Facilis TerraBlock at TBD Post

Located in Austin, TX, TBD Post delivers creative editorial, color grading and finishing for commercials, TV series and independent films.

Since its inception in 2011, the boutique shop has collaborated on campaigns for brands such as the NHL, IBM, Shiner Beer and Verizon Wireless; TV shows for A&E, TLC, TNT and the Discovery Channel; and indie films like An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story.

One of TBD Post’s latest undertakings – a MySpace ‘Portfolio’ campaign featuring short films with artists Hit-Boy, Ace Da God, Findlay and Amadéus – debuted in October 2013. To streamline the storage and management of media for all of these projects, TBD Post depends on a Facilis TerraBlock.

TBD Post’s search for a shared storage system began last year, as a mounting project load prompted the need for improved file organization and sharing within the facility. Co-owners Brandon Thomas and Ted Griffis headed to NAB 2012 to investigate possible solutions, and after consideration, they purchased TerraBlock.

“We looked at a lot of storage systems, and in the end, TerraBlock best fit our current and future needs,” said Griffis. “As a boutique shop with a strong growth trajectory, the ability to affordably expand into the future with TerraBlock was alluring. It also met our high bandwidth requirements and worked with multiple NLEs, plus we knew that having both Ethernet and FC connectivity would afford us greater flexibility in the long run.”

By July 2012, TBD Post’s team had installed TerraBlock. It’s currently connected to multiple Apple Mac Pro and iMac workstations running Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve, Autodesk Smoke, Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro and more. A Telestream Episode encoding server also shares a volume on the TerraBlock.

For each project that TBD Post takes on, it leverages TerraBlock to manage multiple terabyte of data.

“Keeping track of everything used to be exhausting, but now, our files are all in the same location, and we can assign specific volumes for projects. TerraBlock has been insanely beneficial,” Thomas shared. “We often have 2-3 hours of content coming through the shop each week, so multi-user volumes have become critical for coloring and finishing sessions because of the ability to have several artists working on the same project simultaneously.”

With 4K continuing to gain industry momentum, TBD Post sees TerraBlock as a future proof investment.

Griffis said: “We just wrapped the finishing on a 4K feature film, Thank You a Lot and delivered an hour of 4K content to a commercial client, so we are starting to see a bigger push for 4K, especially in the independent film world, where it can really future proof a film for distribution. It’s reassuring knowing that the TerraBlock is fast enough to handle 4k workflows.”

Given the consistent flow of client work rolling in, TBD Post’s TerraBlock often reaches capacity without any drop in performance.

Thomas concluded: “We’re constantly loading TerraBlock with high-res files, but it keeps up. Our team can throw anything at it and it just runs beautifully – without ever getting in our way. It’s a cost-effective, out-of-the box solution that’s been a true asset. We couldn’t accomplish what we’re doing without it.“