IRVINE, Calif. -- Jan. 10, 2008 -- Sonnet Technologies‘ Fusion™ D800RAID desktop SATA storage system has been adopted by design and post-production house Mad Media to ensure secure, convenient, and cost-effective data storage. Mad Media creates branded content based largely on client-sponsored action and motor sports athletes, such as Subaru Rally Team USA® driver Travis Pastrana and Red Bull®-sponsored, SCORE International® athlete Andy McMillin. The Fusion D800RAID system provides Mad Media with reliable storage of its unique high definition (HD) video not only for use in Web content, but also for national television ad campaigns, feature-length film projects, and new mobile technology platforms like the Apple® iPhone™.
“I have very closely monitored the progression of ‘low-cost‘ data solutions for professional video applications for the past few years, and Sonnet‘s Fusion D800RAID product was the first to offer RAID 5 redundancy with a storage capacity of more than 6TB and throughput exceeding 500 MB/sec,” said Joshua Martelli, director of TV/film at Mad Media. “We waited for the product to come to market, and we‘ve been thrilled with the result. The Fusion D800RAID system gives us a central repository from which our editors can access the same data simultaneously, and it‘s allowed us to organize footage more effectively, safeguarding content from future loss while increasing our productivity.”
The Mad Media facility in Oceanside, Calif., is built around Apple‘s 8-core Mac Pro systems with AJA® Kona video cards for capture and acceleration. The company relies on tape as little as possible, shooting most footage with Panasonic‘s DVCPROHD® P2 cameras. Editors rely primarily on Final Cut Studio® 2 and a variety of Adobe® solutions for video; for audio, they use ProTools® and Apple‘s Soundtrack® Pro. The Fusion D800RAID system replaced the company‘s “sneakernet” storage scheme that was comprised of a series of 1TB external drives from various manufacturers. The Sonnet storage system was preconfigured for Mad Media, which allowed Josh Martelli to simply open the box, drop the Sonnet PCI Express® RAID controller card into the principal editing machine, connect the drive enclosure, and get to work. Files and data stored on the Fusion D800RAID are now accessible over Mad Media‘s internal dual-Gigabit Ethernet network.
Sonnet‘s award-winning Fusion D800RAID storage systems provide exceptional performance and data safety in affordable, direct-attached disk arrays ideal for individual projects and for use in facilities with multiple edit stations. Created for HD edit environments in which speed and fault-tolerance are a necessity, the eight-drive Fusion D800RAID systems are available in 4TB, 6TB, or 8TB configurations, all incorporating Enterprise/RAID Edition drives.
The high-performance Sonnet PCI Express RAID controller, based on the latest-generation Intel® IOP348 RAID processor, handles the throughput of all eight drives with plenty of overhead, and 256MB of ECC-protected RAM helps to maintain data-stream writes as the disk array nears capacity. As a result, Mad Media‘s Fusion system can manage uncompressed HD video streams easily while at the same time protecting data. The unit‘s flexible RAID configuration provides failsafe protection in the event of drive failure.
“Dollar for dollar, the Fusion D800RAID was the best solution available for the money we were prepared to spend on storage,” said Martelli. “Sonnet‘s technology has grown over time, just as we have, which means we‘ve been able to absorb the company‘s product line and merge it with our Mac-based editing systems to move forward with an emphasis on speed and cost-effective operations. We anticipate incorporating additional Fusion systems into our operations as our business continues to grow.”
More information about Sonnet and the company‘s products is available at www.sonnettech.com.
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About Mad Media
Mad Media was founded on the idea of bridging the gap between traditional and guerilla marketing, between brands and youth culture, by strategically and responsibly immersing brands within the youth culture. Through strategic partnerships, alliances, and associations, the company positions itself to create and identify untapped marketing opportunities for the brands it represents. Mad Media recognizes trends as they are emerging and takes advantage of this constantly evolving market. It offers the brands it handles a competitive advantage as well as a meaningful brand development. Mad Media is a multidisciplinary marketing and creative firm that unifies each brand‘s marketing across multiple media in order to maintain the integrity of the brand‘s original message. More information is available at www.madmedia.com.
About Sonnet
Sonnet Technologies, Inc. of Irvine, Calif., is a leader in providing local storage systems for professional users of Macintosh®, Windows®, and UNIX® systems in the film, video, and broadcast industries. Since its founding in 1986, Sonnet has pioneered and brought to market innovative solutions that enhance the performance and connectivity of Macintosh and industry-standard computers. Today, the company is a world-leading computer hardware upgrade company with a product line featuring a range of high-performance, cost-effective, and reliable storage solutions, as well as a variety of performance-extending upgrade cards. More information is available at www.sonnettech.com.