Bling Digital's mission: Turn around dailies from production on a
USA Network spy drama so that they are received next day by key agency operatives in Los Angeles for editorial as well as executives in New York and Toronto for "eyes-only" viewing.
Having accepted the mission, Bling Digital, a leading supplier of digital support services for digital cinema shoots, needed the proper technological ammunition to meet tight deadlines and budget restrictions. Enter Small Tree and its not-so-secret-weapon, GraniteSTOR ST-RAID, a robust, Ethernet-based shared storage system that is easy to install and manage. Armed with a 24TB GraniteSTOR ST-RAID, PEG6 multi-port Gigabit card and Small Tree's SLVR Support Service, the spy drama was an open and shut case for Bling Digital.
"Receiving a few hundred gigabytes of footage each day, we needed a storage solution that we could dedicate exclusively to this project to ensure fast turnaround," said Chris Parker, digital cinema specialist at Bling Digital, a division of Sim Video. "With production budgets tightening, we searched for a cost-effective solution that met our strict requirements. We were running the Small Tree system 24 hours a day, 7 days a week during production and it met all of our expectations."
While working on the spy drama, up to four members of Bling's digital support team were using GraniteSTOR ST-RAID simultaneously, processing Red Camera footage into a variety of formats for editorial and screening purposes, as well as running Avid, Final Cut, DVD Studio Pro and a number of other applications to produce the required deliverables. For Parker and his team, the Small Tree system's reliability was crucial to the primary objective of their assignment: achieving client satisfaction.
"Working on a network show, there are a lot of deadlines and requirements you have to meet or you won't make it to the end of the season," Parker said. "Small Tree's storage worked as billed - it was fast and reliable."
Designer of simple-to-install, affordable Mac-based networking and shared storage products, Small Tree is the premier multi-port Ethernet networking technology provider for OS X customers, enabling cost effective Ethernet shared storage technology. For more information about the company and its products, please call 1-866-STC4MAC (1-866-782-4622), or visit www.small-tree.com or follow Small Tree on Twitter @smalltreecomm.
