Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/477832
7 STORAGE SOLUTIONS MARCH 2015 STORAGE SOLUTIONS hile Tom Brady and the New England Patriots spent the two weeks leading up to Super Bowl XLIX trying to figure out how to score on the vaunted Seattle Seahawks' defense, the post production team at DC Collective was consumed with producing and edit- ing on-air interstitials for ESPN's Super Bowl coverage. Demonstrating that a good game plan isn't crucial only for professional sports teams, DC Collective had the foresight to install a Small Tree TitaniumZ-16 Eth- ernet-based shared storage system to ensure its video editors could handle time-critical projects requiring si- multaneous access to media files. Much like the Patriots, DC Collective was successful in achieving its objective. Focusing on live action commercial production, motion graphic design and post production, DC Collective fea- tures an exceptional team of collaborative thinkers, tireless workers and creative savants whose mission is to advance its clients' brands in a relaxed, ego-free environment. Well-respected in the industry for its creativity, passion and commitment, the agency works with a number of leading cable networks, including Discovery Channel, ESPN, National Geographic, TLC and Travel Channel. Having received positive feedback on Small Tree's shared storage solutions, Adam Corey, partner at DC Collective, reached out to the company for an in-depth discussion about the agency's technology needs. What he wasn't expecting was an impromptu remote demo while he was on the phone. "Small Tree was on the short list of storage vendors we were considering, but when they dialed into our sys- tem to give us a demo during our initial call to them, our choice was easy," stated Corey. "We had been spending a lot of time copying projects between rooms, so what we liked about the TitaniumZ is that we could direct connect all six of our rooms." Running Adobe Premiere, Avid and Autodesk Smoke across Mac Pro trashcans and towers, DC Collective in- stalled a TitaniumZ-16 rack mount system with 48TBs of raw storage capacity, providing its editors with 10GbE performance supporting 4K projects and future-proof- ing the agency's shared storage requirements. Capable of supporting numerous multimedia con- tent creation workstations with a highly-flexible mix of Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet configuration options, TitaniumZ is designed and tested to provide maximum performance for realtime video-editing workflows. With its direct configuration, Small Tree TitaniumZ can scale to 288TBs raw in RAID5. With the addition of its more cost-effective near-line back-up NAS configura- tion, the TitaniumZ can easily provide another 432TBs on the network. "It definitely puts my mind at ease that we have a 10 Gigabit Ethernet solution that is scalable," Corey says. "It's lightning fast! In addition, as we continue to get more 4K work in the future and it starts to tax the sys- tem, we can just put another set of drives on it, which is a far more attractive option compared to moving to another new system." Time was of the essence for the ESPN Super Bowl project facing DC Collective, as one of the many snow storms that hit Boston during this unforgiving winter turned a deadline of four or five days into two days. The team hit the streets of Boston to capture interviews with fans on a Canon EOS C100 camera, transferred the files onto the server and dedicated two editors pulling from the same material while simultaneously access- ing each other's sequences by using the direct link to Adobe Premiere. "In the past, when we got the drive, we would have had to make two clones — one for each person to work with," Corey continues. "With the TitaniumZ, we got the drive, put it in the system and everyone was up and running." To Corey and the rest of the crew at DC Collective, the performance of the TitaniumZ was essential to meeting a tight deadline for a key client. But, just as the Patriots didn't excel solely in one area during their Super Bowl-winning performance, Small Tree's shared storage technology excelled in a variety of capacities beyond delivering exceptional speed. "The TitaniumZ's ease of use was a pleasant sur- prise," Corey shares. "I didn't think it was going to be this easy to use. Without a full-time engineer on staff, I worried that we'd have a bit of a learning curve. It really was plug-and-play for us." A 'SUPER' SHARED STORAGE SOLUTION BY CORKY SEEBER PRESIDENT/CEO SMALL TREE, OAKDALE, MN WWW.SMALL-TREE.COM W