Peder Morgenthaler at Frame Linear talks about how today’s file
sizes, high-res workflows and demanding finishing tools make high-
performance shared storage a key factor in modern post.
Frame Linear & Dot Hill Bring Hi-Performance Shared Storage Up to Speed |
Peder Morgenthaleris founder and owner ofFrame Linear, a 10-year-old post production studio that carries out editorial, colour correction, finishing and motion graphics services for television, independent film and documentary projects, commercials, music videos and action-sports programming. Many of Frame Linear’s clients are based in Colorado or have connections to the region. |
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High Speed, High Performance, Large ScalePeder explained that one of the factors in Frame Linear’s continued ability to accept demanding, large-scale projects is its Dot Hill shared storage system. For example, the Warren Miller film involved processing and colour correction of over 110 hours of 4K dailies this year before going to editorial. Frame Linear’s72TB Dot Hill storage array, built with 8Gb Fibre Channel connectivity, has the capacity and performance needed to meet the tight deadlines and data security requirements of the project. “At times Frame Linear will have three artists on separate systems, all working on the same project,” he said. “Through Dot Hill storage, they can work on the material concurrently without copying data between workstations. This is why an external storage system is essential for post production workflows. The infrastructure creates a shared pool of high performance storage, transparently accessible on each workstation, that supports collaboration without the need for project syncing.” |
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Post PotentialPeder has just purchased and is preparing to install and additional 72TB of storage at Frame Linear, bringing the system total to144TB. He plans to use this additional capacity to create a shared storage infrastructure that will be available to the Greater Denver filmmaking community on a per-project basis. The intention is to supply a managed shared storage environment to filmmakers who otherwise wouldn’t have access to such a system or have the resources to maintain it. Starting in 2009, he became a consultant for Dot Hill, specializing in media and entertainment. Dot Hill was acquired by Seagate on 6 October and the product line will continue as part of the storage systems business within Seagate. |
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RAID for TodayPeder pointed out that, when working with software likeDaVinci Relsolvein a multi-user environment, the storage becomes a critical determiner of overall system performance. Multiple high-bandwith reads and writes taking place simultaneously on different workstations can cause RAID controllers to struggle to maintain performance. Dot Hill’s proprietaryRAID controllersare configured in adual active-active redundantsetup with write speeds equal to their reads, which is unusual for a RAID system. In a multiple IO environment, the controllers work to balance the load across all drives in the system, aiming for optimum performance on each workstation. |
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Be PreparedPeder said, “Frame Linear focuses on colour grading and finishing, based on DaVinci Resolve. But because our clients’ studios may work in any NLE for editorial, we also have to be prepared to handle edited work output fromAdobe Premier, Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro 7and occasionallyFCPX. Right now, our company is interested in adoptingBlackmagic Design’s Fusionas well for heavier compositing work.” |
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True Shared CapacityPeder feels that while moving on from direct-attached storage to shared storage is a fairly expensive change for a studio to make, it brings certainlong-term benefits. It opens your workflow to allow editors to work simultaneously on the same project on their separate systems, just as if they were working on a native drive on their computer. Without shared storage, projects can easily fall out of sync. For instance, an assistant editor can log and ingest on one workstation, while an editor starts working on the newly ingested files on another, with metadata, sequences and footagecompletely in sync. |