Arts+Labor produces Customer profile streaming video content with Dell hardware Company Arts+Labor Industry Arts, Entertainment and Media Country United States Employees 15 Web site arts-and-labor.com

Challenge

For event organizer C3 Presents, live- streaming YouTube broadcasts have become a crucial component of both the Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza music festivals. The project requires nearly real-time editing of performance recaps, interviews and more. In previous years, the firm used Apple® hardware and software, but this year it needed to simultaneously produce more content and accelerate the production process.

Solution For both festivals, Arts+Labor deployed five Dell Precision™ workstations with Intel® Xeon® and Intel Core™ processors running Adobe® Premiere® Pro video-editing software, Dell™ UltraSharp™ monitors and a Dell PowerVault™ network-attached storage device.

Benefits “Both Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits were • 2-fold more video streamed without adding video-editing staff tremendously successful, partly because of • Estimated 30 hours saved over 3 days on our partnership with Dell. Our creative team incorporating footage from different types of cameras without transcoding had the tools to tell a compelling story and to • Elimination of P2 conversions prior to do it in a hurry.” video editing

Alan Berg, President and Co-Founder, Arts+Labor Application areas • Application and Platform OS Migrations • End User Computing • Intelligent Data Management When you reach Austin’s city limits, you start to feel a unique, electric vibe. Austinites pride themselves on being much weirder than the average Texan. And in this city with the official slogan “live music capital of the world,” the eccentricity reaches fever pitch at the Austin City Limits (ACL) Music Festival every autumn. Attend next year’s event, and you’ll see a wide variety of artists. At a recent festival, the talent ranged from Stevie Wonder to Kanye West, from Social Distortion to Gillian “We moved from Welch to Foster the People to New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Apple hardware Jazz Band. When ACL is in session, music flows 12 hours a day for three days, from eight stages across several acres in Austin’s and software Zilker Park. to Adobe CS5.5 If you’re lucky enough to be one of the In need of a new workflow software on 75,000 fans who attend in person, it’s sure Cameras positioned throughout the festival Dell Precision to be an experience you’ll never forget. But space capture performances, crowd shots, those of us who aren’t so lucky shouldn’t interviews and other content. At this year’s workstations despair. Festival organizer C3 Presents works event, one high-speed camera in the media closely with two visual production studios to lounge recorded festival attendees’ antics because these produce the event on YouTube. Springboard systems do exactly Productions streams the show in real time, while Arts+Labor produces video extras to Technology at work what we need support and surround the live broadcast. “We Hardware produce content for opening and wrapping them to do.” up the show, and for filling breaks between Dell PowerVault™ NX200 acts,” explains Alan Berg, president and network-attached storage system Erik Horn, co-founder of Arts+Labor. “We use artist Creative Director, interviews, we do recap videos and we Dell Precision™ T5500 tower Arts+Labor create other special video projects to fill workstations with Intel® Xeon® any gaps in coverage.” processor 5600 series Dell Precision M4600 mobile The high-end production extends the workstations with Intel Core™ i7 festival’s reach beyond Austin and beyond 2.30GHz processors the weekend of the event, yet Arts+Labor ™ must post its content as close to real-time Dell UltraSharp U2410 monitors as possible. “We want to make sure that Software our broadcast is the first one out there,” says Erik Horn, the firm’s creative director. Adobe® Creative Suite® 5.5 “In this era where people can immediately Production Premium video post to YouTube from their phones, we editing software don’t want any delay in getting our Windows® 7 content up.” Achieving this goal requires a well-thought-out workflow running on high-powered workstations.

2 at a speed of 2,500 frames per second. on two Dell Precision M4600 mobile Arts+Labor editors then slowed down the workstations with Intel Core processors. All footage, stretching two seconds of live of the raw footage was then transferred onto action into as much as three minutes of a Dell PowerVault NX200 network-attached footage. Stage cameras fed directly into the storage (NAS) device. From there, video Arts+Labor production trailer using HD-SDI editors used two Dell Precision T5500 tower over fiber-optic connections. The festival’s workstations with Intel Xeon processors other cameras provided video content to edit the raw video clips. Footage from through P2, SD or CF storage media. the event’s other roaming cameras was transferred from the tower workstations onto In years past, Arts+Labor used MacBook® Pro the NAS via built-in SD and CF card readers. laptops with Apple® Final Cut Pro® software Dell UltraSharp U2410 monitors provided to turn camera feeds into high-quality original color-accurate editing capabilities. “We see this as content. For storage, the firm used a series a trend in our of FireWire hard drives connected in a daisy The Dell Precision workstations are much chain. “This solution worked OK, but it was faster than the legacy MacBooks they industry: Other cobbled together and wasn’t efficient,” Horn replaced. Their next-generation processors says. “Last year, ingesting and editing the deliver up to 45 percent better performance firms are also video to produce the show’s closing segment on multithreaded workstation applications moving away took me several hours. As we planned this compared with the previous generation year’s broadcast, we looked for ways to of Intel Xeon processors. “We were very from Final Cut reduce that time.” impressed with the render times on our new workstations, and that was due in large part Pro to a workflow The search for a new video-editing workflow to their 5600 series Intel Xeon processors,” that incorporates became more urgent when C3 wanted to says Erik Horn. “Our new Dell systems are produce multiple simultaneous YouTube significantly faster than the Apple systems we Dell Precision feeds. “So many viewers accessed previous used to use,” Berg adds. years’ broadcasts that C3 wanted to create workstations additional channels on YouTube,” Berg says. Producing twofold more video content in with 64-bit “In this live-music scenario, we’re really under almost real time the gun, and adding another channel on All the Dell workstations run Windows 7, and Intel processors YouTube increased the amount of content we the two editing systems run Adobe Premiere had to produce. We knew our legacy solution Pro CS5.5 and After Effects CS5.5 editing and AMD wouldn’t work again this year.” software. “We moved from Apple hardware FirePro graphics.” and software to Adobe CS5.5 software on C3, Arts+Labor and Springboard also work Dell Precision workstations because these together to produce online broadcasts of systems do exactly what we need them to Erik Horn, the annual Lollapalooza music festival, and do,” Horn says. “With Final Cut Pro, we would Creative Director, Arts+Labor they face the same time pressures there that have to transcode raw P2 MXF files before they face with ACL. Arts+Labor evaluated we could begin working with them. But with its options for a new hardware and software our Adobe/Dell Precision workflow, footage setup that it could use to produce original from our interview crews and from the video content for both festivals. HD streams coming off the stages can run directly into the timeline without conversion. 45% faster processor, significantly By eliminating these footage conversions, faster workstations we shortened the length of time required to Arts+Labor opted for an all-Dell solution. For ingest a file by about 40 percent. Over the this year’s ACL and Lollapalooza festivals, course of this year’s ACL festival, this saved us footage from the stage cameras was captured about 30 hours.”

3 The combination of Dell Precision opportunity to post cut-together video on convert for our other work,” Horn says. “We’re workstations and Adobe Premiere Pro the main masthead of YouTube.com,” Horn currently using them in our work on feature streamlined the editing process as well. says. “Five minutes before the video went live, films, short form documentaries, branded “Incorporating footage from different types our producer from C3 came in with footage Web content and a broadcast TV special. We of cameras was a daunting task with Final from Girl Talk, who was performing at that see this as a trend in our industry: Other firms Cut Pro,” says Horn. “The editor would have time. There was a clip from the performance are also moving away from Final Cut Pro to convert all the different file types into a that he really wanted in the YouTube video. to a workflow that incorporates Adobe and format that would work with Final Cut Pro. In We took a card from his camera, plugged it Dell Precision workstations with 64-bit Intel contrast, we now can easily combine native directly into one of the editing workstations processors and AMD FirePro graphics.” footage from different camera systems using and moved the clip from the card into our Adobe Premiere Pro on the Dell Precision video timeline. I didn’t even transfer it to a Both Arts+Labor and event producer C3 see workstations, and then convert the final hard drive. It was ready to stream when we the Dell hardware as key to the success of the exports into different compressions and sent the YouTube broadcast five minutes later. online broadcasts of ACL and Lollapalooza. dimensions easily. That saved our video In the past, that would have taken us 10 to 20 “Timing is everything when you’re providing editors a lot of time.” minutes. When it comes to event coverage, online, HD video and audio content during we’re competing in a real-time environment. large festivals,” says Daniel Gibbs, video The streamlined workflow further accelerates Our Dell-based solution enables us to director for C3 Presents. “Thanks to Dell video production by enabling Arts+Labor provide C3 with a new kind of real-time video Precision workstations and Adobe Premiere editors to work simultaneously. “At ACL, one production that wasn’t possible in the past.” Pro software, we were able to cut production editor would be uploading to the live stream time in half, bringing more live music, while someone else was cutting a behind- Telling a compelling story in a hurry backstage action, audience interaction and the-scenes clip, and a third person would be Another benefit of the improved workflow is festival footage online than ever before.” putting together a daily recap edit,” Horn says. that Arts+Labor requires approximately 50 “This really improved the productivity of our percent less storage capacity. “Because we Adds Berg: “Both Lollapalooza and Austin City team. Some of the things we did this year don’t have to convert files from their native Limits were tremendously successful this year, we simply would not have been able to do formats, we’re saving on storage,” Horn partly because of our partnership with Dell. using Final Cut Pro and MacBook Pros.” says. “We were able to fit three days’ worth of Our creative team had the tools they needed, The firm was able to produce twofold more footage from multiple shooters and the stage so they were able to tell a compelling video content than in years past, without feeds on our Dell PowerVault NAS and had story and to do it in a hurry.” Watching the adding staff. tons of storage to spare.” festivals on YouTube will never be the same as attending in person. But thanks to C3 and Arts+Labor can now make changes to video Better yet, the Dell equipment is more flexible Arts+Labor, it’s the next best thing. content in almost real time, thanks to the than the firm’s legacy Apple setup. “We don’t accelerated process. “On the Friday night have to invest in a broadcast-specific setup of the Lollapalooza festival, we had the because the Dell Precision workstations easily

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