analytics pop up on screen, classifying spectators as they move around the concourse. Dozens of feeds are rotated in and out of the monitors, based on current events and potential issues, identifying suspicious behavior that may need to be escalated to a human.

At the same time, in a series of trailers in the parking lot, the production team of the broadcasting partner pieces together a package of live and recorded footage and high-definition graphics that goes out live over the air and through the league’s applications.

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Powering this smart events venue is usually a mini data center positioned inside the stadium. Racks of servers, storage, and networking equipment line the room, emanating a low hum as they collect and process terabytes of video data. This data is then fed into powerful AI-powered applications on-premises and streamed to the cloud that the scoreboard operator, security personnel, and other teams stationed around the stadium use to improve the game and the spectator experience.

Providing the foundation for these powerful video analytics applications is storage, an important foundation in the AI data cycle. Architects of smart stadiums need to ensure that high-performing video streaming and associated AI applications have the capacity, performance, and reliability needed to enable modern, advanced event venues.

The Importance of Storage in Modern Venues

Video is a growing data storage segment. Higher video resolutions, increased frame rates, and metadata allow analysts to evaluate video and images in greater detail, pixel by pixel, versus analyzing a whole image. This smart video data requires a massive amount of capacity, but organizations can’t procure just any storage solution and call it a day.

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Smart video analytics requires the right type of storage to really bring data to life. Factors such as multiple streams, AI metadata, and even longer retention times have a direct impact on data movement and data storage.

All of this is driving the need for increased capacity, performance, and durability to support streaming workloads for smart video systems and deep learning-enabled storage servers with advanced video AI analytics.

Storage Requirements for High-Performing Video Analytics

There are various storage options for smart video to accommodate these diverse requirements – including large-capacity enterprise-class hard disk drives (HDDs), high-performing solid-state drives (SSDs), and high-endurance microSD cards for cameras – and each has its place and specific use case in the smart stadium, and in smart video in general.

One of the most crucial applications of storage in event venues and stadiums is within smart surveillance systems. In large-scale environments, ensuring the safety of thousands of attendees is a top priority, and this is where HDDs shine.

Modern surveillance systems often consist of hundreds or even thousands of cameras strategically placed throughout the venue, capturing high-definition footage 24/7. These cameras generate enormous amounts of data, especially when recording in high-definition or ultra-high-definition formats. HDDs, with their extensive storage capacities, are essential for storing this data securely over extended periods. HDDs also offer the best total cost of ownership (TCO) for storing vast amounts of video data at scale due to their high capacity, cost-effectiveness, and reliability.

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Smart video HDDs differ from client or desktop HDDs. Smart video HDDs are engineered to support multiple video streams, enable heavy write workloads, and feature firmware that reduces image loss or dropped frames. In addition, on-drive intelligence can allow smart video HDDs to recognize incoming video stream metadata and data types, coalesce data together in a cache, and place data in specific track locations on disk for optimal performance.

Some drives can also provide a variety of storage device parametric operational and diagnostic data to the system, alerting system administrators of specific recommended actions to address potential issues.

Enabling the Smart Security and Entertainment

Sports, entertainment, and other large events are all about delivering a powerful and safe spectator experience. Video analytics is a big part of this experience, providing high-definition video streams, stats, and other entertaining highlights to fans while ensuring attendees, performers, and employees are safe.

The storage requirements vary widely across these event center use cases, making it essential for organizations to build a smart storage environment. The next close play at the plate, the viewing experience of a spectator in the back row, and the security of everyone inside the facility, are all dependent on the need for storage.

Brian Mallari is director of product marketing for smart video products at Western Digital.