Affinity Productions Purchased Third Facilis TerraBlock

Affinity Productions,
Ottawa’s full service digital media, video production and post-production
studio, delivers creative content and technical
services for clients in film, broadcast, commercials, corporate video and
government – from concept and script through to production, motion
graphics, post production and distribution.

David Zimmerly, Affinity’s post supervisor and editor, is recognized
among his colleagues and clients as a jack-of-all-trades. On any given day he’s
supervising staff, providing workflow consulting for client projects, upgrading
and maintaining the facility’s core editing technology, and more.

Initially
frustrated with the complex logistics of managing bulky SCSI drives, in 2004 he
and a colleague scouted the NAB show floor for a shared storage system that
would help his team manage resources more efficiently between Affinity’s
multiple edit suites. After watching a demo of TerraBlock from Facilis Technology, Inc. and weighing alternate
options, David oversaw the purchase of Affinity’s first TerraBlock 24D in July
2004.

Over the last eight years he’s transitioned from 6 to 48TBs of storage
through 3 generations of TerraBlock – just purchasing his third TerraBlock in
May 2012.

"TerraBlock is the
beating heart of our post department; it’s absolutely critical to what we do.
We don’t just see it as storage, but as a facility manager," Zimmerly
explained. "Before TerraBlock,
moving drives from one room to another was risky and cumbersome. Every time we
moved a pair of striped drives, we’d do it on a wing and a prayer – never
knowing if they would properly fire up again. With TerraBlock we can safely and
efficiently move projects around – creating a level playing field for all of
our workstations, so we can work smarter and faster. It also makes facility
bookings much easier so we’re better able to accommodate last-minute changes
and avoid booking conflicts."

Zimmerly and his team have a simple, but effective strategy for
managing TerraBlock resources. Editors are assigned one or more volumes from a large pool of
various-sized drives, which are all tracked in a custom Microsoft Excel grid.

"We can cross-reference at a glance
the volume name, project name, client, assigned editor and status notes against
every active volume. This provides a great complement to the TerraBlock
Manager’s crucial volume, system and user access information," David
said. "If we encounter any issues,
TerraBlock allows us to quickly and easily check volumes and the system status
from any room on-site. I don’t have to wonder about which room the volumes are
in, and I don’t have to uproot anyone, which is invaluable."

Editing across eight suites and workstations equipped with Avid Symphony, Apple
Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere, Affinity takes an agnostic approach to any
post projects that enter its doors.

"We don’t want to be known as an
exclusively Avid, FCP or whatever shop. We want the flexibility to use any
combination of tools for the job, and TerraBlock enables that,"
Zimmerly explained. "It’s a common
backbone for all of our systems, which makes my life as post supervisor much
easier."

"The system is easy to
maintain and so intuitive that it hardly takes any time to teach new users. We
also appreciate that Facilis listens to its customers’ needs – keeping pace
with the industry’s ever-growing bandwidth and capacity requirements,"
he added. "TerraBlock 5.5 is a
perfect example; it gives us new options for incremental drive chassis
expansion as a cost-effective alternative to another complete server. This will
be key, especially as we migrate beyond HD to 2K and 4K."

Zimmerly concluded: "At
the time of our first TerraBlock purchase, it was the perfect fit for our
facility, and even with all the changes in platforms and formats throughout the
years, it remains so today."