ABERDEEN

MAXIMUM THROUGHPUT S K R O W T E N T C E R I D A T A

D G-TECHNOLOGY

A supplement to the March 2009 issue of

PROAVIO P

VISIT OMNEON IN BOOTH SU7217 Storage Solutions The importance of storage We all need a place to put our stuff. By KEN McGORRY

Honestly, who doesn’t need more stor- age these days? “That’s the whole meaning of life, isn’t it?” George Carlin has said, “Trying to find a place for your stuff!” Fact is, especially with the explosion in low-cost digital acquisition, the innumerable layers and elements that compositing and VFX afford (or require) and the almost endless varia- tions and versions that today’s NLEs allow, everybody’s got more stuff, and everybody needs to find the best place to put their stuff. What’s more, you need to be able to find your stuff, immediately, when the occasion arises that you need more stuff to go with the stuff you already have. It’s amazing how much more stuff there is to store today — even for stop- motion animators. In this report, Post spoke with animators, indie producers, VFX specialists, music video producers, Webisode directors, commercial col- orists, even feature film audio post pros. And they all have innovative ways to store their stuff.

AARDMAN’S LOAF AND DEATH Ian Fleming, head of production technology at Bristol, England’s Aardman Animations, the multi-Oscar- Aardman has been using Max-T’s winning stop-frame animation studio, Sledgehammer HD!O while was instrumental last summer in the producing work like the special purchase of a new storage system from A Matter of Loaf and Death. Maximum-Throughput. Since January

STORAGE SOLUTIONS • S-1 Storage Solutions

Aardman pioneered the new work- over the Internet without the need for flow on last year’s half-hour TV special, dedicated workstations.) Wallace & Gromit in “A Matter of Loaf Finally, Aardman gave Big Bang, a and Death” (our heroes in a bakery), post house based here, DPX files of directed by Nick Park. There is howev- Loaf and Death for Baselight color er, something old school at work here grading and an HDCAM SR deliverable that resembles the classic offline/ for broadcast. online workflow. “We’ve gone for the A Matter of Loaf and Death attracted offline model, where we use 14.3 million viewers in the UK alone Sledgehammer’s external software to during its broadcast on Christmas Day produce standard def proxies to go and was the highest rated show on any back to Final Cut as just an offline edit,” channel in 2008. Even in standard def, Fleming says. Fleming says, the show looked “beauti- Aardman subsequently conforms the ful,” adding that it was Nick Park’s “first sequences through Sledgehammer’s digital project, and he loves it.”The next Maxmedia by using the Final Cut EDLs. Aardman feature film will also forsake Ian Fleming: Aardman’s next film “Eventually, the movie builds up on the film for an all-digital pipeline. will have an all-digital pipeline. Sledgehammer,”he says. On Loaf and Death, the full half-hour, WE’RE GONNA NEED 2008, this would be Aardman’s third including lots of extraneous shots, did MORE STORAGE installation of a Sledgehammer HD!O fit onto the 2TB system, although LA-based writer/director/producer file server and realtime, multi-format- toward the end, the animation team Patrick Read Johnson’s 1970’s coming- video system. While Aardman (www. began to archive off some material. of-age movie tells of a film-obsessed aardman.com) creates feature films and Thanks to Sledgehammer’s video teenager suspiciously similar to TV programs, this 2TB unit was headed card, “you can play all these image Johnson himself 30 years ago. His for the company’s facility devoted to commercial production. It fulfilled an array of roles: as a DDR play-out system; a fast NAS file server for edit bays; and as a format-conversion, media-processing and assembly solution. The idea was to exploit Sledgehammer’s versatility to stream- line workflow. Even, or especially, in an art form as intricate as stop-motion animation, time is money. Aardman animators shoot their multitudi- nous frames with Canon SLRs. From there, Fleming says, “The whole pipeline is IT — Linux scripts. The image sequences are 77’s production made use of CalDigit’s HDPro and HDOne. scripted into the Sledge storage. This means you’ve got sequences in realtime.” Fleming movie, 77, premiered at the Hamptons instant playback and review of what is adds, “It’s basically a big NAS — net- Festival last year and took the coming off the studio floor at full qual- work-attached storage — with high Heineken Red Star Award. But before ity, because the Sledgehammer does- def play-out. We can access any of that could happen, Johnson n’t need to render.”In past productions, [sequences] over the network and pull needed storage. Lots of storage. Fleming says, turning sequences stuff off.” As it turned out, as Johnson labored which could be 200 to 300 frames into (Max-T also champions its own to get his project fully funded, unseen “huge QuickTimes was about as slow multi-user collaborative editing solu- hands at CalDigit were working to as you could get.” tion, Maxedit, which users can access improve workflow. But does a speedier

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CalDigit salesman. Patrick Read Johnson: (CalDigit’s HDPro is an eight-drive dependable storage hardware RAID with 20GB ultra-high “can give an extra bandwidth connectivity. You can con- six weeks of reliable nect together “as many HDPros as you up-time to my want”and it’s also a SAN-ready storage creative team.” subsystem.) “We were so happy with the HDPro that we soon bought two HDOne units as well,” Johnson says. “And all three have worked flawlessly since we first turned them on.” Johnson also values the investment he made in converting all his footage, in all its many formats, to 1080 24p video on D-5 tapes. “Because of the ‘aspect ratios within aspect ratios’ for- mat and ‘70s graininess we were going for, we knew we’d never really need better than that for our final material. When we finally got around to shoot- ing ‘The Hollywood Section’of the film, we did end up scanning all of the Super-35 anamorphic at 2K. But the rest of the picture — the Super-16 material — is now all QuickTime clips at Apple ProRes 4:2:2 resolution and it’s absolutely beautiful.” workflow truly speed things up? dreams of , Johnson and “To the degree it allows more time crew shot a lot of Super-16mm 1:1.85 FILMWORKSFX SPRUCES to actually try things, and see these and reduced the frame and centered it UP MANURE things actualized with faster render in a 2.35 anamorphic frame: “That was Every once in a while you get a times, and fewer system failures, a the format that felt like Wadsworth, whole movie’s worth of VFX dumped in smooth-running editorial pipeline is a Illinois, in 1977.”When our hero (who is your lap — like when a production godsend,”says Johnson. “What I hate to obsessed with the recently released abruptly decides to change vendors. see, however, is the misperception by ) finally makes it to Ken Locsmandi and FilmworksFX expe- some that just because the system is Hollywood the film format switches to rienced something like this recently faster, you should automatically allow Super-35 anamorphic. Home-movie with a film that needed to make it to for less editing time. A director and sequences used Johnson’s own origi- Sundance. This year’s Sundance. editor still need time to feel and think nal Super-8 camera. VFX were shot on “We had to finish 123 bluescreen and analyze the consequences of their anything from DV to HVX to CineAlta. composites in four days,” says post production choices.” Johnson and crew were happy with Locsmandi, “from delivery of the materi- Johnson does not relish giving away their XServe RAID but, when they al — with no VFX editorial.”The comedy advances in workflow speed purely for needed more HD storage, they went film, Manure, starring Billy Bob Thornton the sake of budget. He’d like to tell film for something more portable — a low- and Tea Leone, was shot on Red by pro- financiers that “it’s worth investing in a cost CalDigit HDPro. Johnson’s con- ducing brothers Michael and Mark faster, more capable system not cern over the unit’s portability were Polish (Michael directed). Locsmandi because I can shave six weeks off my assuaged when he saw the FedEx and the Polish brothers grew up in the editing schedule, but because I can delivery man show up with the box on same hometown, and Locsmandi felt an give an extra six weeks of reliable up- his shoulder. When his team installed obligation to give the film and all its VFX time to my creative team so they can the new system they were shocked and environment shots his best shot really put the film through a proper that it was up and operating in five despite the demands of the deadline. creative shake-down cruise.” minutes. It had already been pre-for- The film ultimately had 300 VFX shots — To evoke 77’s small-town teen with big matted to Johnson’s RAID level by the including 200 bluescreen shots for

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Storage Solutions

Manure: FilmworksFX provided VFX, including airplanes, on a super-tight versions and viewing and Assimilate deadline to make Sundance. They used JMR storage solutions. Scratch work. This way, when working on shots in DI in Scratch with material which FilmworksFX had to create back- Genesis and film. converted to DPX files, Locsmandi did grounds. On Manure, Locsmandi and compa- not need to halt editorial. Santa Monica’s FilmworksFX (www. ny employed two JMR BlueStor units. “Every time we finished a VFX shot, filmworksfx.com) has a long list of VFX One was for editorial, since we’d look at it in the DI but then we’d POST_SUP_HALF_H_nobleed:POST_SUP_HALF_Hcredits on many feature films including FilmworksFX 2/16/09 was also10:41 acting AM asPage VFX 1 have to make sure there was continu- Apocalypto, which was shot on editorial, and the other handled con- ity so we’d have to load it back into

Patent Pending

Advanced recording technology

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PureDV’s Lester Cohn uses an Enhance RAID T5 U320 when working on editorial and for music videos. editorial [Final Cut HD], convert it to Locsmandi says, “This movie would not services. Recent rock acts that have got- ProRes and watch it in the edit. It was have been finished if I did not have ten the PureDV treatment include fast and furious and just crazy; there their hardware. I was able to view the Fallout Boy and Taking Back Sunday. was so much conversion going on, 4K fast enough and convert it quickly Another is country-pop singer Charissa’s both ways!” enough to keep up with the produc- HD music video, Come on Now. Locsmandi says he “ended up doing tion schedule.” While the case of Cohn, originally a fine art student, some VFX shots in Scratch right off the Manure was extreme, it was not was an early adopter on the Chicago system. One thing that was really nice unique. Locsmandi cautions that digi- rock-club scene, shooting on Canon was that we maintained all the original tal acquisition is causing “more and Opturas and cutting on Canopus. Red file names when we did our ren- more chaos” in post compared to the Compared to fine art, video produc- der and I could easily go back and find relative strictness of a film production. tion was “instant gratification.” [material] really fast on the machine, “With digital acquisition, you just shoot Cohn went on to shoot for major like if I had to make a shot longer.” and say, ‘Well we’ll figure it out later.’ labels like Warner Bros. who wanted Locsmandi says that some filmmak- The burden is on post now, and it’s not well produced concert footage of cer- ers wrongly believe that Red is like any necessarily saving [producers] money.” tain rock acts for Internet promotion videotape with immediate digitizing and other uses. Today PureDV will shoot and editing. “It’s not that straightfor- PUREDV ROCKS multi-cam with Sony F-900s, Sony EX or ward. You’re doing a lot of conversion Ten-year-old PureDV (www.puredv. on Panasonic P2s and uses Enhance and trying to figure everything out — com) in Chicago was founded by Lester Technology storage products. it’s a big step.” FilmworksFX ultimately Cohn, a producer who loves music and On a concert DVD for Paul Stanley (of delivered Manure to Warner Bros. as made his name shooting unsigned local Kiss) Cohn used a compact 10-bit log DPX files. The Sundance bands. Today PureDV shoots, edits (on EnhanceRAID T5 U320 SCSI desktop screening was on HDCAM SR. Avid and Final Cut), provides effects RAID storage array and got the job As to the one-two punch of com- (such as After Effects), graphics, audio done with 1.5 TB. He used an Apple G5 bining Scratch and BlueStor, post and DVD authoring among other dual 2.7 with 8GB of RAM and an AJA

S-8 • STORAGE SOLUTIONS ture “was like pushing elephants through a straw. When you’re working with uncompressed footage you need more bandwidth for editing,” he says, “especially if you’re doing multiple streams at one time. This is where the Enhance product comes in.” Once Cohn started running the T5, “it was like night and day. It made my life so much easier. I left that thing run- ning for weeks on end and it never had a problem.” Today, he says, “a lot of things I’m working with are multiple streams from 720 P2 card cameras.” Recently Cohn was bidding a concert shoot PureDV’s Cohn shot country-pop singer Charissa’s music video, Come on where he planned on using three Now, in high definition. Panasonic HPX-2000s with additional coverage from handheld Panasonic Kona card. Cohn shot the show with 12 T5, Cohn set about editing his Paul camcorders. His finished work may cameras, but they were a “mish-mash” Stanley footage uncompressed on appear on MTV2, on value-added of formats, determined by a tight budg- Final Cut HD. But trying to edit materi- DVDs or, increasingly, on the Internet. POST_SUP_HALF_H_nobleed:POST_SUP_HALF_Het, without matching timecode. al from 2/17/09the concert’s 9:25 12 AMcameras Page on 1 “You’re giving the client so much more Before acquiring the EnhanceRAID FCP with its (then new) multi-cam fea- bang for the buck by shooting 720 —

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STORAGE SOLUTIONS • S-9 Storage Solutions

it’s still high def and on an HD network Huddle (concerning the integration of of intranet for us to get back and forth it will still look fantastic.” Cohn was a college football). But Wonderland is and store things and get things mixed.” pioneer of the value-added DVD into something new — and demand- When not on the road and not phys- footage that often accompanies a ing — for HBO. Ring Life is a series of ically working at Wonderland, music release. “Now you have to be as shorts documenting the lives of up- McCullough uses a G-RAID to work creative as possible about finding new and-coming boxers (who may or may from his home. “I can take my MacBook ways to present media to fans.” not eventually hit the big time with and my G-RAID drive and go home and Cohn now has his eye on Enhance’s major bouts televised on HBO). cut HD. That’s a wonderful thing.” newer external SATA product line. “I’m McCullough shoots and edits these McCullough worked with HBO pro- constantly trying to find out what is mini-docs on the road all around the ducer Thomas Huffine, who created the newest, fastest drive I can have. country. Each fighter’s story is present- the Ring Life series. Huffine says, That’s because you want your creativi- ed in three segments covering the “There’s no doubt that the proliferation ty to fully come out. You buy these fighter and his family life (if any); the and mobility of digital storage has products because they allow you the final installment covers fight night. allowed the business to change. And reliability to have the fastest through- Each segment is five to seven minutes. the business has reacted by saying, put speed, which allows you to do “HBO is the gold standard for box- ‘This is great — how much faster and more and be more creative.” ing,” McCullough says, “and this is a how much better can you do it again?’ look at some of the guys who are on So the ability to take the material that STORAGE IN WONDERLAND the undercards.” you need digitally on the road and The multiple-Emmy-winning team McCullough shoots the fighters work is a light-speed step up from just at NYC’s Wonderland Productions and their fights on a Canon XL-H1 a few years ago when you were stuck (www.wonderlandnyc.com) has lots of using handy HDV cassettes. He can to whatever desktop situation you sports-oriented productions to their easily shoot six hours of tape on the were editing in.” credit, many shown on HBO, ESPN and fly to dramatize each boxer’s story. Huffine adds, “Ring Life is right out SNY. Director/editor Bill McCullough is “When we’re on these road trips, I’ll on the edge of the industry as far as partnered with producer Dan Klein in bring my drive with me, I’ll digitize being a completely digital production. the company and John Wiggins, right there and I’ll cut.” On some fight People in the industry are expecting nights, McCullough needs to turn more for less these days. HBO is around the segment quickly. “I’ll go embracing digital with open arms in shoot the fight, then go back to my every aspect from shooting digitally to hotel room with my laptop, camera going all the way to the end digitally. and my G-RAID drive, and digitize it Shooting physical film is going to be and cut right there.” left up to the major studios.” Fight night can still add up to three hours of tape and McCullough digi- COLOR FOR SPOTS tizes the footage in realtime. “The cool Post production veterans Bob Festa, thing is, as I’m shooting, I kind of Clark Muller and Darby Walker opened know my selects and where I’m going Santa Monica’s NewHat here last year to put them.” with an all-British array of color grad- McCullough’s G-Tech G-RAIDs each ing systems, including Pandora store 1TB and he was able to hold six Platinum systems and, recently, a boxers’stories on the one he dedicates Filmlight Baselight Four. Richard Alcala to Ring Life. (He also archives copies in came on board at NewHat as senior case there is any loss.) “It’s a good engineer last August. Wonderland’s Bill McCullough uses workhorse and it’s portable and reli- The shop (www.newhat.tv) special- G-RAIDs and TerraBlocks. able. I use all G-RAIDs.” izes in color correction for TV commer- For work on a longform, cials. Big-budget spots for big national owner/partner in audio sister compa- McCullough allows that you want mul- advertisers. The automakers alone that ny Wonderland Sound, also collabo- tiple editors sharing footage. NewHat has done color work for say a rates with McCullough on scoring their Wonderland has its 7TB Facilis lot: Alfa Romeo, Dodge Ram, Jeep, productions. TerraBlock networked to four FCP edit Land Rover, Lexus, Lincoln and Mazda. McCullough cuts on both Avid and rooms but often today the TerraBlock It’s all digits, of course, and that Final Cut and recently completed edit- serves as an aid to mixing and scoring means they need storage. Besides ing an HBO documentary, Breaking the projects at the facility. “It’s a great kind pushing digits around the shop, Alcala

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cials, and NewHat clients tend to be film people, NewHat scans on two Spirit 4K DataCines. But they work in 2K — for now. The 2K workflow on

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F “We scan full-ap 35mm negative at NewHat, which houses two Thomson Grass Valley Spirit 4K Datacines, uses full 2K resolution and now we have the a DataDirect SAN for its DI work. full image that, when you bring it into the color corrector, we can pan, push says, it’s about “doing it in realtime, full that’s what the DataDirect SAN allows in, we can tilt up and down and frame resolution and in multiple streams, and us to do.” For film-acquired commer- it the way we want.” POST_SUP_HALF_H_BLEED:POST_SUP_HALF_H 2/17/09 3:01 PM Page 1

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When color grading is finished where they were color grading fea- as many as 40 in the past year for such NewHat colorists typically play out to ture films in 2K resolution using data major advertisers as Apple, Levi’s, high def tape — about 90 percent of files transferred to DVS Clipster local Ubisoft and M&M’s. And that means the time. “There are some clients who attached storage. Using the SAN at lots of digits. want to walk away with a FireWire NewHat is a new paradigm. When Alvaro Cubillas is VP and head of drive,”Alcala says. These clients want to seeking a file on a SAN, Alcala says, technology at Laika. It’s his responsibil- keep their media as uncompressed, full “You just point to it. It’s really very ity to support activities at both Laika bit-depth data files for additional VFX convenient. There’s a lot more flexibil- Entertainment (feature films, etc.) and work or other processing. “In which ity having all of the elements residing Laika House, a bustling division busy case we can apply the color to files, put on one large pool of storage.” with commercials, branded entertain- them back onto the SAN, then pull ment and more. Laika House was cre- them off the SAN on a workstation and LOTS OF DIGITAL ASSETS ated in 2005 with the purchase of Will deliver them on a FireWire drive.” If you saw Post’s February cover story Vinton Studios, the Portland pioneers Another thing the xSTREAMScaler on the hit stop-motion feature film of stop-motion and CG. SAN allows NewHat to do is, “when we Coraline, you’ve seen just some of what The whole Laika operation is spread scan the film in, we can then take an animation house Laika does. across three buildings in three loca-

Laika’s Coraline and Al Cubillas (inset): The studio’s datacenters all house NetApp gear.

EDL, load it into the color correction sys- The reality of painstaking stop- tions. “We have datacenters in all three tem, and it basically pulls in those spe- motion production is such that it does buildings,” Cubillas says, and all the cific shots with handles. We could actu- not actually generate a whole lot of dig- storage therein is from NetApp. One ally do the conform within the color its in a day’s work. Or even a week’s. But building’s datacenter primarily sup- correction system. if you look at the whole of Portland, OR’s ports the corporate offices and Laika “Formatted, we have about 220 TB of Laika (www.laika.com) — including its House projects. Nearby is the building real storage area,” Alcala says. “That’s CG entertainment department and its with the largest data center — it broken down into multiple volumes cel, Flash and motion graphics work — serves Laika’s many CG efforts. and that’s how we’re able to sustain the you understand the company’s claim The third facility, designed for stop- bandwidth and the streams we have.” that it makes “every kind of animation motion feature production, such as Alcala comes to NewHat from for every medium.” Coraline, has its own datacenter with Technicolor’s Burbank DI facility That includes lots of commercials — NetApp storage. The stop-motion

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operation, which used 50 sets just for Coraline, is, at least for now, located about 20 minutes away on the free- way. About 30 animators worked on Henry Selick’s Coraline. The film’s digi- tally captured still frames were shot in stereo at 24fps and cached in the local stage’s NetApp storage. “The digital effects on Coraline were done by Laika Entertainment folks,” Cubillas says. And all effects — rig removal is a big deal — were stored up at the datacenter housed in the corpo- rate offices known as the Conway building. Each night the data stores of the day’s stop-motion work and the digital effects/rig-removal work are synced there. Laika produced this Oregon Lottery spot recently for agency BPN, Inc. “We’ve had an exclusive relationship with NetApp for seven years,” Cubillas — and exceeded, in a lot of cases — backbone of where all our frames are says, although Laika would look at dif- our data-services needs for commer- stored for all of our work.” ferent vendors over that time. “That cials, corporate storage, CG work and Laika currently maintains over POST_SUP_HALF_H_nobleed:POST_SUP_HALF_Hhas not been due to blind loyalty but stop-motion 2/16/09 feature 8:39 work.” AM Over Page the 1 200TB across all three datacenters, all due to the fact that their products met years, NetApp products became “the on NetApp gear, including their tradi-

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tional Data ONTAP-managed systems they were shown was in HD. Which Wanted here at the Hitchcock Theater. and Data ONTAP GX systems used for was better? Almost always the con- “We’re really proud of them,”says David CG and VFX work. NetApp’s Data sumers claimed the video with the “Doc” Goldstein, VP of post production ONTAP GX allows for easy expansion of superior audio tracks was high def — engineering, Universal Studios Sound. storage and increase of performance even when it was actually SD. “The movie sounds really amazing — behind the scenes, and without inter- They understand this at Burbank’s they did a great job of carrying the rupting source service, which is key to Universal Studios Sound (www.film- sound to the visuals in that show, animation. “Their GX technology makersdestination.com) This is the which are pretty striking.” allows us to have the kind of control venerable 18-stage facility where clas- Storage and workflow for audio where we can do live ‘data shuffling.’ sic movies and TV programs have got- have undergone important changes We can tune and optimize during the ten sophisticated audio post since here in recent years. “Our [audio] files film to make sure that the artists are they had sound. Today, Universal offers aren’t usually as big, but we have a lot working as fast as they can,” Cubillas mixing, sound editorial and design, more of them,” says Goldstein. “We says. “Not interrupting production at ADR, Foley (and the original Jack Foley have three tiers of storage here. We the height of production is a holy grail stage), audio preservation and restora- have a SAN that is our working storage when you’re on the data side. You try tion, digital mastering, and sound — we work on Pro Tools systems and to get as much as you can out of the transfer for feature films, television, the Pro Tools thinks that the SAN is

studio’s very precious resources.” Wanted: Universal Studios Sound mixed this Angelina Jolie film. They use And that’s Cubillas’s biggest chal- ICON and Harrison boards and SNS storage. lenge. However, he stresses, “We’re a company of filmmakers. We’re not a trailers, and independent projects and local storage. At the end of the day, we company of technologists. We’re mak- it’s all digital. They do big pictures here, drag that off to our nearline storage, ing cartoons and having a lot of fun!” like 300 and Watchmen. And there are which is about 100TB of RAID storage. plenty of TV programs — Universal’s And in the middle of the night that’s UNIVERSAL SPEED parent, since 2004, is NBC Universal. backed up to our LTO-3 tape library.” How important is quality audio to a Universal’s Chris Jenkins and Frank With 18 soundstages to serve, quality picture today? One HDTV con- A. Montaño (along with freelance pro- Universal’s sound department has two sumer experiment a few years ago duction mixer Petr Forejt) mixed the separate areas. “We have the main post asked civilians which of two video clips Oscar-nominated sound for Universal’s production area which houses all but

S-14 • STORAGE SOLUTIONS Storage Solutions

two of our mixing stages,” says chief engineer Jeff Taylor, “and we have our BluWave Audio Building.”The BluWave Building is new and was designed by Taylor to house a sophisticated storage operation, including a new SNS SAN, along with many other activities. It houses digital mastering (or “post-post production”) doing foreign releases, DVD audio prep, and other aftermarket work. Restoration and preservation of Universal’s (and third parties’) classic Universal’s mixing team on Wanted was nominated for an Oscar. films also take place here. Digital trans- fer represents the third group in the files and work on them. It’s really great Gigabit Ethernet fabric sitting under- building and, acting as a “Swiss Army in sound editorial when you have more neath that is our own private LAN. We knife”of digital audio, they can transfer than one person working on a project.” have our own servers and manage the any sound medium to any other. “With the three tiers of storage,” storage on that through an active Among others, Taylor works in the new Taylor says, “we have approximately directory environment.” building with Jeremy Ayers, Gary 70TB of online 4GB-attached fibre SAN That’s how the sound department Gorman and Andy Peach. architecture within the department.”At manages the security of all the work “All these various areas are attached least half of the department’s 200 or so passing through. And that includes to the storage,” Goldstein points out, Pro Tools systems are fibre attached to third-party work — movies that are “which means it’s easy for different peo- the SAN backbone and that number is just visiting. The idea is to serve up POST_SUP_HALF_H_BLEED:POST_SUP_HALF_Hple in different areas to get the same 2/17/09likely to grow. 8:38 “In AMaddition, Page we 1 have a media to working creative profession- Storage Solutions

als while curtailing opportunities for tion for the soundstages includes over Tools systems,” Goldstein says. “That’s piracy at the same time. In fact, securi- 80 seats of SNS’s SANmp with Fibre because they’re edited on Pro Tools sys- ty may be “job one”at Universal Sound. Channel switches and 12 IBM DS4200 tems and we have to have a very trans- Outside editors working on the lot, enterprise-class storage arrays. The FC parent workflow to and from the edi- for instance, need full and unfettered fabric is connected via 10GB Ethernet, tors as they’re working on a mix stage access to their material, but no access allowing the mapping of any FC because films are always changing.” to other shows. Editors have their cre- resource to a specific user as needed. The picture changes even during the dentials for their particular job but, Universal’s new storage has really audio post process. “Versioning is a huge within the configuration of the fabric, made it easier to protect filmmakers’ deal,”Taylor says. “It’s another reason that that’s the only material they can see or work, Goldstein says. “You can central- our storage environment has been very hear. “We have people, Eddie Bydalek, ize your picture files and limit access to beneficial, because we can track and Rob Carr, who do the lion’s share of the the very few people who have to have manage lots and lots of versions. We management for us,”Taylor says. it.” When they’re done working, per- keep only the current version on the “Some of our competitors are still car- missions and access are removed, and Fibre Channel storage array and we rying FireWire drives around from room files can be deleted at the end of the keep all the version history in our near- to room,”Goldstein says. “The advantage project, obviating the need for copies line environment so that the filmmakers to the way we’re doing it is it’s much that could fall into the wrong hands. can go back very quickly if they need to.” more secure. Everything can be locked Universal Sound runs a combination Filmmakers working at Universal down by the administrators. You don’t of Digidesign ICON boards and tradi- expect speed. “The ping pong tables have a zillion copies because everybody tional Harrison MPC and Series Twelve don’t get as much action as they used can work off the same files off the SAN.” consoles. But even on the projects to,” Goldstein says. “Filmmakers [have] a Universal’s new SAN is from Studio being mixed on the Harrisons “all of the lot more to deal with — DI, special Network Solutions (SNS) and it first tracks are being played back from Pro effects and sound — and it’s all happen- came online in spring of 2008. The solu- Tools systems, and the recorders are Pro ing at the same time.” POST_SUP_HALF_H_BLEED:POST_SUP_HALF_H 2/16/09 8:08 PM Page 1

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