| 摘要 |
<p>A system for capturing, storing and retrieving prerecorded videos recorded and stored in a compressed digital format at a central distribution site is described. A plurality of remote distribution locations are connected through fibre optic connections to the central distribution site. The remote sites may be of one of several types: a video retail store, a cable television (CATV) head end, a factory environment for mass duplication, electronic video mail, or other types. In the case of a video retail store, VHS videotapes, other format videotapes or other video media may be manufactured on demand in as little as three to five minutes for rental or sell-through. A totally automated manufacturing system is described in which the customers can preview and order prerecorded videos for rental and sale from video kiosks. The selected prerecorded video is then either retrieved from local cache storage or downloaded from the central distribution site for manufacturing onto a blank or reused videotape. One feature of the system is the ability to write a two-hour videotape into a Standard Play (SP) format using a high speed recording device. The MPEG-2 closed group of pictures format is used to compress a full-length prerecorded video and audio into a prerecorded video data file of approximately four gigabytes of storage. The prerecorded video data file can be downloaded from the central site to the remote manufacturing site and written onto a standard VHS tape using a parallel decompression engine to write the entire prerecorded video at high speed onto a standard VHS tape in approximately three minutes.</p> |
