Facilis 48TB TerraBlock Provides Heart Beat at Bespoke Production Facility

Facilis Technology Inc. has integrated its TerraBlock 24D 48TB shared storage system within a production facility in Dublin, Ireland.

The facility has been designed and built to produce Ireland’s first soap series in a generation, Red Rock, which is co-produced by Element Pictures Ltd and Company Pictures and broadcast across Ireland by TV3.

The team invested in a production facility to produce the series and Tyrell Content Creation Tools Ireland Limited (Tyrell CCT) was contracted to assist in the design, integration and commissioning of the production workflow. Working closely with Tyrell, Facilis has created collaborative capabilities based on its TerraBlock shared storage system.

“Tyrell recommended the TerraBlock system unwaveringly as the best option for our Red Rock focused production facility,” said Paula Heffernan, series producer (production) on Red Rock. “The ability to have shared projects throughout the facility: our production schedule would have been impossible without it.“

From day one, Facilis TerraBlock has provided the heartbeat of this most demanding workflow. On Red Rock, the turnaround is fast: 22 days for four 22 minute episodes to be shot, edited, graded, sound mixed and delivered to the broadcaster. In reality, this requires four different cycles (of four episodes each) being worked on at various stages of the post production process simultaneously.

“The ability to create a separate volume within TerraBlock for each Director’s cycle keeps everything neat and tidy during the edit and when it comes to archiving,” explains John Philipson, online editor and post production HOD on Red Rock. “Also, having no per-seat licensing fees gives our production team access to 100 clients if needed, leaving plenty of room for our post production department to grow.“

“With only two offline editors, an assistant editor, a sound mixer and one colorist / online editor TerraBlock has to look after all the raw rushes as well as Avid, ProTools and DaVinci projects,” continued Philipson. “The ease of use between all these projects is great and again everyone accessing the one set of rushes keeps everything neat. On top of this, we need our server to be efficient and reliable so we can concentrate on hitting our deadlines, and this is what TerraBlock does.“

“Initially, we were attracted by TerraBlock’s value for money and also the enthusiastic technical recommendations Tyrell provided,” explained Heffernan. “However, very quickly we realized that TerraBlock offers a lot more in terms of speed and efficiency. TerraBlock enables our post production team to all work from the same rushes and Avid projects, enabling us to work quickly and efficiently: with our fast turnaround needs this is paramount.“

Red Rock went to air in January 2015. Initially TV3 commissioned two 80-episode series, broadcast twice a week over a 40-week period. Positive viewer reaction and recent IFTA award wins has created ambitions to go far beyond two series, to broadcast year round, and more frequently in the future. TerraBlock’s scalability means that the shared storage system is well positioned to support this future growth.

Background to the Red Rock workflow:

• Shared Storage System: One Facilis TerraBlock 24D, currently providing 48 TB of storage capacity.
  
• Connected to TerraBlock:
  
  • One iMac assist/data wrangler system.
  • Two HP Z820 offline edit suites with Media Composer.
  • One online edit and grading suite with Media Composer and DaVinci Resolve respectively (connected via 10GbE).
  • One Z820 running ProTools.
  • Storage DNA automated LTO archiving system (connected via 10GbE).
    
• Function:
  
  • Five clients running simultaneously.
  • All Media Composer systems sharing projects.
  • Media ingested from Sony F5 (AVCHD@1080p) cameras transcoded to DNxHD 120 @ 1080p.
  • Archiving is controlled using StorageDNA watch folders on a Mac client running Linux on virtual box (TerraBlock is mounted on Mac).