TerraBlock Opens Up Facilis Shared Storage in the UK

Facilis TerraBlock has been adopted as a central storage server over the past year at a number of creative studios in the UK region with an interest in more capacity and bandwidth for teams and better collaboration across graphics and editing workstations.

TerraBlock is Facilis’ multiplatform, high-capacity, shared storage solution supporting 8Gb and 16Gb Fibre channel, and 1Gb and 10Gb Ethernet through the Facilis Shared File System. The Cut London, a production studio in Shoreditch, began using the TerraBlock late last year. TerraBlock has created a more direct workflow between storage, editing applications and editors. “We’re able to mount a volume, launch an editing app and start working,” explained Owner Jamie Mac. “Our editors can share media across workstations so we don’t spend time exporting or duplicating files, which leaves editors more time for projects.”

Since launching three years ago, the studio’s three-person team has edited a number of TV series plus commercials for the BBC, music videos and documentaries. Last year, The Cut’s workload began to outpace its local storage bandwidth.

Turning Point

The turning point came when Jamie and his team were enlisted to work on complete post for new Channel 4 series ‘Jamie & Jimmy’s Food Fight Club’. In order to complete the project, the team would need additional storage space and the ability to not only share media across five Avid editing suites, but collaborate at the same time. Jamie said, “Working off local storage for such a large show would have been far too slow, so I looked into high-capacity shared storage options that would allow all of our Avid suites to run and share media simultaneously.”  

Jamie researched systems on the market and consulted Facilis’ reseller in the UK, Tyrell, looking in particular for bandwidth, space and native Avid Project sharing. He invested in the Facilis TerraBlock 24 EX, which includes the Facilis Shared File System. Tyrell assisted them with setup and installation on location and will provide ongoing technical support.

Ordinarily, The Cut would have tested the system prior to beginning work on a series, but due to the pressure of time they had to install the TerraBlock four weeks into post production. “Bringing in such a critical part of the system at that stage was not ideal,” Jamie said. “Usually you’d want to test your infrastructure before starting a project, because it’s a bit like plumbing: if it doesn’t work, everyone suffers. However, we were up and running right away on the TerraBlock.”

Close To Capacity

They found the interface is intuitive and makes it easy for the editors to learn the system, including creating volumes, adding users and assigning permissions in the system. Previously, they spent a lot of time exporting and duplicating media. Now, for example, when one of the editors closes a bin, Jamie can pick it up and continue editing without having to copy the data. He explained, “I can mount a volume, launch the editing app and start working. On a series like ‘Food Fight Club’, having editors collaborating together, working off one Avid project, is the key to hitting your deadlines.

“We’re also able to run everything natively on smaller projects without having to recompress footage. The clients like to be able to see how the footage actually looked on set as opposed to a compressed file.”

The Cut London’s TerraBlock typically runs close to capacity with multiple suites running four streams of DNxHD 36, a screening-quality HD offline resolution for progressive formats, and one stream of DNxHD 185x 10-bit video with a 185Mbps data rate, at all times on standard GIG-E connections. “No matter how close to capacity we get, the system continues to operate without dropping performance. In the future we plan to have our suites connected with the higher bandwidth 10 GIG-E connections.

TV Shopping Channels

Post Production Manager John Lucas at consumer brand and TV shopping specialist JML, also looking for fast bandwidth and increased storage capacity, recently invested in two TerraBlock 24D systems. “Our 3D artist can share project volumes with editors without having to create separate media volumes, and we’re able to use DNxHD185 media on multiple edit suites without experiencing a slow down, which is crucial to meeting deadlines,” he said.

JML specializes in retail and promotions for home television shopping. The company produces a catalogue of products supported by in-store video promotions and nationwide ad campaigns. Over the last few years, JML has produced and broadcast several advertisements for international audiences, including 30-second spots for Belvia, Shark and Mantis, and a series of chatshow style commercials for the commercial TV network, ITV.

The company’s in-house team of designers, production staff and a 3D artist creates all of the company’s content for broadcast on shopping channels such as JML Direct, JML Living and JML Cookshop. The team has a post production workflow, running on Facilis TerraBlock storage, to turn around content in time for air. All content is ingested into Avid Media Composer 6 through AMA and archived to a XenServer and Spectra Logic T50e tape library. After transcoding, projects are offlined and onlined on TerraBlock, and motion graphics are integrated using Adobe After Effects. Once finalized, projects are laid to tape for delivery and archived.  

Connected Teams

Last year, additional bandwidth and storage space was required to accommodate JML’s growing project load. In November 2012 John Lucas took advantage of the Facilis Customer Loyalty program and traded two older TerraBlocks for new 24D systems, also through reseller Tyrell.

JML started using TerraBlock in 2004. “A major benefit of the system is that our 3D artist can be connected via Ethernet to share project volumes when delivering animations to the editors – without having to create separate media volumes or use external HDDs,” John said. “We also have seven Avid suites, and it’s essential that we’re able to use DNxHD185 media at any one time without experiencing a slow down. TerraBlock allows us to do that.”

In October 2012, Dublin-based sports broadcaster Transmit Solutions adopted TerraBlock in-house to set up shared access to programming clips for its promo department to create new teasers each week. “The team can share EDL and timelines to create promos using the same footage at the same time, which has really sped up our workflow,” explained CEO Mark Pilkington. “TerraBlock is also very agnostic. Even as editing and graphics applications evolve, TerraBlock is still compatible with most products.”     www.facilis.com