NBC Universal’s LX.TV Chooses Promise for 4K Post Production

LX.TV, a division of NBC Universal, Inc. which produces lifestyle and entertainment programming including the Emmy Award-winning home improvement show George to the Rescue, needed to upgrade their storage solution to be ready and flexible for 4K post production.

Requiring a solution that delivered massive capacity and high bandwidth, LX.TV turned to Promise Technology, Inc. and the VTrak J930s.

Promise develops solutions, including VTrak FC storage and Pegasus Thunderbolt drives, which are optimized for the video bandwidth requirements in big data, rich media and the media and entertainment market.

LX.TV boosted its raw storage capacity to a total of 912TB with three dense VTrak J930s, two VTrak E830 RAID subsystems, multiple SANLink Thunderbolt to FC bridges and multiple Pegasus enclosures, plus they added a Media Asset Management system from Levels Beyond to interact with Final Cut Pro X. The solution increased LX.TV’s storage capacity by 1,700% in one rack and was achieved through the dense VTrak J930s, which delivers up to 240TB of raw capacity from a single unit. Additionally, VTrak delivered a clear speed increase in drives and performance which is crucial as LX.TV transitions to a 4K workflow with new Blackmagic cameras.

“We want to be set up to be 4K ready and future proof our workflows, especially with the upcoming Blackmagic 4K cameras, and looked to the VTrak J930s high density solution for higher bandwidth in less than half the rack space, Final Cut Pro X for 4K video editing and leveraging Levels Beyond for a digital asset management,” said Mike Fernandes, post production manager, LX.TV.

“4K+ workflows present countless new challenges to broadcasters, producers and editors, but with Promise’s capabilities to ingest, edit and create HD/4K+ content, storage is no longer the biggest obstacle,” said Elaine Kwok, product marketing manager, Promise. “The VTrak, Thunderbolt and SANLink solution at NBC Universal demonstrates the versatility throughout Promise’s product lines whether it is for mobile, desktop or enterprise editing.“

To download the customer story