DUBLIN, December 2nd, 2010: Tyrell CCT, a leading supplier of digital media solutions in Ireland and the UK, today announced that the company has provided broadcaster UTV Television with an intelligent archiving solution, consisting of Marquis’ Parking archive and retrieval software and a three node MatrixStore cluster from Object Matrix. Powered by Marquis Broadcast’s Media Highway Technology, the new solution takes advantage of Parking’s easy to use edit sequence archive and restore functionality and MatrixStore’s secure, cost efficient near-line storage array enabling UTV to move forward rapidly with their transition to tapeless technology.

UTV needed fast, un-hindered access to their digital news packages whilst also requiring a large volume of archive material to be available at their fingertips. They wanted to avoid adding more capacity to their production storage network and consulted with Tyrell CCT to identify an archive solution that required minimal management, could scale quickly and be available across their entire Avid news production systems. The integrated Marquis and Object Matrix solution allows UTV to move entire sequences, including edit decisions, subclips and metadata, from dedicated Avid ISIS storage to the MatrixStore environment in a simple one-click process. No specialist knowledge of storage or archive management systems is required. At any time in the future, sequences, together with all metadata including media and edit decisions, can be retrieved and dropped directly into the editing system.

The solution greatly improves workflow efficiency and resource management for UTV as valuable online edit storage is freed up. The process of archiving is fast and easy as Parking wraps the sequence elements and metadata into a standard TAR file as they are transferred to MatrixStore. Similarly, the process of file restore is also fast and efficient as Parking eliminates the need to re-ingest and conform media before editing can begin. The MatrixStore provides a self-managing nearline archive that compliments UTV’s online Avid workflows and manages the availability, protection and longevity of their digital content. This node based clustered storage array will initially provide UTV with 33 TB of nearline storage and combined with the unique object based architecture of MatrixStore, it provides an incredibly secure environment to build UTV’s digital archive.

“We see this as a perfect example of the synergies and cost efficiencies that can be achieved by combining key technologies,” commented Stuart Lawn, Technical Director, Tyrell CCT. “The joint Marquis and Object Matrix solution presents broadcasters and post facilities with a greatly simplified and flexible approach to the management of the ever increasing volume of digital content.”

“The combination of Object Matrix and Marquis gives UTV a robust and flexible solution that is easily scalable and allows us to accommodate and manage our rapidly growing digital news archive,” commented Sean Ferrin, Head of Operations, UTV Television. “The solution brings significant cost savings and efficiencies, freeing up valuable resources and greatly reducing the requirement for large quantities of tapes and associated physical storage. Content can now be moved with minimum effort and it is instantly searchable, easily retrievable and totally secure.”
About UTV

UTV Television is part of UTV Media plc and is the Channel 3 licence holder for Northern Ireland. UTV is the most watched channel in Northern Ireland and its award-winning team produce the UK’s most watched local news programme, UTV Live. UTV Television recently celebrated its 50th birthday and launched the first High Definition service on the island of Ireland.

About Tyrell CCT
Tyrell CCT is the leading creative technology solutions provider for the broadcast, post production, education and corporate sectors in the UK and Ireland. Established in 2000, the company provides complete digital media solutions for the creation, manipulation, management and delivery of digital content. Tyrell CCT represents leading global suppliers of video, audio, storage and media streaming solutions and also provides consultancy, system integration and technical support services. For more information, visit Tyrell CCT at http://www.tyrell.ie

About Marquis Broadcast
Founded in 1998, Marquis Broadcast provides a range of media integration products designed for the data-intensive and challenging requirements of today’s fast-paced broadcasting environments, enabling broadcasters and other users of digital media to achieve maximum efficiencies from their workflow processes. The company has considerable experience in integrating an extensive range of broadcast systems and devices, providing easy to use workflows via Medway, Marquis’ widely installed interoperability engine. http://www.marquisbroadcast.com

Cardiff, UK, 10th November 2010 – Object Matrix, a developer of secure archive and retrieval software, has supplied Porth based post production facility Avanti Media with its pre-production and nearline archive solution, The MatrixStore. The multi-purpose data management solution provides an audited, secure archive for the Panasonic P2 rushes that enter the facility and also a safe place to keep finished AVID projects online.

Avanti Media use The MatrixStore to manage the many terabytes of content that they work on every week, it looks after the location, authenticity and availability of the content so that the editorial staff can get on with more relevant tasks. The solution consists of a three node MatrixStore cluster, Dropspot and MxFS client applications from Object Matrix.

Rhys Bevan, Operations Director, “Due to the nature of the business we need to support the production effort both in-house and off-site. It is therefore crucial that any technology that we bring into the facility both adds value to our process and does not hinder our ability to work. In that respect MatrixStore so far has fitted perfectly into our workflow.”

Located at the historic Corona pop factory in Porth, Avanti is Wales’ premiere entertainment producers. Credits include Jonathan, which is filmed onsite, Wakestock and an impressive mix of live events, documentaries and weekly shows for clients such as S4C, BBC, ITV & Sky including the recent Welcome To Wales – Ryder Cup concert from the Millennium Stadium.

“The MatrixStore is an essential bit of kit for us given the current workload and the cost of our online storage. The local support we have received from Object Matrix has also given us the comfort factor that we know they will be on hand should we need them for anything.” added Rhys.

The MatrixStore vault functionality allows the team at Avanti to manage client content in their own distinct areas whilst using the same physical platform. it also allows them to protect rushes in a secure area where it cannot be deleted either accidentally or maliciously.

“Like to many of our clients the team at Avanti are coming to terms with content coming into the facility on tapeless media which have until now been clogging up there AVID Unity. With shooting ratios sometimes in the range or 60-1 keeping all that raw footage on the Unity is neither cost effective nor practical. Avanti also need a place to keep content at their fingertips so editors can quickly find content from the current series of a long running show which is why The MatrixStore is such a good fit for them” added Nick Pearce, co-founder of Object Matrix.

About Avanti
AVANTI’s Post Production is all done in-house at The Pop Factory, Porth. The department consists of 4 HD Avid Adrenaline suites and a Pro-Tools based Dubbing and Voiceover studio, each housed in individual, spacious rooms with plenty of natural light. With each room overlooking views of the Rhondda hillside, there is no better place to edit the wide range of programmes that we produce here at AVANTI.
The Pop Factory also houses three large recording studios as well as the loft and the tower which offer a more intimate recoding space.
www.avantimedia.tv

Caerphilly, Manchester, UK, 30th September 2010 – Object Matrix, a developer of rushes and nearline archive software, has been chosen by Manchester based post production facility Sumners for its pre- production archive solution, The MatrixStore. The low touch data management solution provides an audited, secure archive for the increasing volume of file based projects that enter the Sumners facility on a daily basis.

Consisting of a three node MatrixStore cluster the solution perfectly compliments the incumbent AVID workflows, allowing content to be available to editors whenever they require it without putting unnecessary strain on the editing and production storage platforms.

Brian Hardman, Technical Director at Sumners stated, “Fundamentally what we want, as do many other post houses in our market, is robust technology that has relatively low entry level cost, but that is inherently and easily scalable. The MatrixStore architecture provides the scalability we require and also it’s flexible data protection approach allows for project based data protection schemes to be set up.”

Located in the center of Manchester Sumners has a strong reputation for providing a creative, professional and reliable environment in which their clients can work. Programmes post produced at the facility include Waterloo Road, The Royle Family and Childrenʼs Hospital.

“Most of the other options we looked at did not meet our criteria by cost, scalability, architecture, metadata handling or suitable architecture for post.” added Brian.

The MatrixStore vault functionality allows Brian and the team to manage client content in their own distinct areas whilst using the same physical platform. It also allows them to protect rushes in a secure area where they cannot be deleted either accidentally or maliciously.

“Brian and the team at Sumners have been at the forefront of the AVID post community pushing products to find their limitations and subsequently innovating workflows to ensure their clients have the best environment possible. We are very pleased to be working closely with Sumners to further refine how MatrixStore solves a crucial part of the file based workflow, namely ensuring rushes are available, authentic and protected. ” stated Nick Pearce, co-founder of Object Matrix.

Sumners ordered the MatrixStore through UK reseller Root6 who also provide consultative and support services to the leading Manchester facility.

ʻIt was great working with Brian in resolving issues in their workflow which not only complimented their existing workflows but also enabled future expansion. MatrixStore fitted the storage and workflow requirements perfectly whilst balancing their business modelʼ stated Mark Jackson, Sales Director

The View From OM

We are very excited to be working with a facility with a strong reputation for innovation and quality delivery. Working  with Brian, Roger and the team we aim to further improve our integration with AVID tapeless workflows.

The Need
Dinamo require fast, un-hindered access to their digital assets whilst also requiring a large volume of content to be available at their fingertips. They wanted to avoid adding more capacity to their more expensive rendering and compositing storage and started to look for a archive solution that did not require any management, could scale and be available centrally on the network.
The issues they faced included:

• Finding content on the many separate RAID silos acquired over time.

• Managing the protection and location of terabytes of content.

• Procurement and administration of 3rd party storage management tools.

• Locating and loading clips from previous work when new series are commissioned.

• Moving content to and from tape was laborious and error prone.

The Solution

After working with different technologies and managing the many silos of content Dinamo selected Object Matrix’s secure and scalable MatrixStore solution to act as a nearline repository for all content that they require to be available on demand.

Out of the box The MatrixStore provided: • Centralised Vaults providing instant access to all assets. • A scalable solution that requires little or no management. • Capability to add and search on Metadata • Data Lock Down to stop accident deletes • High availability of data and automatic failover in the case of a hardware failure • Ability to add in future storage as and when they become available

MatrixStore allows Dinamo to pull content up when they need it, where they need it. They no longer have to go hunting around for clips from previous episodes, it is now available with a simple search operation.

The Process

1. The AVID media held on the SAN is moved to MatrixStore using DropSpot with rudimentary metadata added.

2. Historical episodes of programmes are also copied to a MatrixStore vault.

3. When content is required to be restored the editors use either DropSpot or MXFS (File System Interface) to pull content from MatrixStore on demand.

Comment

Aron Evans, MD of Dinamo Productions stated, “The team at Object Matrix clearly understand the technical and operational challenges faced by production facilities up and down the country, namely ‘doing more with less’. With the MatrixStore solution hitting an economic sweet spot and the team having the domain expertise we have the happy situation were we are doing more for less. The fact that we have local support is also a huge bonus”.

“Asset management and storage are constant issues in digital content creation. Every Animation and VFX project we work on need archiving to stable, accessible and expandable storage , this is where MatrixStore comes in” Ben Cawthorne, Head of R&D, Dinamo Productions

Case Study PDF

Get the full Dinamo MatrixStore Nearline Case Study.

The view from OM

It is great to work with local companies, especially ones who look to work with us to improve workflows and encourage innovation. We look forward to developing more solutions and workflows with Aron, Ben, Hywel and the team..

We will be on stand with our partners MOG Solutions (Hall7 G39) from Friday to Tuesday showing various tapeless workflows and will also be taking part in various Apple reseller and partner events at their Amsterdam EBC. So, if you would like to learn more about any of the following please do drop us a line or come along to see us:

- File Based Ingest Workflows (manage and protect P2, EX3, XDCAM rushes using DropSpot, MXFS and also mxfSPEEDRAIL from MOG Solutions)

- Nearline Archiving (take the load off your ISIS or XSAN, put content somewhere more appropriate)

- Deep Archive (Keep your content alive and available for re-purposing or distribution. Use DropSpot, Final Cut Server or Vidispine to protect, find and use your content on-demand)

The View From OM

Three times a year the body and soul of Object Matrix toddles off to various locations across the globe, standing around for hours, miles of walking and yards of imbibing, all in the name of business. Is it worth it? We think so.

• Secure, Searchable Rushes/Dailies Ingest and Protection (Panasonic P2 etc)
• Nearline or parking space for AVID or Final Cut workflows
• Local Library, keeping assets alive to be re-purposed/re-used

The View from OM

NAB is always an experience and shows how niche storage vendors can dominate in a space not yet penetrated by the big tin companies (thought they all claim to be there). Please do get in touch if you would like to have a chat with Mark or myself.

The video (HD version available here) provides a high level view of The MatrixStore in this role:

As shown in the video there are 4 main benefit areas:

• Guaranteed Ingest - MatrixStore generates a hash (digest, digital fingerprint) of the content on the client and also on the two MatrixStore nodes the content lands on. Three different places where the content is checked ensuring the content in MatrixStore is bit for bit the same as came off the P2 or SxS card. Because MatrixStore keeps that digest/fingerprint as metadata with the content we are able to automatically, periodically and systematically (insert line from Grease here) ensure the content on disk matches the digest kept with it. Forever.. and ever.

• Secure Protection - MatrixStore provides the option to keep content in vaults that can have retention periods set upon them. No deletion or modification before the retention date. End of. This helps not only for the long term retention of content but also as a highly secure ingest vault for rushes/dailies coming into the post process. Set a one month retention policy on an ingest vault and that content will be secure from the accidents that do tend to happen.

• Searchable Metadata – “If you can’t find it you don’t have it”. DropSpot harvests metadata contained within the P2 (and other formats) media and creates a searchable rushes (dailies) repository allowing producers or editors to find and retrieve clips in an instant.

• Making use of the content – Now that the data is online and protected at the highest levels you can now access the data. Using either DropSpot or MxFS from any authenticated client content can be copied to and from the archive or can be accessed from within applications like Media Composer or Final Cut Pro. Using MxFS, The MatrixStore is perfect to provide quick access to content to browse or perform a quick edit before working ‘online’.

The View from OM

There is currently no de-facto standard or best practice defined for the safe ingest of tapeless content. The MatrixStore offers the ability to provide guaranteed ingest coupled with an audit trail from ingest through to archive in AVID and Final Cut Workflows.

During BVE last week I spent time chatting with Larry Jordan for the ‘The Digital Production Buzz’ podcast talking about:

• The two maxims .. now three…
• Highly secure protection of file-based rushes/dailies
• MatrixStore as nearline or parking space
• Keeping legacy assets online in order to re-use or re-purpose

We also touched on the integrations with CatDV/Final Cut Server and disk based archiving in general.

Click on the image to to to the website:

Larry  is an internationally-renowned consultant and Apple-Certified trainer in digital media with over 25 years experience as a television producer, director and editor with national broadcast and corporate credits. Based on Los Angeles, he’s a member of both the Directors Guild of America and the Producers Guild of America. Jordan is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Edit Well, the rich-media newsletter for Final Cut Studio, published by Peachpit Press. He is the author of hundreds of hours of online training, published by Lynda.com and two books on Final Cut Pro, published by Peachpit Press. Visit his website at www.larryjordan.biz.

The View From OM

I would like to thank Larry for once again giving us the opportunity to talk about MatrixStore and it position in video workflow. I will post about other nice stuff at BVE in another post.

The OM  team will demonstrate how The MatrixStore can protect content from ingest to archive:

- Guaranteed ingest with metadata harvesting (Panasonic P2)

- Secure Ingest Vaults (Lock down from accidental deletion)

- Production/Project parking to a Nearline Vault in AVID and Final Cut Workflows (one click operation)

- Archiving Legacy assets to an online Library Vault using DropSpot, Final Cut Server and CatDV

Implementing a tapeless or file based workflow has been highlighted as one of the top challenges facing creative organisations in 2010. With no tape to put on the shelf broadcasters, post-production facilities and creative agencies are looking for a solution to keep their assets secure and more importantly available throughout the production process. A single MatrixStore cluster acts as pre-production, nearline or local archive allowing content to move seamlessly through any digital workflow from ingest to delivery.

The View From OM

We are very much looking forward to the show so come along and see us on stand C10!

One sweet spot for MatrixStore technology is in the creative space. Creative organisations are increasingly being subjected to change driven by external forces such as changes in the way content is captured and our insatiable appetite for HD or 3D content (see The Big Broadcast Survey published in 2009). The industry is one that is used to adapting to whatever is thrown at it but it also relies on solutions that just work.

Below is a quick summary of the challenges they currently face and how MatrixStore is positioned to help. I will elaborate on each point in later posts :

1. File Based/Tapeless Ingest - Some call it pre-production archiving, some call it prechiving, the problem is the same, more and more content is being captured on disk or flash. There is no tape to put on the shelf. Protecting content that enters the building in an audited manner is a key area where MatrixStore is helping. Integration into Final Cut and Avid workflows, digital fingerprints on ingest, locked vaults to protect from deletion and metadata harvesting from P2, SxS etc are some of the benefits.

2. Parking/Nearline – Production disk, the online, the SAN should be kept lean and mean. Some projects can take years to complete so content needs to be moved off and onto the expensive disk repeatedly over a prolonged period. Tape based technologies do not cut the mustard. Organisations are also looking to ‘rightsize’ their expensive disk by offloading older or less-used content that should not sit clogging up the SAN to a more appropriate tier of storage. Seamless one touch capacity expansion, DropSpot (metadata support/search) and performance make MatrixStore a natural choice.

3. Legacy/Local Archive – organisations who own content need to protect their content or they will not be able to re-use or monetise that content. The two maxims come into their own here. Integration with DAM/MAMs, Self-Management,  redundancy of data, retention policies (prevent change or deletion), metadata and search goodness are key here.

4. Content Manipulation/Distribution Repository - If you own the content and have it protected and available on disk then what can you do with that data? Clustered/Grid architecture, high availability, metadata and search again key.

5. Regulations - More and more financial institutions are using video in the way they communicate with staff or shareholders, that video needs to be protected and stored for a pre-determined period in accordance with global regulations. MatrixStore has built in characteristics that satisfy these compliance requirements.

The View From OM

Even medium to large creative organisations will not have dedicated I.T staff to work on the video side of the business so they need solutions that just work and do not take them out of their comfort zone. The MatrixStore is the storage geek so they don’t need one.