NAB Show: Tuxera Demos Fusion File Share Software and Solutions with Partners

Tuxera, Inc. announced its network access technology is enabling M&E companies to get more stunning and effects-laden video content more quickly from the editing suite to consumers’ screens.

Post-production company requirements fueling adoption of Fusion File Share by Tuxera to enable real-time networked data access for vfx, animation and other high-bandwidth studio operations

The Fusion File Share by Tuxera server message block (SMB) server software for the Linux operating environment is the secret key that unlocks the awesome power and performance trapped in today’s high-performance computing hardware and software-defined storage systems. The firm’s software opens up a bottleneck at the networked data access layer of the stack that post-production companies use to feed video to the editing suite. When Fusion File Share by Tuxera replaces the standard SMB solutions that are normally loaded in storage infrastructure by default, the data transfer roadblock disappears.  

Now, studio technicians can work on the most demanding editing and production processes in real time, even when processing uncompressed 8K 60 FPS content. The familiar experience of lag and downtime while editors wait for high-resolution video files to transfer across the network and load disappear, freeing time for studios to create the greatest possible video products and realize the most ambitious creative visions.

“When we originally tested Fusion File Share, I had no idea what it was capable of,“ says Veikko Ruuskanen, CEO, Toast Post Production Oy, a full-service post-production house in Helsinki, Finland. “We always prefer to play back raw material on our workstations in real time, regardless of the resolution or file format. Unfortunately, that was not always doable with equipment running SAMBA SMB server software. At times, we needed to create local caches which slowed down the workflow, frustrating both our artists and our clients. With the Fusion File Share software, we found that we could instantly manage real-time transfers of the most demanding file types. The change was immediate.“

Visitors to the NAB Show (Las Vegas, NV, April 13-17, 2024) can hear more about the boost to post-production workflows which Fusion File Share by Tuxera offers in a joint presentation from Tuxera, Toast Post Production, and Pixitmedia, in SDS and data management solutions for M&E. The presentation will be held on 15, 2024 at 3PM local time at the SU4087 Create Zone Theater.

NAB Show visitors can also visit Tuxera’s booth to see Fusion File Share by Tuxera performing high speed networked file accesses from storage. The company’s technical staff will be on hand to explain how storage providers can enable the latest exciting production effects for their media and entertainment customers by addressing the bottleneck in their data access layer.

Beating industry performance standards for networked data access
The Fusion File Share software provides a uplift in the speed, throughput and reliability of networked data access for all workflows performed in media and entertainment studios, editing suites and post-production facilities, including:

• Color grading
• Vfx
• Animation
• Motion tracking

With Fusion File Share running on hardware and software storage systems from the company’s partners, studio technicians can perform concurrent processes such as color grading and video editing on raw 8K video feeds with no loss of definition, and with data throughput typically exceeding 10GB/s.

Antti Alila, VP, enterprise solutions, Tuxera, said: “Just one simple change can unlock the full potential of your content storage and network bandwidth. Fusion File Share by Tuxera – our high-performance SMB protocol solution – is transforming the work of production studios and video technicians in the media and entertainment industry, producing huge improvements in efficiency and productivity. We know that studios are putting heavy investments into the best workstations, the best effects software, the highest bandwidth networks, and the best storage hardware and software. All those investments essentially go to waste if at the protocol level the system cannot scale and deliver the needed throughput. Now technology will not get in the way of studios making whatever effects they can imagine.“

How Fusion File Share works?
It connects the users of data over networks to storage servers, continuously providing high throughput while maintaining data integrity regardless of the status of the infrastructure over which data are transferred. The most widely used alternative to the open-source SAMBA software, Fusion File Share offers up to 60x higher throughput and as much as 500% better scalability. Compatible with the SMB protocol up to version 3.1.1, Fusion File Share also offers RDMA capability.

In addition, its scale-out feature enables the creation of parallel and scalable multi-SMB cluster service, providing faster throughput with low CPU and memory usage.

M&E workload performance comparison

Internally validated test data demonstrate the superior performance of Fusion File Share when handling multimedia workloads such as high definition video. The results were derived from a live staged concert set-up consisting of a 16K x 16K, 60fps video livestream to a giant display screen from 27 storage nodes via media servers with active-active scale-out SMB and storage clustering. The application required zero frame drops or latency, to give concert goers an uninterrupted, immersive viewing experience while maintaining throughput for an event lasting for several hours.

In a major storage provider’s cluster running Fusion File Share with RDMA enabled, the file sharing system fully saturated the network with data transfers running at up to 412GB/s. The Fusion File Storage software’s low resource usage also enabled SMB service directly on the storage nodes, with no requirement for protocol nodes or extra hardware.

Resources:
Fusion File Share by Tuxera SMB for media, broadcast, and entertainment file access    
Fusion File Share by TuxeraSMB for software-defined storage (SDS)   
Fusion File Share by Tuxera SMB for file processing in high-performance computing (HPC)    
Fusion File Share by TuxeraSMB file access for public cloud     
Video: Fusion File Share by Tuxera SMB server overview        
Video: Reduce data transfer bottlenecks with RDMA-enabled SMB server   
Video: Scale out active-active SMB clustering in Fusion File Share    
Vide : SMB transparent failover with continuous availability    
Webinar: SMB for fast content creation in media & entertainment