Online Celebrity Content Provider Installs GraniteSTOR ST-RAID II

Young
Hollywood LLC simultaneously consolidated its workflow environment with the
installation of GraniteSTOR
ST-RAID II, a shared storage
solution from Small Tree.

For the online celebrity content provider, working with clients such as Google,
Yahoo, Unilever, AT&T, FOX, Samsung, Coca-Cola, and AOL, the shift to Small
Tree technology was made in concert with the organization’s efforts to improve
efficiency in the face of increased production and archival demands.

In April 2010, Young Hollywood formed a partnership with the Four
Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills to build a high-definition broadcast
studio within the hotel property, from where it conducts scheduled celebrity
interviews on a daily basis. The workspace also includes four connected hotel
suites that have been converted into a functional lounge space,
green room, and editing facility featuring six on-line bays and several
graphics stations.

According to Richard Charney, Young Hollywood’s production
manager, the company’s post-production lab has packed a lot of infrastructure
into a little space.

"Space is a critical issue at our
office so we needed to make decisions regarding technology that would not only
optimize our work efficiency, but space limitations as well," said
Charney. "Our editors are far more
efficient working off the Small Tree shared storage equipment and we no longer
have several RAID drives with a chaotic flow of wires taking up precious space."

In January 2012, Young Hollywood teamed up with Google for their channel
initiative to launch ‘The Young Hollywood Network’ (YHN) on YouTube. With a library of celebrity content already in hand – probably 40 to 50 TBs
of material – and the YouTube channel initiative gearing up, Young Hollywood
needed a robust storage solution that could handle the editing team’s existing
daily projects while taking into consideration the company’s future growth
expectations. As a result, ST-RAID II’s scalability was an
attractive selling point to Charney.

"As we grow and continue
to look for ways to maximize our space, our money is better spent on expanding
local storage in terms of having our library accessible to all of our editors,"
Charney noted. "To that end, Small
Tree’s ST-RAID II offers tremendous scalability to meet the future workflow
needs our editors will require without negatively impacting our physical space."

ST-RAID II is an Ethernet-based shared storage system supporting 6Gb
SAS/SATA protocol end-to-end. Small Tree’s ST-RAID II includes direct attached
shared storage technology designed for post-production
professionals looking for a
storage solution.

Featuring transfer rates capable of supporting 44 streams of Pro Res 422 HQ
with transfer rates up to 1GB/s and 96TB, the ST-RAID II’s low latency ensures
there are no dropped frames in SD or HD. Available in 8-, 12- or 16-drive (2 or
3TB drive) configurations, ST-RAID II produces higher video stream counts and
storage capacity.