Imagine Products — creator of software utilities for backing up, viewing, sharing, transcoding, and archiving video assets — and StorageDNA — which specializes in intelligent nearline and archiving workflow solutions for media professionals —have collaborated on an integrated solution that enables random access to files on an LTO tape, essentially turning it into a hard drive with dnaLTFS.

The new joint solution is called myLTOdna. It’s an integration between Imagine Products’ myLTO tape-authoring application and StorageDNA’s HyperTape high performance direct access tape solution powered by dnaLTFS. The result is a simple and intuitive user interface with which to administrate HyperTape operating modes manually, or automatically from creative applications such as Imagine Products’ PrimeTranscoder — a process that is highly preferable to command line operations, says Tridib Chakravarty, CEO and president of StorageDNA

myLTOdna is the Mac-based front-end interface for HyperTape. It allows users to switch modes of operation and direct HyperTape to train, write, and read to and from an LTO tape. With myLTOdna, users can now access files directly on tape without having to restore them for sequential operations such as transcoding, ingest, or QC. Instead, they can drag and drop files to or from tape at the desktop level at speeds exceeding 300 megabytes per second. Those benefits can save facilities hundreds of hours in time and resources.

myLTOdna benefits any segment of the media and entertainment industry in which ever-increasing amounts of content regularly exceed spinning-disk storage capacities, according to Michelle Maddox, marketing director at Imagine Products. It is especially useful for field/camera file offloads, postproduction facilities receiving field/camera files, facilities wanting to manage their online storage capacity levels, and those looking to keep files long term for repurposing.

Those who use myLTOdna with PrimeTranscoder can still archive to LTO tape with standard LTFS (myLTO) and use all the functions of PrimeTranscoder: transcoding files to useable formats, stitching together clips, burning in timecode, performing color correction, and adding watermarks.

myLTOdna and PrimeTranscoder are available from the Imagine Products and StorageDNA websites, while LTO drive licenses for HyperTape powered by dnaLTFS are available through StorageDNA’s reseller channel. Also, through StorageDNA’s website, the company will sell a bundle that pairs myLTOdna, HyperTape powered by dnaLTFS, and PrimeTranscoder with an LTO drive.

More information about Imagine Products is available at www.imagineproducts.com. More information about StorageDNA is available at www.storagedna.com.