Atlab Gets InfiniteStorage
Atlab Gets InfiniteStorage
May 2nd, 2006: Atlab Australia, one of the largest independent release printing laboratories in the world, has gone with an SGI InfiniteStorage SAN solution to manage the immense amounts of data required for digital filmmaking.
Advances in digital processing technologies have driven the film industry's move from traditional film stock to a digital format, and as this has happened the need for immense storage capacity and access speeds has appeared.
Atlab installed the SGI InfiniteStorage TP9700 based SAN solution in its Sydney headquarters in November to allow colour graders, directors and photographic experts to work together to refine images and colours in the film that would otherwise be lost in translation.
"Clients demand the ability to see and manipulate colours and images in real time and in high quality, and since we are working with such huge files, we need the speed and capacity that SGI's SAN solution delivers," says Rob Sandeman, Digital Supervisor, Atlab.
“An entire feature length movie scanned equates to six terabytes of data so the file sizes are very different to those used in the commercial space,” added Sandeman. “We're running with 16 terabytes in a single partition, which is not usual for most industries, but for the film industry, it's really our starting point.”
Atlab upgraded to the 4Gb SGI InfiniteStorageTP9700 as part of a $1.7 million project. The new system eliminates the need to copy data from one place to another, creating multiple copies.
“What a SAN solution brings is a quicker time to market for digital intermediate environments," says Michael Cocks, Account Manager for SGI. “We have seen customers save two days per week as a result of installing an SGI CXFS SAN solution and if you think about the number of people working on a film saving two days per week, that is an enormously significant time and cost savings.”
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