February 2004 - Rorke SAN used in Win A Data with Tad Hamilton

MAXIMIZING PRODUCTIVITY
Producing the half-hour weekly show California Dream Homes, which airs on KGTV/San Diego, is not only time consuming for multimedia production company Groovy Like a Movie, it’s also “very processor and personnel consuming,” says executive producer Brent Altomare.

To maximize its productivity, Groovy Like a Movie (www.groovylikeamovie.com) has tied together three suites featuring Apple Final Cut Pro, outfitted with AJA Kona capture cards, with a 2GB Fibre Channel SAN controlled by Rorke Data’s Image SAN OS X software.

“With the SAN we can continue to do other business,” such as commercials and corporate videos, while cutting the magazinestyle real estate series, Altomare reveals. “And if we need more than one suite working on a project, we now have that capability. Without ImageSAN we couldn’t be that productive.” ImageSAN OS X enables editors, effects and graphic ar tists, and broadcasters who rely on the Mac to focus on content creation rather than their storage systems. ImageSAN OS X transforms their workflow with high-speed file sharing and promotes creative collaboration.

Altomare explains that Groovy Like a Movie does all the TV spots and in-arena productions for the San Diego Sockers professional soccer team. “They have a 42-game season, so we have a tremendous amount of raw footage to choose from.With our ultiple edit suites, we can be logging and capturing footage while editors are working with previously logged and captured raw material. This dramatically reduces time spent on these tasks while increasing the creative time the editors can apply to the projects.” The company’s storage and networking also “provides the ‘wow factor’ for clients, even those who aren’t technically savvy,” he notes. “Clients are impressed by having access to the same information from any suite with no copying. Everyone has had to wait for files to copy from one place to another.To say we never have to do that — everyone can understand how that saves time.”

A year ago, when Altomare was doing extensive research on networking solutions, Rorke was the only company in his price range “that showed how multiple editing suites could edit material without dropping frames,” he says. “Rorke’s service and technical expertise far outstripped anything available to me” at a comparable price. At the time Groovy Like a Movie was moving from a single Media 100 system to multiple Macs and Rorke handily provided a cross-platform product.

Rorke offers scalable storage, for up to a cer tain number ofn workstations, so more drives can simply be dropped into the Rorke Galaxy 60 RAID array if needed. “This is a relatively new technology, so there are still bumps in the road,” Altomare reports.“The technology needs to mature a bit. But Rorke’s technical support is really great; they jump in and provide solutions right away.” He would like to see Apple team with Rorke to improve the media anagement aspects of Final Cut Pro.

A DREAM DATE FOR FILM EDITING
Feature film editors need networking solutions, too. LA-based Scott Hill, who cut Bruce Almighty last year, is also a Rorke Datam user. He tapped Rorke’s Galaxy 60 Fibre Channel SAN to link two Lightworks Touch systems for his latest project, the DreamWorks romantic comedy, Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!, which opened last month.The system had about 1.5TB of storage.

“The Rorke RAID array enables my assistant to keep digitizing dailies and organizing material while I’m cutting what we received the day before,” Hill explains.“We have access to the same picture and sound without disturbing each other. My assistant can also lay off versions on tape for sound and music while I’m still cutting away.” Effects-intensive motion pictures might require networking a third system for editors cutting visual effects sequences.

Hill remembers networking gaining a foothold in episodic television about a decade ago, but methods “weren’t as elegant” then as they are now. “It’s so easy to move information back and forth between our two Lightworks systems today,” he says. “My assistant only has to digitize material once and send a copy to my system so I can read the same material on the Rorke RAID.” For Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!, assistant editor Alex Renskoff’s Touch system was the host machine, ordserver, loaded with Tivoli SANergy software from IBM, which enabled the implementation of the Rorke SAN.Tivoli SANergy works equally well with Fibre Channel, SCSI, SSA, iSCSI or InfiniBand SANs with components from any manufacturer.

Hill had used Rorke enclosures on other projects and found they performed “really well” for him. “So when I heard Lightworks had been talking to Rorke, I thought, ‘Great! I’m already a fan!’” Hill’s best testimonial for working this way is that he “never thought about [networking] once” during post production of his latest feature. “There were no problems, no crashes. Everything worked the way it was supposed to. We never thought about the software or the drives.They were never a concern.The best scenario is when they’re totally transparent.”

About Rorke Data

Rorke Data is a full digital storage solutions provider with expertise in Fibre-Channel RAID, SAN, DVD, tape and optical libraries, Unix, NT and Mac environments, high bandwidth networks, and related professional services. Founded in 1985, Rorke Data, is a subsidiary of Bell Microproducts, San Jose, CA, and is composed of four divisions: Medical Diagnostic Imaging, Digital Video & Broadcast, Digital Prepress & Publishing, as well as a Technical Services division. More information about Rorke Data can be found at www.rorke.com. Rorke Data is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bell Microproducts, Inc. (Nasdaq: BELM - News).

©Reprinted from POST, February 2004 AN ADVANSTARPUBLICATION Printed in U.S.A.

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