Small Tree Shared Storage System a Slam Dunk

Winning a championship is the primary objective of every NBA team, but delivering the ultimate fan experience featuring live entertainment, video and music is critical to keeping spectators on the edge of their seat throughout each home game.

To make sure there’s never a stop in the action at Energy Solutions Arena during Utah Jazz games, Small Tree Communications LLC provided its GraniteSTOR TITANIUM16 Ethernet-based shared storage system for the post-production team’s workflow.
 
With 16 Final Cut Pro editors using FireWire drives for projects ranging from promotions and commercial spots for KJZZ-TV to graphic elements and in-house production for Jazz home games, project management was almost as hard as shutting down Lebron James.

Looking for a solution that would offer his editing team immediate and simultaneous access to HD media files, Sean Fahey, broadcast engineering supervisor for KJZZ-TV and the Utah Jazz, selected TITANIUM shared storage system for its performance, affordability, ease of installation and scalability.
 
"Shifting from FireWire drives to TITANIUM is like a dream come true for us, as we’ve wanted to make the switch to a more manageable workflow solution for some time," said Fahey. "The system’s ability to provide our editors with immediate access to files while offering real-time play-out has resulted in significant improvement in efficiencies across the board."
 
An all-in-one system TITANIUM offers flexibility, supporting a range of performance and capacity requirements. TITANIUM16, a 3U rack-mount solution, is configurable up to 32 GbE or 20 10GbE ports and storage capacity from 32TB to 360TB, while delivering up to 72 streams of ProRes 422.

All 16 members of the KJZZ-TV/JAZZ team are connected to the TITANIUM16 via 10Gb over CAT6a using Small Tree’s 10GbE switch and network adapters.
 
"We looked into Small Tree for several reasons, including cost, as their solution was significantly less expensive for what we wanted to accomplish," Fahey remarked. "Additionally, the fact that all of the equipment we needed – the storage, the switch and the cards – was available through Small Tree was extremely attractive. I’ve never found a storage company as smart and forthright with that knowledge as Small Tree. I will never turn to another company for future storage needs."