mlb

Launched on January 1st, 2009, MLB
Network has grown, reaching more than 70 million households to
deliver America’s national pastime all the time. With multiple camera
feeds, audio clips and on-screen information, it’s not uncommon for
MLB Network to record more than 3,000 hours of content per week. Much
of that content needs to be categorized and catalogued for future
use.

Functioning as a NAS, StrongBox
provides a file-based system for storing and accessing digital
project footage using LTFS
technology.

With drag-and-drop functionality,
StrongBox makes accessing archived projects easy for MLB Network,
delivering content to multiple, simultaneous editors and producers.
The network being a 24/7 operation, the production staff use a
SAN-based Final Cut Pro platform to develop programming updated
throughout the season with the latest information. The ability to
recall an archived show, and repackage it with current information,
utilizing the data tape as storage, reduces the storage costs. When
these projects are ready for storage or archival, the video, audio
and revision files, along with their metadata, are stored in
StrongBox.

"StrongBox has been natural
for streamlining this type of storage. Instead of keeping projects on
spinning disk, we’re able to offload to StrongBox" said Tab
Butler, director of Media Management and Post-Production for MLB
Network. "If I look down my future roadmap, my project
archive is going to continue to grow for the lifetime of the network.
By placing project content on LTO-5 media, it’s much more
cost-efficient."

"With the introduction of
LTFS, tape can be partitioned and indexed on a file level,"
Butler continued. "This offers a lower-cost alternative for
storage for media within broadcast companies. For us, LTFS brings the
capability to efficiently maintain an accessible archive at the file
level, while reducing the operational costs associated with spinning
disk storage. StrongBox is an excellent tool within my environment,
providing flexibility that makes it functional in multiple use-cases
for MLB Network."

"Crossroads is extremely
pleased to see high-profile organizations such as MLB Network turn to
StrongBox due to its unique ability to cut archiving costs through
the use of tape storage," said David Cerf, EVP of
business and corporate development at Crossroads. "We
continue to see significant interest in StrongBox throughout the
media and entertainment industry – and for the clear reason that
storing tremendous amounts of content is, indeed, their business.
StrongBox not only does this much less expensively, but it does so
securely and efficiently."

MLB Network Deploys StrongBox

For video project archive