Archive of the Case Studies Category

Frustrated by having projects continuously freeze up in the middle of editing sessions and having to rummage through multiple external drives to locate footage, Red Productions, a full service, script to screen video production and independent film development and production company, recently commissioned respected independent video engineer Bob Zelin to install a cost-effective Ethernet-based shared storage solution featuring Small Tree technology.

Specializing in national TV commercials, feature films, viral videos for web, industrial videos, and non-profit fundraising pieces, Red Productions has experienced steady growth since its inception. With well-known organizations such as Coca Cola, the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Christian University among its client roster, Red Productions could no longer rely on the external drives chained via eSATA they were using within their three-room facility to complete projects if they were interested in keeping clients happy and continuing their more

Manassas, VA––Unveiled this year, the new Edward L. Kelly Leadership Center was built for Virginia’s Prince William school system at a cost of $37.5 million and feature the very latest in A/V technology.

Named for Edward Kelly, the county’s longest-running superintendent who presided over the system for 18 years, the new facility is 150,000 square feet and will house about 500 employees.

The scope of improvements is impressive. For example, school board meetings had been held in a cramped former military barracks. Now they’re held in a 300 seat meeting room with state-of-the-art video screens and audio systems.

Other features of the center include: a small museum representing the history of the school system in the main lobby; computer stations for people to fill out employment applications; a School Board meeting room that can be divided, like a hotel conference more

October 20, 2009 — Markham, Ontario: Digital Rapids – the leading provider of tools and solutions for bringing television, film and web content to wider audiences — today announced that the company’s award-winning TouchStream appliance powered live Internet streaming of the prestigious “The Digital Chiefs” event for the Hollywood Radio and Television Society (HRTS) last month. Part of the HRTS Newsmaker Luncheon Series and presented in association with National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE), “The Digital Chiefs: A Special Conversation on the Future of Media in the Digital Age” featured an all-star lineup of top executives in the digital entertainment industry.

Moderated by Bob Iger, President and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, the panel provided an engaging discussion of the monetization of digital media, the impact and future of social networking, and the need for even the most successful digital entertainment companies to continually more

Fairlight’s award-winning Xynergi Media Production Centre has recently been installed in a number of prestigious Australian audio post production facilities, all of which are citing the system’s versatility and ease of use as key reasons for investing.

Specified as a controller-only system or delivered with a 12 fader sidecar, Xynergi organizes and delivers all the tools needed for high-end audio for video production in all widely used surround formats. The system harnesses the ‘green’ processing power of Fairlight’s CC-1 digital media engine and incorporates integrated PyxisTrack video. The Xynergi controller provides engineers with a desktop user interface that allows them to access all features and functions of the Fairlight CC-1, as well as commonly used Windows applications.

One company that has recently invested in Xynergi is Tracks Post Production, a leading sound post and picture editing facility based in Crow’s Nest, Sydney. Tracks has an impressive client more

CHARLOTTE, NC – Linear Acoustic, the leading authority in loudness control and upmixing solutions for digital television, is helping the FOX-owned SPEED Network bring the action and excitement of motor sporting events to viewers’ living rooms via the company’s UPMAX™ 5.1 channel upmixing technology. more

Adds New Dimension to Audio for Chinese New Year Parade Broadcast

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — KTVU, San Francisco’s local Fox affiliate, is bringing the audio for its special events coverage — most specifically the station’s coverage of the city’s Chinese New Year Parade — to the next level with Holophone®’s H4 SuperMINI Camera-mountable surround microphone.

The largest celebration of the Chinese New Year outside of Asia, San Francisco’s parade attracts visitors from all over the world. For over 20 years it has been KTVU’s task to bring the sights and sounds of the event to viewers at home. This year, in addition to the event being broadcast in HD, Mark Metzler, Operations Supervisor of KTVU and one of the sound designers for the show, wanted to further enhance the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound mix more

JPL, a Harrisburg-based integrated communications company working across a variety of media, recently made the switch from a growing pile of G RAID drives to a single, cost-effective Ethernet-based shared storage solution featuring Small Tree technology to streamline workflow.

“We were working off ‘sneaker net’ drives from suite to suite, and had no ability to share the same media in our six edit suites,” said Paul Grosso, vice president of media productions for JPL. “This was a challenge, as we often work on multiple projects for our corporate clients – to support an event launch or the introduction of a new service – and we needed to have access to the same media across multiple suites in order to meet tight deadlines.”

To streamline its workflow, JPL installed Small Tree’s GraniteSTOR shared storage technology with its unique OS X networking capabilities supporting multiple more

DP and Colorist Andrew Huebscher Selects AJA HDP2 HD-SDI to HDMI Mini-Converter for True 10-bit Signal, Performance and Picture Quality

DP and Colorist Andrew Huebscher has been working on commercials and independent films for the past fifteen years. He recently started using the AJA HDP2 converter with an HP DreamColor LP2480zx 24-inch display as part of the monitoring solution in his color-grading bay. The HDP2, which has undergone extensive testing in conjunction with the HP DreamColor LP2480zx Display, is a miniature HD-SDI/SDI to DVI-D converter for digital display devices such as LCD and DLP, and will automatically size 4:3 or 16:9 inputs to many DVI-D monitors.

“With my previous converter box, I was experiencing multiple problems, losing sync, screen flickering and was limited to working with an 8-bit signal,” said Huebscher. “Since switching over to the HDP 2, I’m getting much more more

In the suburbs of Nashville lies Tier 1 Media, a small production company handling production and post-production for several popular Outdoor Channel competitive shooting sports programs, including “Shooting USA” and “Impossible Shots.” Featuring three newly renovated Final Cut Pro editing suites, Tier 1 Media recently installed a cost-effective, Ethernet-based solution from Small Tree that has improved productivity and efficiency substantially.

To streamline its workflow, Tier 1 Media installed Small Tree’s GraniteSTOR shared storage technology with its unique OS X networking capabilities supporting multiple Ethernet ports, tightly integrated with Apple’s built in file sharing system. The GraniteSTOR solution incorporates Small Tree’s PEG6, a 6-port Ethernet card with the Edge-corE ES4524D, a 24-port Gigabit Ethernet switch certified to work with Small Tree’s technology.

Before the installation, Tier 1 Media’s three suites each had its own RAID, more

A recent shared storage installation at Tempe 11, a government access station operated by the City of Tempe, illustrated once again that it’s either Ethernet or it’s EtherNOT, as an Ethernet-based solution from Small Tree has enabled the full-service production team to substantially increase its workflow without crippling its bottom line.

“We recently added a third editing suite and we needed a solution that would allow us to share resources between the suites,” stated Greg Wolfe, media services producer for Tempe 11. “Originally, we were looking at a 6TB Fibre Channel system, but the pricing we received was between $25,000 and $40,000. With Small Tree’s shared storage and networking technology, we were able to double our storage capacity to 12TB for about half the price of a typical Fibre Channel system.”

“Working for a municipality, keeping expenditures low is always a priority,” Wolfe continued. “This more