It's no secret that modern content production continues to involve higher resolutions, new formats and more complex workflows from pre-visualization to finish. As such, storage environments must be able to keep up with this pace of development.
In the world of video production and post-production, storage environments must be robust enough to support a full range of creative projects. They have to deliver the performance and scalability for both HD and UHD workflows, while facilitating collaboration among internal and external team members.
This has become even more critical with the rise of remote working and is essential to maintaining productivity levels across every aspect of post-production—from editing and compositing to color correction and CGI rendering—no matter what the situation.
(Read more: Storage Modernization With PCIe and NVMe)
Most importantly, storage environments must give businesses the tools to contend with perpetual data growth. The time has come to rethink how data is captured, preserved, accessed and shared. This is particularly important for growing businesses that are adding new clients and embracing immersive media projects, both of which present a need to store more data and larger files.
This is where non-volatile memory express (NVMe) flash storage—such as Quantum’s F1000 NVMe storage solution – comes into play. NVMe flash storage is changing the game for many businesses, enabling them to access high-speed storage media, drive remote collaboration and power business growth.
New age production
The NVMe protocol is state-of-the-art technology that enhances the performance benefits of flash-based storage by removing performance bottlenecks. NVMe solutions give studios the performance to work with large data volumes and the large file sizes that are generated by 4K, 8K, and higher-resolution media projects. This makes NVMe flash storage ideal for high-speed and high-capacity data processing.
This is exactly what South Korean video production and post-production facility Studio Lennon discovered when it deployed Quantum’s solution during the COVID-19 pandemic. As well as providing the performance needed for media production, it supported remote accessibility as part of an integrated environment.
This enabled team members to access media files from anywhere and use their preferred workstations without any compatibility issues—thereby maintaining productivity levels during a period of significant disruption.
The implementation of NVMe flash storage can also help accelerate workflows for a variety of editing and finishing tasks—even when working with massively unstructured data such as 8K 60 fps UHD content, high-resolution images, CGI, VFX, and 3D content—and enable seamless collaboration. Multiple team members can quickly access content when needed in a stable environment that enables in-house and external editors to work together on content and deliver their best work.
The final benefit that Studio Lennon has realized from its new storage environment is streamlined management. Simplified storage administration has enabled the facility to focus its resources on realizing client goals instead of managing technology. For example, administrators can set policies that automatically move data to long-term storage according to data utilization.
A single user interface gives administrators visibility into the entire storage environment, from post-production systems through the archive. They can make changes to data access rights, path changes, storage, access control, and overall storage architecture configuration from a central console—providing an unparalleled level of control.
Powering future growth
According to Chaewon Seo, CEO of Studio Lennon, NVMe technology “can solve many of the challenges of state-of-the- art media workflows by delivering high performance, scalable capacity, collaboration capabilities, and metadata support.”
But the benefits don’t end there. As client needs change, NVMe solutions give facilities the flexibility to accommodate rapidly evolving requirements—as well as cater to a fast-growing clientele during periods of growth.
Ultimately, this technology lays the foundations for future business growth. Whether creating TV commercials, immersive multimedia content, or VFX for film and TV, post-production facilities can be confident that their storage environment will be able to meet the needs of today’s data-driven world.
