Storage at the Center

Traditionally, post-production facilities bring projects online only for short periods because of the amount of space that uncompressed media occupies on a disk. Each additional step in the post process then requires a layback. For instance, when the assembly process is done it’s laid to tape for delivery to the graphics and title departments where an amount of recapturing needs to take place. Sometimes, however, necessity and nontraditional thinking can yield something really exciting.

At our company, PlasterCITY Digital Post (PCDP), we had to ask ourselves some very big questions: How could we get the media online and then keep it there for the length of the project? How could we deliver content to the entire facility at the speed we required? In response to those questions, could we build a system that centralized data and delivered it at very high speeds? That’s what the idea was at our company when we envisioned a storage pool that would, in effect, eliminate the need for multiple decks of the same format to perform basic online services. This system would require only a handful of decks (one in each format), thereby greatly reducing overhead for the facility.

As a nonlinear, full-service post facility dedicated to providing high-definition post, and a business that already operated entirely around Apple Final Cut Pro, we knew that making Final Cut a cornerstone of this new system was key, especially because the plan was only to lay to tape for final delivery.

We were able to turn this innovative DI process into reality just several months ago when we completed renovations to our new facility in the heart of Hollywood. There, we were able to house 10 edit bays, a 2,000-square-foot sound stage and a 2K DLP theater- all connected via an 8 GBps fibre channel network to our central machine room. Our new process is now based around a 24 TB central SAN (Storage Area Network), augmented by Ciprico MediaVault 4210 fibre channel RAID arrays (MediaVault is now part of the Ciprico family of servers since the company acquired Huge Systems in January of this year). This unique system is what lets us store and play out uncompressed media centrally.

In the spring of 2005, PCDP set out on a three-month technology project. The goal was to build a central storage pool that could accommodate the capture and use of 4:4:4 high-definition footage into Final Cut Pro. We weren’t sure this project was possible because, while Final Cut Pro is more than capable of dealing with the high throughput material when coupled with the AJA Kona 2 cards, the real trick was finding a drive to deliver the kind of throughput we needed. That proved to be a very expensive proposition. About two weeks into development we went to the team at Ciprico and asked for their help.

With the Ciprico MediaVault 4210, Qlogic’s 5602 Fibre Switches, ATTO Technologies’ FC Host Adapters, Apple’s Final Cut Pro and AJA’s Kona2, PCDP is able to push the throughput of its system up to 750 MBps to all 10 of the online edit bays. The substantial throughput is in large part due to the dual 4 GBps backbone of the system, effectively giving us an 8 GBps network. We originally considered a 2 GBps system; however, when Ciprico offered a 4 GBps solution at approximately the same cost, we took the plunge. The new system has had five months of continuous use and the results have been outstanding. We are now getting speeds that we hadn’t even imagined were possible.

One of the projects currently in house at PCDP is All In, the next film for director Nick Vallelonga. His credits include Choker, which also went through DI at PCDP. We decided to go in a different direction with the offline for All In because the media was all captured at a 1080 23.98 Psf proxy resolution. That let the editor work in the native resolution of the original material, all shot on the Sony HDW-F900 CineAlta camera.

Tony Wise, one of PCDP’s staff editors, explains: "As an editor, it’s important to have all of the tools possible to stitch together a great story. Having all of the media in its native resolution during the offline has been a real asset. The really great thing about the SAN is being able to move from room to room without worrying about moving the media; it just follows me. So if I’m cutting with the director in one of our large client bays in the morning, it’s no big deal to move to one of the smaller rooms in the afternoon. I just pick up and go. There are no drives to move and no missed media; it’s really great."

The best part of working with this system is how collaborative our workflow has become. Because we have a SAN seat available in every bay, multiple editors and artists can work on the same project with simultaneous access to the same media. This open access to media lets the team work on graphics, titles and visual effects at the same time the offline occurs, and no one has to duplicate content.

The system is also very flexible when it comes to working in different parts of the facility. At any time we can move a cut from its offline or online bay into our 2K theater for screening and review. Traditionally, that would have required a costly layoff, but not with this system: We simply open the project and hit play. This proved especially important during the All In offline, as the film was screened several times for a variety of audiences.

Says Tony Wise, "We showed the cut to a number of people involved in the project, and we could act on client feedback virtually in real time. Because we can play out a timeline into our theater, a director can make a change right there. That’s a real advantage."

PCDP’s unique all-Final Cut Pro system lets the staff perform any type of work, from traditional online to more complex online work, without making a larger investment in hardware or software. Because all of the edit bays are connected to the SAN, editors can use any bay for online and offline work. All of the bays also have access to the same shared storage pool, and because of the versatility of Final Cut Pro, we can work at any resolution without switching applications. This is a seamless and powerful way to work and one of the main reasons that drove the decision to go with Final Cut. PCDP’s system currently works on resolutions up to 1080i at 4:4:4, but leaves the option open for future 2K and 4K work.

After All In leaves the offline stage it will start into PCDP’s HD DI process, going through digital color grading and final assembly of graphics elements, all without seeing a tape. We don’t claim to be the least expensive post house in town, but our system will save on production time, sometimes as much as two weeks on a feature film; if everything is done in-house, that’s a real help to any production, on any budget. We are committed to bringing the advantages of an all-digital, nonlinear post process to the sub 2K market, a market we feel is not being served as well as it could be. We aim to change that.