Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/283517
8 • Storage Solutions • March 2014 STORAGE SOLUTIONS Pro, Maxon Cinema 4D and Autodesk Maya. One PC-based suite offers Avid DS, Adobe Master Collection CS6 and Imagineer Mocha Pro. A pair of PC-based audio suites run Fairlight EVO, and a single Mac-based audio bay features Avid's Pro Tools 10. The Underground's storage solution consists of a 228TB SAN comprising Scale Logic Genesis RX RAID running Hy- perFS (www.scalelogicinc.com) for shared online storage to all but the Avid DS suite, where the SAN works locally; FlavourSys Strawberry Project Management software plays a key role in the workflow. The Scale Logic products have been in place for about 18 months, says Doner's director of engineering Steve Ken- nedy. "Although we fill out storage pretty quickly, the size of the SAN is more a case of speed over storage: We need- ed spindles fast enough to support the work for all our edit suites and laptops simultaneously," he explains. "The Underground typically works from 9am until 6pm, with oc- casional evening and weekend work." Scale Logic's HyperFS SAN has proven to be "very user friendly and stable, without any issues," Kennedy reports. "It does everything it needs to do. And Scale Logic provided us with a one-stop solution, including Strawberry Project Man- agement software, which they fully support. That usually doesn't happen with companies and third-party software." Kennedy says Strawberry serves as "a central solution for all the workstations, no matter whether they're Final Cut Pro, Avid, Adobe. They all work off Strawberry; it's a very important part of the process for us." Doner's recent Rise spot for JC Penney, which aired na- tionally during the Winter Olympics, followed the typical workflow at The Underground. After footage arrived from the shoot, an asset project was created on the Genesis RX RAID running HyperFS via Strawberry Project Management software and the footage was loaded onto the SAN under that project. The footage was also sent out as an archive to LTO-5 tape for a back up if needed. Offline editorial created an offline project on the SAN via Strawberry, graphics created a graphics project, audio an audio project, and finish editorial a finish project in the same way. All of them sub-mounted the asset project so they could work with the footage. Once offline editorial was complete and approved, it passed an EDL to finish editorial, which conformed the spot from the sub-mounted asset project. Finish editorial could also sub-mount the graphics and audio projects to get elements from them to complete the spot. When the spot was client approved, mastered and sent out for broadcast traffic, all projects associated with the spot were archived to LTO-5 tape for long-term storage and removed from the SAN. Kennedy notes that The Underground is "talking about upgrading to the latest [editing] software release and pos- sibly adding four more edit systems. At that point we'll look at more storage, too. What's nice about our Scale Logic sys- tem is that if we increase our editing capacity we can also increase our SAN capacity without redesigning the system or investing in a new one." G-TECHNOLOGY G-Technology (www.g-technology.com) is now ship- ping its latest products, G-Drive Pro with Thunderbolt and G-Dock ev with Thunderbolt. G-Drive Pro is a desktop, external hard drive solution in 2TB and 4TB models, which delivers data transfer rates of up to 480MB/s. It's easily transportable for editing in the field or in the studio and has dual Thunderbolt ports for daisy chaining with other Thunderbolt-enabled devices. "G-Drive Pro is optimized for performance and capac- ity," says product line manager Greg Crosby. "Four hard drives working together give the level of performance of a RAIDed solution at a cost- effective price." G-Drive Pro is well suited for transferring and storing content captured in the field or for shuttling data to those involved in the produc- tion and post processes. "It's so compact that it can easily fit in a Pelican case," he notes. Early adopters are working with multi-stream 2K and 4K data, and looking for "high capac- ity and high performance in a small, desktop-style solution instead of a larger multi-bay RAID configuration," Crosby explains. "Adventure photographer and filmmaker Lucas Gilman has five in a Pelican case, which he uses to store 4K content captured in the field." G-Dock ev with Thunderbolt is part of the Evolution Se- ries. Its two-bay, hot swappable JBOD media drive system can be user configured to RAID 1 (protected) or RAID 0 (performance). It ships with two 1TB removable and por- table G-Drive ev external hard drive modules with USB 3.0. It provides dual Thunderbolt ports for external storage ex- pansion and daisy chaining with other G-Dock ev solutions or other Thunderbolt-based devices. "G-Dock is a flexible, scalable and expandable storage solution," says Crosby. "We're highlighting it for content cap- ture — offloading camera media to multiple G-Drive evs g-tech's g-dock ev features thunderbolt connectivity.