INDUSTRY

SGI CXFS Shared Filesystem and SGI InfiniteStorage RM660, Highly Optimized for Rich Media, Deliver the Top Speed Needed for Hollywood Blockbuster Deadlines: To robustly power a brand new color-correction and editorial production facility, EFILM LLC purchased a complement of technology from SGI to meet the nail-biting deadlines of Hollywood movie trailer production. A pioneering digital film lab that has relied on innovative SGI InfiniteStorage and storage area network (SAN) technology for many years, EFILM expanded its business into movie trailers in an 8,000 square-foot building across the street from its main Hollywood, Calif., facility. Gutting the interior, EFILM designed its movie trailer business, with networking assistance from SGI Professional Services, to house two editorial suites and a color-correction suite, which also functions as a digital or film screening room for the end product. The acknowledged market leader in digital intermediate (DI), known for their ability to work with directors and cinematographers to create an entire "look" for a film starting from the first day on a set, EFILM is wholly owned by Deluxe Laboratories. Operational for two months, EFILM's movie trailer business has been busy from day one, with SGI high-speed storage and networking technology at its core. EFILM works on four to six movie trailers on any given week and completes approximately the same amount per week. Almost all trailers are worked on in 2K resolution and, when completed, most go back out on film, some to video, and more and more frequently, to the color-accurate, DCI-compliant (Digital Cinema Initiative) format as well. The new DCI format is used in theaters that have switched to digital cinema and now use digital projectors instead of film projectors. Just as with full-length films, EFILM can output trailers in 2K or 4K, depending on the digital projector the theatre uses. While the movie trailer data files are small compared to full-length films (two to three minutes versus 90 minutes to two hours), the extremely short production timelines means there's always a rush or an emergency to get the trailers out and into the movie theaters for "Coming Attractions." The need to meet those deadlines was one of the primary reasons EFILM again turned to SGI, backed by their long-term familiarity in the digital intermediate business with SGI InfiniteStorage systems, SGI heterogeneous SANs and the strong differentiator in networking and storage systems: the SGI InfiniteStorage CXFS shared filesystem. "For what we do, the SGI network is really the only game in town," said Bob Eicholz, Vice President of Technology & Corporate Development, EFILM. "I haven't found anything that's as robust. We know SGI has reliable hardware and networking capabilities, great service, and competitive pricing. And then there's CXFS, the glue that holds the storage and the network together with all the machines. It allows us to get the data from machine to machine at top speeds, reliably and consistently. The new facility has been extremely successful from day one. We have thrilled clients and it's just been an unqualified success." To create the SGI SAN to provide high-speed storage and networking to run their new trailer business, EFILM purchased an SGI Altix 350 server with 8GB RAM and 2 Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processors (for a total of 4 processor cores) running the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating environment. The SGI Altix 350 is set up as the gateway server, receiving offline tape from an Avid system -- via a 10Gb link to EFILM's main DI facility across the street -- that shows how the trailer is to be cut, the SGI Altix 350 server then delivers the information to two Autodesk Smoke workstations. EFILM also selected two SGI Origin 350 servers with 8GB RAM as metadata servers, and an SGI InfiniteStorage RM660 RAID storage array -- highly optimized for rich media and streaming applications -- with 21.5TB storage. SGI CXFS shared filesystem links the servers and storage array via 4 Gigabit Fibre Channel to the two smoke editing workstations as well as linking an Autodesk Flame for compositing and an Autodesk Backdraft media-management workstation; SGI CXFS filesystem also enables soft imports to Autodesk Stones and renders, and to EFILM's color-correction suite. In the suite, EFILM uses a proprietary version of Autodesk's Incinerator color-correction software, called EWORKS. The major pieces of EFILM's pipeline (full-length films or trailers) are all proprietary, many of them 100 percent developed for EFILM, while some others are adaptations of product that are on the market. EFILM also purchased a Barco digital projector for the color-correction suite through SGI Professional Services. "SGI technology provides the high-speed storage and networking backbone that cutting-edge digital film production facilities rely on throughout the globe," said Louise Ledeen, Media market segment manager, SGI. "EFILM knows first-hand, through their DI business, how well SGI InfiniteStorage SANs can impact a high performance workflow for maximum efficiency, translating into bottom-line profits for a world-class artistic facility.