Small Tree Provides Storage for Post-Production of “My Family’s Got Guts!â€?

Small Tree Communications, designer of networking and shared storage products for professional video and audio editors, recently provided an inexpensive workflow solution to Five Alts Productions for post-production on Nickelodeon’s new extreme sports competition show, ‘My Family’s Got GUTS!’

“Small Tree Communications offers the ideal shared storage solution for small- to mid-size post-production facilities running Final Cut Pro and Pro Tools,” states Bob Zelin, an independent video engineer with more than 30 years experience in the television industry. Zelin was engaged by Five Alts Productions to analyze initial difficulties the company was experiencing with system performance. “By using Small Tree’s shared storage solution instead of a typical SAN, Five Alts Productions received exceptional performance while saving more than $25,000.”

Running on an Apple Mac Pro with some additional disk drives, Zelin simply utilized Small Tree’s Edge-corE ES4524D, a 24-port Gigabit Ethernet switch, along with its PEG4, a 4-port Ethernet card, to provide Five Alts Productions with a robust system that could meet all of their technical needs at a fraction of the cost. Edited using Final Cut Pro and the Apple ProRes422HQ HD codec, the Small Tree equipment also enabled the use of Apple iMac computers and Apple Mac Book Pros to cut HD material without any additional hardware.

“Small Tree provided excellent service in addition to great products,” said Joanna June, supervising editor during production of the show. “Their solution was affordable and stable, two things necessary for a tight-deadline delivery. We had five stations all solidly accessing the same HD-resolution media and the Small Tree switches handled the workflow perfectly.”