Small Tree Shared Storage System at Pomp&Clout

The haunting beauty of EDM artist Caribou’s latest video, Our Love, shot on a 6K RED Epic Dragon, was pieced together far more quickly in large part because of the production company’s recent decision to implement Small Tree Communications LLC’s TitaniumZ-16 shared storage system at its studio.

Pomp&Clout is a Brooklyn-based design and media production company with a spectrum of projects ranging from music videos and tour visuals to motion graphics and pixel-perfect interface design. The decision to install the Ethernet-based TitaniumZ-16 shared storage technology with 10GbE connectivity came from the company’s desire to strengthen project management and improve workflow.

Filmed in Ireland in 6K (6144×3072) 48fps on the RED Epic Dragon, it was extra-critical for the Pomp&Clout team to watch playback after each take, due to the long take nature of the video’s concept, so that they could ensure all was documented appropriately before moving forward.

“Despite having the footage backed up across multiple drives on location, I was understandably nervous about flying back to our post-production offices in Brooklyn with the footage, given the less than stellar drives we sourced in rural Ireland,” said Ryan Staake, executive producer and director, Pomp&Clout. “It wasn’t until I’d quickly backed the footage up to our Small Tree TitaniumZ-16 that I could breathe a sigh of relief and the fun could begin.”

Once back in New York, Staake and his team blocked out the timing in Premiere using raw 6K footage from the TitaniumZ-16 via 10GbE connections on two machines.

Staake and his creative director, Aaron Vinton, were able to simultaneously audition different takes, show their progress, share notes and continue with the project. After a week, ideal edits of takes with rough transitions and re-timing of footage were selected before moving to VFX, where Vinton began exploring subtle lens-effects of the footage and Staake focused on transitions between takes and VFX touchups. Lastly, the two worked on stabilizing the footage to minimize minor Steadicam bumps.

“What was amazing to me,” Staake revealed, “was that we could both work off of raw 6K footage simultaneously while experiencing zero lag. What’s more, other members of our team were working on completely different footage from the TitaniumZ-16 at the same time – again with zero lag. As a result, a project that would have taken four weeks using multiple drives was completed in two weeks, and that includes production.“

Capable of supporting numerous multimedia content creation workstations with a flexible mix of GbE and 10GbE configuration options, TitaniumZ is designed to provide performance for real-time video-editing workflows. With its tier 1 configuration, it can scale to 288TB raw in RAID-5. With the addition of its more cost-effective tier 2 backup NAS configuration, the TitaniumZ can provide another 432TB on the network.

The shared storage system works with the Adobe Creative cloud applications, as was required at Pomp&Clout’s facility where four workstations, including a Mac Pro, two MacBook Pros and a PC machine are connected directly the TitaniumZ without a switch to help achieve lower latency. The system also works with Apple Final Cut Pro X and Avid Media Composer, offering creative facilities flexibility.

“The immediacy of data transfer has been really incredible,” Staake remarked. “We’re doing stuff through 10Gb, which enables us to copy a massive piece of footage or a final rendered project from a local drive onto the TitaniumZ instantaneously.That’s been a major game changer for us.“