Utah-based video production studio Digital Bytes, Inc. supports local and national companies such as eBay, AMC, Rio Tinto and Ernst & Young with production and post services for a wide range of projects, from commercials and corporate videos to live events and documentaries. To deliver results that keep customers coming back, the team relies on a postproduction workflow managed by Digital Bytes multimedia producer Kiyoshi Nagahama.
In order to expand the scope of the studio’s technological capabilities and prepare for the advent of 4K TV, Nagahama recently added Facilis’ TerraBlock 24 EX SAN and Adobe Premiere Pro to Digital Bytes’ arsenal of technology, which already includes three Avid Symphony suites and an Apple workstation running Autodesk Smoke. Facilis and local reseller, Philm Gear, helped to seamlessly integrate the TerraBlock into this workflow. “Support was great throughout the entire install process,” Nagahama said. “Both Facilis and Philm Gear were fast to respond to questions and resolved any issues quickly.”
Digital Bytes is currently transferring data from its obsolete Unity MediaNet system to the TerraBlock, which will replace the Unity entirely. Throughout the process, Digital Bytes has already seen increased productivity because editors are able to connect via Ethernet and Fibre Channel to easily collaborate across Mac and Windows workstations. “Our editors are no longer limited to one piece of software,” Nagahama said. “They can work together more efficiently across Avid, Final Cut, Adobe and Smoke, which makes our workload much more manageable.”
TerraBlock has also given Digital Bytes additional storage space to grow, which will help the studio diversify the kinds of projects it can take on in the future. “As the pool of multi-format media continues to expand and our facility starts to dive deeper into the latest version of Premiere, we need the space and bandwidth of TerraBlock to accommodate new work, especially 4K projects,” Nagahama added. “Now, we’ll be able to easily handle HD and 4K files with Fiber Channel, while tapping Ethernet for DVD files and encoding.”
“Shared storage is very, very important to everything we do, and TerraBlock keeps us up and running. The system does exactly what we need it to without interfering in our day-to-day operations or costing us an arm and a leg with per-seat licensing.”
