NAB: Eight of Ten Largest Hollywood Studios Use Qumulo File Fabric

Qumulo, Inc., in universal-scale file storage, announced that  famous media and entertainment companies, including 8 of the 10 largest Hollywood studios, rely on its File Fabric (QF2) to accelerate media production workflows and meet fast-paced production deadlines.

In separate news, the company announced the release of the Qumulo P-series, an industry NVMe all-flash solution. Qumulo will be demonstrating QF2 on NVMe all-flash, powering 4K video editing and VFX rendering on premises and AWS at the 2018 NAB Show.

“Media production pushes the limits of digital technology, and has done from the earliest days of computer graphics to today’s ultra-high-resolution digital pipelines,” said Peter Godman, co-founder and CTO, Qumulo. “Fast-moving digital experience creators in film and television are driving some of the most exciting trends in technology today through their investments in modern, file-based workflows. It’s no wonder that Qumulo has become the standard for the digital pipelines behind today’s award-winning films and television.“

Qumulo also announced that 9 Story Media Group, Inc., Falcon’s Creative Group, Pure Imagination and RodeoFX have joined the growing list of customers, including alter ego, Ant Farm, Atomic Fiction, Awesometown, Blind Studios, Crafty Apes, The DAVE School, Deluxe Entertainment Services Group Inc., DreamWorks Animation, Eight Solutions, FotoKem, FuseFX, Intelligent Creatures, Mr. X, MSG Networks, Pipeline Studios, RodeoFX, Sportvision, ZOIC Studios and others who are using QF2 to power media and entertainment production workflows such as compositing, rendering, animation, simulations, video editing, post-production, color correction, VFX and virtual reality.

Key QF2 use cases for M&E highlighted at NAB 2018 include: 

• Rendering and VFX on-premises and in the cloud. Animation and VFX are at the heart of modern film production. Because VFX is a file-based workflow, increasingly complex films require a highly scalable, modern file storage system that can help accelerate production timelines. QF2 is suited for the growing storage demands of VFX, and is the a fully-featured file storage system that can support rendering workflows both on-premises and in the cloud.
• Editorial using NVMe all-flash. Productivity and fast turnaround times are critical for post production in the media and entertainment industry. QF2 is a scalable, single-namespace file storage system with the performance and capacity needed to free demanding editorial workloads from the limitations of DAS. With NVMe all-flash, the Qumulo P-series enables teams to edit uncompressed 4K.

QF2 is an universal-scale file storage system. It was designed to meet all requirements for scale. It is a performing file storage system in data center and the public cloud, and can scale to billions of files, making it the solution of choice for the media and entertainment industry. With QF2, customers have the freedom to store, manage and access their file-based data in any operating environment, at petabyte and global scale.

“We have built a very advanced rendering pipeline that spans our on-premises data center and AWS Cloud to meet the rigorous demands of our media production schedules. Our workflows and rendering applications require file storage that can scale and provide the highest performance both on-premises and on AWS. Only QF2 is able to meet the needs and demands of our content delivery pipeline,” said Jason Fotter, co-founder and CTO, FuseFX.

“When researching new storage solutions, our main criteria were scalability and simplicity, and Qumulo came through on both fronts. I also appreciate QF2’s hybrid design – Qumulo knows that flash is the future. With QF2, we have been able to increase our productivity and ability to review iterations at a faster pace – and push the limits of our creativity to help our clients ‘experience imagination’ like never before,” said Saham Ali, director of technology, Falcon’s Creative Group.

“Being able to drill down into who’s using what storage, when and how, and being able to track it over time with QF2 has been a game changer for our animation workflows. Having a storage system that can keep up with billions of small files without getting bogged down has been a huge win. Qumulo makes my job easier, makes me look good and helps me sleep better at night,“said Chris Brown, senior systems engineer, 9 Story Media Group.

“QF2’s file storage and management capabilities have played a critical role in our large-scale projects such as Game of Thrones, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and the 2018 Academy Award winner for Best Visual Effects, Blade Runner 2049. QF2 exceeds our performance requirements in a way our previous solution simply couldn’t. Qumulo’s real-time analytics and outstanding customer service allows us to work on several projects simultaneously, while reducing the amount of time spent troubleshooting issues, making our lives that much easier,” said Jamie Darville, senior systems engineer, RodeoFX.

Connect with Qumulo at NAB
QF2 will be featured at NAB, taking place April 7-12 in Las Vega, NVs. The company will sponsor, exhibit, and demonstrate the power of QF2 for media and entertainment workflows. In addition, customers including 9 Story Media Group, Atomic Fiction, Falcon’s Creative Group and FuseFX will be presenting their use case, and talking about the benefits and successes they’ve achieved.