Grande Vitesse Systems (GVS) is a San Francisco-based company specializing in the design and manufacture of video and digital storage equipment that allows for management of uncompressed data in real-time. GVS develops and manufactures digital acquisition, storage, and distribution units for clients worldwide. They were founded in California in 1989. GVS products have been implemented in a wide range of industries including aerospace, broadcasting, defense, digital cinema, government, medical, television, motion picture, post-production, print, scientific, sport, security, universities, and utilities.
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Locations
GVS Headquarters are located at 390 Fremont Street in San Francisco, California, United States. The headquarters encompass research and development, and support and training facilities. GVS also maintains a manufacturing and testing facility in Fremont, California, and a demo facility in Burbank.
Products
GVS supplies integrated system solutions for mission critical data management, storage and distribution. GVS designs, develops, manufactures and installs enterprise class servers, storage subsystems and network solutions with a focus on the implementation of contained systems. GVS solutions extend from customer management through operational/production applications to platform infrastructure and integration creating a complete operating system.
Digital disk recorders/Video tape recorders
GVS specializes in manufacturing DDR/VTR devices that use a secure, high-capacity media storage system based on regress selection hard drives, allowing the user to record digital video and 16-channel audio, both locally or remotely, with a simple VTR-like controller. These DDR devices capture footage directly from camera without any compression algorithms. GVS DDRs include the capacity for digital capture, mixing, pre- and post-read, and processing of the uncompressed RAW video signal from 2K film resolution, HD or SD, with a proxy file that allows the user to edit while recording. GVS produces VTRs with 1U, 2U, 3U and 4U rack space. They can be integrated to allow real time editing across the network, without having to stop recording. GVS VTR is also a stand-alone device. GVS currently features GVS9000 1XU Pro 2K VTR and GVS9000 2XU 4K VTR among others.
Servers
GVS manufactures mid- to high-end servers as part of their Metropolis line. GVS uses a unique combination of MCR 10GBase -T Ethernet, and 8 Gbit/s fiber network routing, with SAS advanced admen tools, a multi-processor architecture, and server clustering options to allow for the management of local and private clouds. Metropolis allows the user to build public clouds and wide-area multi-node cluster configurations for KVM, VMware and Xen while integrating with legacy machines. GVS produces rugged and compact products, individually manufactured for each client. The Metropolis 1XU Server is a rack mountable system taking up less than 19" of deep rack space, designed with open architecture and low power and noise consumption. GVS Metropolis is designed to capture uncompressed data to a shared network, and share the entire project in real time, since all data are accessed over the fiber channel network.
Storage
In the mid-2000s, GVS developed the Nomadic RAID Systems with GVSan and GVSan Pro, designed to provide high performance, scalable, centralized data storage. The Nomadic RAID Arrays come in a variety of form factors with 4/8GB controllers, and hot-swap systems. Nomadic RAIDs can accommodate dual 8GB fiber, 10Gigabit network and iSCSI technologies and are customized with SAN, NAS and iSCSI applications. GVS redundant RAID controllers support Windows, Solaris, AIX, VMWare, Linux and OS X to execute FlashCopy, Dynamic Volume Expansion, Volume Copy and Enhance Remote Mirror. Products include the Nomadic 1U 12xPro 8GB fibre, iSCI or host interface with 3.6TB of raw space and Nomadic 1U 18xPro, Mini SAS host with 18TB of raw space.
Flypack
GVS Flypack is configured for an HD mobile satellite truck, providing on location uncompressed RAW 4K, 2K, 3D, 4:4:4, 4:2:2 with live encode, capture, edit, storage, and broadcast. The Flypack takes up less than 11U rack space, and is designed to ship anywhere in the world. Main components of the Flypack consist of a rugged system with air shock option, a panoramic touchscreen display (HD SDI, SD SDI, NTSC/PAL LTC), a GVS9000 system for capturing, editing and playback, a GVS Nomadic 1U system containing 24-hour media with 12xHD SDI recorders and playback in a single storage media, Live Cast during capture or playback, an I/O interface for HD SDI and SD video with 3D support, power management, a 12xGVCam with HD SDI camera recording and a complex configuration with a large number of displays and a fibre channel line.
Partnerships
GVS has partnered with a diverse group of clients and industries including Boeing, Chevron, U.C. Berkeley, Pacific Bell, Old Navy, Genentech, Nickelodeon, Fox News, Blue Cross and Warner Bros.
2002
In 2002, GVS partnered with Yellow Dog Linux maker Terra Soft to create a custom cluster node/server/workstation converting a PowerBook G4 into a 2U vertical space. Shipping with both Yellow Dog Linux 2.2 and OS X pre-installed, and in addition to the 1 GHz dual PowerPC G4s, the system featured 1GB of PC-133 SDRAM, an 80GB IDE hard drive, Apple's DVD-RW "SuperDrive," Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire and USB ports, and an ATI Radeon 7500 dual monitor video card. The system also featured a single PCI expansion slot and shipped with an Apple USB keyboard and mouse.
2010
In 2010, GVS partnered with John Lund, a professional photographer, to integrate the GVS9000 2XU VTR and Vision Research's Phantom v10. The 2XU VTR was coupled with Vision Research’s Phantom v10, a high-speed digital camera, to capture HD quality footage in slow motion. Recording in ultra slow motion requires significantly higher frame rates than are produced by conventional cinematic cameras. Lund used the GVS9000 2XU VTR to quickly see captures and make adjustments without interrupting the recording process.
2011
Most recently, GVS partnered up with Toshiba Imaging to design a camera and storage system for NASA. GVS used Toshiba's miniature, high definition, IK-HR1S 1080p/60 camera for integration into a ruggedized, digital video recording system for NASA. The configuration developed for NASA, the GVS90002XU 4K VTR, combined single video channels, Fibre Channel, and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity with the 3CCD Toshiba high definition camera, using DVI output to capture uncompressed HD footage at 1080p/60frames per second (fps) and provide simultaneous playback in both compressed and uncompressed formats.