Sonnet Sells Mobile HD Editing to Schenkel Productions

Sonnet Technologies, Inc. announced that Schenkel Productions, a provider of video production services for two decades located in Northern Indiana, is using the Fusion F2 portable 2-drive RAID SATA storage system to support full HD editing anywhere, any time.

Schenkel Productions offers videography, editing, live event production, and DVD authoring services to companies across the United States, and the Fusion F2 supports all of these services by providing high-performance and high-reliability storage, as well as a compact form factor and low power requirements, to enable rapid completion of SD and HD edits.

"Editing can’t always be done in the luxury of a post-production suite," said John Schenkel, owner of Schenkel Productions and son of legendary sports broadcaster Chris Schenkel. "Constraints involving location, time, and budget often make on-location mobile editing a necessity, and the Fusion F2 has enabled us to edit anywhere – in a car, on a plane, or on-site – without losing the quality or look that every client demands. The Fusion F2 has made our work a lot easier, and clients are very impressed by what this small and highly portable system allows us to achieve. I just plug it in, and it works."

Schenkel provides mobile Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere editing on the spot, using the Fusion F2 in a RAID 0 configuration along with a Tempo SATA ExpressCard/34 adapter and a MacBook Pro. He maintains a collection of 20 1TB drives to maintain fast access to stored footage and edits for any project. In his HD work, Schenkel acquires footage with a Sony XDCAM 330 HD and a Sony HVR-V1U HDV camera. The Fusion F2 transfers data via two eSATA ports, providing significantly better speed than FireWire and USB portable drive solutions. Because it draws power from a powered FireWire port, the system can be used even when power is unavailable or an outlet is too far away.

Whereas Schenkel’s previous editing solution required that he travel with a hard-sided case, the Fusion F2 fits conveniently into a soft briefcase along with his laptop and mouse. To ensure system reliability in the face of mobile use, each of the Fusion F2’s two drives are individually shock-isolated, protecting the drives during transport and virtually eliminating cross-coupled vibration – a potential source of soft-error-induced skipped frames in video capture and playback. Fusion F2 is also energy efficient and extremely cool and quiet. Side-by-side placement of its drives increases the metal case’s cooling surface area, so no additional fan is required, thus enabling near-silent operation and reducing the F2’s power requirements.