EditShare, the pioneer of cross platform collaborative editing and shared media storage systems, today announced that it will be unveiling the next generation (version 4.0) of its award-winning EditShare family of systems at NAB 2006, (booth SL 1410). Available by the end of Q2 2006, EditShare version 4.0 will bring users a host of new productivity enhancing features, including support for uncompressed HD, faster hardware and larger hard drives, and a new scalable architecture.

Already used in production by hundreds of news organizations, independent producers, post production facilities, corporations and institutions around the world, the EditShare systems offer a cost-effective and secure workflow solution designed to help organizations enhance their creativity and streamline the content creation process. EditShare allows large groups of editors to capture into and share a common pool of media files, while guaranteeing that unauthorized individuals can never interfere with, damage or erase media once it has been shared.

All EditShare systems include powerful tools for organizing media files into virtual partitions or “Media Spaces” that can be instantly resized without interrupting the editing process. In addition, every EditShare system facilitates the easy sharing of bins and sequences ‘ so that editors can quickly and efficiently swap work with one another. For Avid users in particular, EditShare is the only non-Avid collaborative storage solution that supports opening ‘ and simultaneously working from ‘ the exact same projects. With EditShare, Avid editors working on specially designated “shared projects” can instantly see what each other is editing, while maintaining total control over their own work.

Support for uncompressed HD over 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Editors can now finish uncompressed HD projects on the same NAS storage they use for lower resolution editing. With this new development, EditShare continues to prove that it can give users the simplicity of a NAS with the power of a SAN.

Faster hardware and larger hard drives. EditShare now takes advantage of the latest Hardware RAID cards and hard drives for cutting edge performance. As always, EditShare's RAID 5 architecture achieves the throughput editors need, while also providing efficient data protection without having to rely on wasteful mirroring.

A new highly-scalable architecture that allows multiple EditShare units to be installed on the same network, and then coordinates the units so they can be accessed easily by editors and administrators as if there were just a single server. This means that EditShare will be able to scale to storage sizes of 100 TB, 200 TB and beyond, while still maintaining all the simplicity and convenience of a smaller NAS.

A new "Mount Manager" that simplifies connecting EditShare's "Media Spaces" to editors' workstations. A small EditShare "client program" now allows editors to browse all Media Spaces to which they have access and remember what was selected for fast and easy log on next time. In addition, on Windows workstations, editors can select what drive letter to assign those Media Spaces and the system will also remember the selections for next time

Support for legacy Avid systems, including Symphony and Meridian-based Media Composers ‘ as well as DS Nitris.

An enhanced and improved administrator's interface that streamlines set up of Media Spaces and users. Of particular note, is a suite of innovations that make managing accounts and Media Spaces a simple task for large schools and universities that might have hundreds of users who change from semester to semester.

Pricing and availability
EditShare version 4.0 will be available at the end of Q2 2006 from EditShare’s large international network of resellers with a MSRP starting at US$15,000.