The Electronic Still Store: A Digital System for the Storage and Display of Still Pictures

The preparation, storage, retrieval, and broadcasting of stills (slides and graphics) add up to a significant cost element that must be controlled in the operation of a typical television facility. The physical handling in using stills can damage the materials and result in human error. Furthermore, reserving a studio camera and/or a telecine chain to show stills is inefficient and not cost-effective. A new system to overcome these problems, the Electronic Still Store (ESS), has now been demonstrated by CBS and Ampex. The ESS can randomly search an electronic library of still pictures from a number of locations, arrange the stills in the order for playing, play them as fast as 1 still/s, and do these things without physically touching the media. The system makes available a current stock of about 1500 stills (those expected to be needed within the next 100 days) and a long-term stock of about 5000 stills. System control tasks are handled by an LSI-11 microcomputer which emulates the larger PDP-11/40. The core element of the ESS is a very reliable computer disc drive. The adaptation of the disc drive for storing PCM video requires only that the dissimilar standards of digitally encoded video and the computer peripheral be reconciled.

Print ISSN

0036-1682

Published

1976-08

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/J07579