AZIMUTH GOES WITH THE FLOW

Azimuth Post Production has invested in a 32 Terabyte EditShare XStream storage and asset management system.

Purchased via reseller Tyrell:CCT, it replaces Azimuth's current mix of Avid Unity and Lanshare disk arrays and will provide the facility's prime storage for its Avid and FCP suites. The deal also includes EditShare's Flow Ingest, Flow Browse and Flow Ark.

Flow Ingest can digitise multiple HD signals, simultaneously creating offline, online and browse quality media in real-time. Azimuth is offering clients the opportunity to search, view and log media using Flow Browse on standard PCs either prior to or during the edit. These logs and basic assemblies can be imported to Avid bins and sequences by means of simple drag-and-drop.

According to Azimuth's Director of Post Production, Neil Hatton, the increasing amount of tapeless rushes coming into the facility necessitated the purchase of a backup system. EditShare's Flow Ark software was chosen to drive a Quantum LTO4 tape drive with a 16 tape autoloader. Hatton said, "As clients usually recycle their XDCAM EX cards almost immediately, we were finding ourselves holding the only copy of their rushes. We needed to protect ourselves against all possibilities of data loss, so purchasing an archive and backup system was vital. The integration of all the Flow applications with the EditShare storage means that the location and metadata of all files is tracked throughout the production cycle, right through to permanent archive."