Unfortunately we need to dive a bit deeper into the technology now to explain the advantages of A/V FS. On any shared storage system you find the directory tree which shows what is on the storage.
Now let us ask the question “Can I freely copy and move files around on the storage without effecting the directory tree?”
At first sight this question sounds weird.
Normally when you do a copy or move you select files or folders and then move or copy these and it shows in the directory tree that files on the storage have been moved or copied.
However state of the art shared storage systems consist of different groups of physical storage such as hard disks, SSDs, tapes or groups of hard disks of different capacities on premises or in the cloud.
To manage such systems the file system with its directory tree is kept independent from where the file data is stored. This creates the possibility to move file data around internally between these groups without effecting the directory tree. A limitation is that in many cases during such a move at some point no one can access such file. Mind you these are internal moves so a copy without effecting the directory tree does not sound like a possibility at all. With A/V FS we have gone that extra mile and implemented an internal move and copy mechanism which can be used while operators access files as they see fit without hick up.
It is a fact that SSDs are fast and can easily handle audio, video and film, but compared to hard disks they are still much more expensive.
So it helps that A/V FS can unconditionally and transparently copy and move data internally. Copying is between groups and SSD cache.
Moving (consolidating) can be between all groups.
Now how does that benefit the customers?
We know that material in M & E is organized in projects. And obviously projects are organized using some kind of folder/subfolder structures. So to cache a project which is on the hard disks you only need to cache the content of its folder structure to the SSDs. This is exactly what the DDP allows you to do.
When opening a project caching can start. When the project is finished its files can be cleared from the cache. The clearing is instant and the files can still be accessed from the hard disks. This is because as an unique property of A/V FS the data of files and folders in the directory tree can be at two places simultaneously.
This kind of caching is not possible in other systems. Even an internal move in other systems is not straightforward.
In general a move is a copy, rename and then finally delete of the original. A file which is being read by an operator can not be deleted of course. It means that although the copy part can happen the rename and the delete must be stalled to the point that no one has access to the file or files anymore. But when would that be?
