Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1013519
www.postmagazine.com 28 POST AUGUST 2018 STORAGE FOR VFX STORAGE FOR VFX DIGITALGLUE LEAVES THE POST COMMUNITY 'BREATHLESS' BY LINDA ROMANELLO ATLANTA, GA – DigitalGlue (www.digitalglue.com), which provides equipment, integration, and software development for the production and distribution of digital video as well as designs and implements solutions for complete turnkey content creation, post production, and distribution, earlier this year introduced innovative new high-end storage solutions with the launch of creative.space, an entirely new concept in media storage. The platform is offered as an On-Premise Managed Storage (OPMS) service and features high-speed, high-capacity, 24/7 monitoring, technical support and next-day repairs for an all-inclusive, affordable, fixed monthly rate. DigitalGlue's creative.space targets collaborative workflows by optimiz- ing the latest, most advanced hardware and software for efficiency and increased productivity via its On-Premise Managed Storage service. OPMS removes storage as a bottleneck, helping creatives achieve uninterrupt- ed creative flow. "creative.space is the first on-premise managed storage offering engineered specifically for the media and entertainment industry," explains Tim Anderson, DigitalGlue CEO/CTO. "It was designed with a sim- ple mission in mind: minimize the time it takes to turn vision into reality in an affordable way. We believe that when creatives are given the tools they need to succeed, they are more productive and generate more value for their agencies and clients." Here, DigitalGlue's Nick Anderson, product manager, speaks with Post about the new storage solution. What led DigitalGlue to the launch of creative.space? "Over the last decade, our clients' have pushed us to dive deep into file- based media workflows. We were always forced to stay on the bleeding edge of technology to meet the performance demanded by emerging formats like 4K, 8K, HDR, OpenEXR, 3D and more. Our main value-add was integrating various systems together to make a seamless and coherent workflow. After spending so much time trying to fit the existing products on the market to the customers we kept running into, we realized that the market wasn't listening to what the production community was asking for: An affordable storage that enables them to work with the formats their clients are demanding in real-time. So, we spent the last few years breaking down the elements required to deliver video from the drive to the client and applied that expertise to optimizing the most cutting-edge hardware on the market." What need in the industry did you feel wasn't being met properly? "Apart from my work as product manager for creative.space, I am a colorist and post production supervisor. This industry has been lacking a platform that is focused more on the day-to-day experience that post production professionals actually live through. For us, it starts with the storage. By delivering an enterprise-solution at a lower price point, we hope to bring the benefits of seamless real-time performance to more artists than was possible before. Spending less time dealing with all the technical hassles that arise when moving projects and media between systems mean more long days at the office and less time at home. Even more, it means more time invested in the creative quality of the final content instead of being at the mercy of constant bottlenecks. As a post production professional myself, I wasn't satisfied with the idea that I would have to compromise the quality of the media I do my work with in order to achieve the real-time performance required to effectively make creative decisions. Our goal with everything we do is to minimize the time it takes to turn vision into reality." Since DigitalGlue launched creative.space earlier this year, it has released a number of systems extending the solution. //BREATHLESS was introduced in May. What can you tell us about it? "Yes, we have designed an entire product line-up that is designed for spe- cific production tiers but is also easily scalable to meet any workflow need. //BREATHLESS is really all about breaking through the ceiling on how far we can scale. With each 4TB and soon 16TB NVMe SSD card, we can almost deliver the performance of an entire spinning disk system. This is parallel access storage that scales to accommodate any size team working with high-bandwidth formats, like 4K OpenEXR. It is actually the cheapest SSD system per-gig currently available." //BREATHLESS specifically benefits the visual effects community? "So many of the issues that arise in VFX workflows are caused in the interchange of assets both rendered and unrendered. When artists can't seamlessly communicate their work, the bottlenecks easily stack up. We designed //BREATHLESS as the answer to the issues that arose when VFX teams needed to scale at the highest quality level (4K 16-bit half-float OpenEXR). In addition, our software-defined RAIDing allows users to move drives between systems. This provides VFX teams to use sneaker-net to share assets and save on cloud transfer costs. As we continue our Early Adopter program, we hope to work with VFX companies to build out tools to help share media easily and securely point-to-point to finally bring the benefits of the cloud back down to earth and back into a secure and con- trolled environment." Do you agree that sometimes the importance of storage can be a bit underestimated? "This has always been a problem. At the end of the day, all you end up with is the digital assets and those have to live on storage. Real-time performance is crucial to meeting client expectations and reaching creative flow. The biggest issue has been that the costs of not hav- ing collaborative storage are typically accrued as unexpected time delays. Every time an asset has to be moved or copied is another possible chance for human or computer error. I will be the first to say that direct-attached storage drives have their purpose and they aren't going away any time soon, but the benefits of everyone on your team being able to seamlessly collaborate without delay or chance for error allows everyone to work more effectively. We want to provide a seam- less experience across all storage, not just our own hardware and this is a big part of why we have opened up our Early Adopter program at this stage, to give customers a chance to be involved in our software development process and ensure that we deliver our vision for a de- centralized media ecosystem in an intuitive way that any artist can take advantage of without any specialized training." [Visit us online for the full interview] creative.space's BREATHLESS solution. BREATHLESS targets video production and VFX.