With falling costs and increasingly powerful software, even small video production ventures are capable of producing spectacular digital effects for projects ranging from weddings, family events, to commercial feature films. This inevitably means an increasingly sophisticated computer infrastructure to create these assets. Within a digital production environment, a company may have numerous specialists, artists, designers and consultants working on different aspects of a project using high end PCs or Apple Mac systems. The production process involves numerous iterations of data intense sequences, especially if taken from “High Definition” sources. The caveat with an all digital production is the absence of tape as a backup, which increases the value of original source material exponentially.
So how would one mitigate potential loss and costly production overruns? How about introducing the HP StorageWorks X510 Data Vault into the workflow. Now, the precious digital media can be stored safely with “Folder Duplication” and “Shared Folders” allow workgroups to share project files using applications like Final Cut Studio, Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects.
The flexibility of Data Vault in allowing additional storage to be added, either internally or via external USB and eSATA drives, removes the frustration of having to manage multiple, disparate storage devices. Most agencies will be familiar with the time-consuming process of moving larger files off their primary storage device to free up space. This tedious and risk-prone process not only puts data at risk but significantly slows down the creative process.
By using “Folder Duplication”, instead of RAID, Data Vault customers avoid the painful process of copying data off of their RAID, installing larger drives, rebuilding the array, and then re-loading data. Some NAS devices, alert customers to the fact that deploying RAID-5 can take up to 18 hours to reconfigure the RAID across four drives. This can be a serious brake for the business each time it needs to install additional storage capacity.
Introducing Windows Home Server into the production process streamlines work-flow and ensures confidence that all “digital assets” are intact for the eventual directors cut, super-extended edition, and 25th anniversary.
Makes perfect sense…business sense.