Facilis, a leading international supplier of cost-effective, high performance shared storage systems and dynamic workflow solutions for the film, broadcast and AV markets, has announced the successful delivery and commissioning of a 48TB TerraBlock 24D shared storage system to Norwegian Film, TV and Commercial post house, Oslo Post Company.
For this Scandinavian creative post house, file access and organization are paramount to its daily operations. The creative team is tasked with delivering post production services for a large volume of films, commercials, reality television shows and documentaries. In order to get each project out the door in a timely fashion, the facility’s crew relies on an extensive arsenal of post production tools. Acting as a central pool from which employees can quickly save and share project files, TerraBlock has been a huge boon to collaboration and productivity within the company since it came on-stream.
The facility’s owner, Theodor Kristensen, reports that very quickly after its commissioning, the TerraBlock shared storage has established a position at the heart of the facility and provides the life-beat for his team’s collaborative work. “There’s a constant influx of work here,” said Theodor Kristensen. “So many different editors and colorists are contributing to projects simultaneously, so it’s critical that we keep everything catalogued in one place where our team can instantly access it. That’s where TerraBlock comes in. There’s no way we’d be able to do what we do without an important system like TerraBlock.”
TerraBlock’s agnostic architecture empowers creative genius
TerraBlock’s application agnostic architecture has enabled the Oslo Post Company crew to employ the best tool they see fit for each job. Home to an eclectic mix of post production gear, the facility houses six Avid Media Composer suites for editorial and an Assimilate Scratch workstation for color grading, as well as Autodesk Flame and Flame Assist bays, workstations
with both The Foundry Nuke and Autodesk 3ds Max, a BlackMagic Design DaVinci Resolve suite, and other multi-use machines housing both Scratch and Adobe Creative Cloud. All of these systems are connected to TerraBlock via a combination of 1 and 10Gb Ethernet.
“We don’t like to limit ourselves creatively to one application,” Kristensen shared. “TerraBlock plays really well with all of the industry standard tools from Avid through to Assimilate, so it’s an ideal tool for a dynamic environment like ours.”
Since installing the system, the Oslo Post Company team is working faster than ever before. “TerraBlock is so user-friendly with an intuitive interface that has proven to be much simpler than other systems we researched. We can create volumes on the fly without any wasted time; you simply add the volume, and it’s up and running right away,” noted Kristensen. “Having multi-user write capabilities has also allowed us to multi-task, because we can have team members working on VFX and color correction simultaneously to get projects out the door on time.”
Even when managing a full slate of HD and 2K projects with several systems running full speed, the TerraBlock continues to perform seamlessly for Oslo Post Company. Theodor Kristensen explained, “No matter how much we throw at it, TerraBlock runs smoothly; there’s never any lag. And, even if there’s a problem, Facilis’ support team is quick to respond, help us figure out where we went wrong and get us back on track.”
Satisfied with the performance of the system and capabilities it’s brought to Oslo Post Company, Kristensen concluded, “TerraBlock keeps our team connected, our files organized and project delivery on time. We’re having such a great experience with it.”
