Film Editors Turn to JetStor

‍Independent Producer’s Acclaimed Documentary Takes Off Using JetStor® RAID Solutions

Founded by Lawrence C. in 1997, Vancouver-based Ocean Tides Productions crafts industrial and training films, interactive CDs, and, most importantly, documentary films about people and the issues they face. Having delivered such classics as “Keepers Of The Light” about the automation of lighthouses worldwide and “A Nurse’s Opinion,” a prescient look at nursing in Canada’s healthcare system, Lawrence, a filmmaker for 35 years, shot and edited potentially his most far-reaching documentary, “Crude Sacrifice” (www.crudesacrifice.com), over the last three years.

The innovative work examines the adverse health effects on residents in Northern Alberta who live downstream of the Athabasca Tar Sands, the world’s largest oil-development project. The extraction is Canada’s largest producer of greenhouse gases, accounting for almost one percent of all greenhouse gases in the world.

With JetStor RAID arrays anchoring his production environment, Lawrence edited 16 terabytes of digital video files into a feature-length documentary at a fraction of the cost traditionally incurred by professional filmmakers. The built-in Fibre Channel ports of his JetStor solutions, coupled with their extremely fast I/O functionality, reduced data transfers from hours to minutes, greatly accelerating the editing process. The reliability of his JetStor solutions eliminated the need for secondary backup storage and a costly Fibre Channel switch to link them.

“Without any backup in place, we worried that we would lose files should a disk fail, which would have been disastrous,” Lawrence explained. “But JetStor removed that risk. Its storage arrays performed flawlessly, and we didn’t lose a second of footage during months of post-production.” Moreover, Lawrence found the JetStor arrays easy to manage and monitor. “We had post-production capabilities that were the equal of a studio’s IT environment, but without the costs and administrative overhead,” added Lawrence. “We couldn’t have made ‘Crude Sacrifice’ without economical solutions like those from JetStor.”

Indeed, Lawrence’s resourcefulness and hard work have begun to pay off. Released as a System of Illusion Pictures film, “Crude Sacrifice” premiered at the Planet in Focus International Environmental Film & Video Festival in Toronto, Ontario. It was the only film out of 88 entries from around the world to receive an Honorable Mention.

To edit “Crude Sacrifice,” Lawrence searched for storage solutions that met his needs for economy and dependability. Lawrence learned about JetStor arrays and was impressed with their performance, features, and data security. He deployed a JetStor SATA 516F RAID array with 16 one-terabyte disks and linked it via four gigabits per second Fibre Channel to a Mac Pro workstation with a Fibre Channel adapter.

Lawrence then used the array’s web-based management tool to configure the system for RAID 5 storage. A RAID solution features multiple hard drives that enhance performance and provide fault tolerance and error recovery with such techniques as data striping and mirroring. RAID 5 uses block-level striping with parity data distributed across all of the array’s disks to safeguard data even if two drives fail. Additionally, the Fibre Channel protocol ensures no data is lost during file transfers.

As a result, Lawrence’s JetStor solution protected his work regardless if it was stored on disks or moving between devices. “I felt secure trusting years of my work to JetStor RAID solutions,” he noted. Lawrence deployed a Cinetel film scanner to transfer his analog film footage onto Sony HDSR tape and then used an AJA KONA 3 solution to convert the video into uncompressed, 10-bit 1080p digital files stored on the JetStor array. As more footage was converted, Lawrence installed another JetStor SAS516F RAID Array, also with 16 one-terabyte disks, for additional storage.

Once the raw footage was stored on the JetStor arrays, Lawrence and his team used a second Mac Pro workstation with Apple’s Final Cut Pro video editing application, as well as Adobe Photoshop, to edit “Crude Sacrifice,” make color corrections and add such effects as titles and credits. Another key advantage of his JetStor RAID arrays was their performance. The resolution and frame rates of broadcast-quality files demand a throughput of at least 200 megabits/sec per stream and Lawrence needed two such streams for editing purposes.

“Our JetStor solutions delivered the speed we required,” said Lawrence. “Their extremely fast throughput expedited our post-production work by letting us retrieve and save enormous files very quickly.”

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