Overview

It was not long ago that the average computer had a 200 MB hard drive, a 50 MHz processor, and a connection to the outside world that consisted of either a 3.5 floppy disk or a 9,600 band modem. If the computer was connected to a network, which was rare, the network consisted of a simple hub operating at 10 Mbps. A single, large file transfer from one computer to another brought the entire network to its knees. In this environment, it seemed ridiculous to move a project from a video tape to a computer, where it could take at least 200 GB of storage. It was equally ridiculous to move film images to such a computer environment. There were a few digital film facilities, but they employed special computers and huge storage systems. To sum up, just a few years ago, computers and networks could not support professional imaging applications.

Fast forward to 2003: You cannot purchase a hard disk smaller than 80 GB. Processors run at 1 GHz or faster. Floppies are almost obsolete, having been replaced by keychain USB drives and gigabyte PCMCIA cards. Many businesses have at least a 1 Mb DSL connection, and networks are deployed at 100BaseT or gigabit speeds for a few hundred dollars. Clearly, this is a different environment from just a few years ago. But one additional advance has been crucial in enabling imaging applications on the desktop compression. Using current compression technologies, that 200 GB file is now 8 GB.