Category
Post & network production facilities
Submitted by
EditShare Design Team
Texolve:
Jeff Barnes, proj. mgr.
Pittsburgh Penguins:
Chris DeVivo
Technology at work
Adobe After Effects workstations
Apple Final Cut Studio workstations
DPS Whiplash slow- motion recorder
EditShare Storage Series
connecting via GigE
Sony XDCAM HD
The NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins make media move with speed
When it comes to stepping up the mobility of media across the production chain, the Pittsburgh Penguins turned to EditShare shared storage solutions. Prior to the installation of the advanced workflow-engineered shared storage solution — an EditShare Storage Series 5RU 18TB system — the Pittsburgh Penguins digitized specific game clips to each workstation using an off-the-shelf drive. The game source material became isolated to either a specific editing workstation equipped with Apple Final Cut Pro or a compositing workstation equipped with Adobe After Effects. Because certain media was not housed in a central location, media had to be constantly redigitized in order to be available in multiple locations. Further, there was a constant battle to balance the media space per editing and compositing workstation, limiting the amount of material to work with for any given highlight or replay project.
To resolve this issue, the Pittsburgh Penguins installed EditShare. The system helps mobilize media and turn around robust packages more quickly for commercials, scoreboard highlights and promotions, as well as the Penguins’ Web site. Another catalyst for shared storage was the increasing demand from the NHL for more online content. Not only was the EditShare going to mobilize their media, but also it was going to be used for multiplatform and multichannel distribution.
The system provides high performance and an open environment for creative teams to share media, regardless of application and platform. Users of Apple, Adobe, Assimilate, Autodesk, Avid, Digidesign, Sony, Thomson and more can connect via GigE or 10GigE and freely share media, regardless of size or format. The system also provides project and media sharing for Apple and Avid users with management tools designed for real-time collaboration in post and broadcast workflows.
The Pittsburgh Penguins post team, working on eight Apple Final Cut Pro workstations and two Adobe After Effects workstations, use the EditShare system for simultaneous projects and media sharing while producing highlights and replays of the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey games. They also record shows for the Web and scoreboard pre-game. They are able to pull up logged highlights of various talk shows on the fly using laptops, even as commentators are speaking, and they use the media in real time as b-roll.
Sharing media is job number one for the various end products that the editors need to deliver. Project sharing is also emerging as a way to cut larger-form material and could become more useful as they look toward adding live ingest solutions such as EditShare’s new Flow solution for creating an in-game highlights package.
