INDUSTRY
SOLUTION BRIEF
UNIFIED
WORKFLOW
SOLUTION FOR NLE
WORKGROUPS
The Ultimate Collaboration
Solution for True Shared Editing
THE CHALLENGE
Choosing an NLE is a highly strategic, personal and controversial decision that can have long lasting
implications to your business. Once you select a platform, you are often stuck with it, for better or worse.
These creative platforms are highly captive by nature, making it both complex and costly to change when
desired features are not available or once supported components are discontinued. Regardless of which
NLE you do choose, it seems other applications have a capability or two that your team wants. For those
who do undertake platform transitions, it often requires a painful rip and replacement of a large part of your
existingworkflowsandinfrastructure.Then,thenextchallengeistheimplementationofaclunky,combined
workflowwithsignificantmanualintervention.Becauseoftheselimitations,costandcomplexity,most
organizations choose not to transition and wait for the next product release. In the meantime, you become
captivetoundesirabletechnologythatslowsdownworkflows,stiflescreativityandleavesyouvulnerableto
the competition moving ahead of you.
•
MostNLEsdon’tofferorenableyoutoconnecttoastorageplatformthatsupportssimultaneous
SOLUTION
BRIEF
accessofnewhigherresolutionworkflows(2K,4Kandbeyond).
•
You inherently restrict your available talent pool and employee satisfaction to those experienced
and willing to work on your NLE platform.
•
You end up with islands of creativity caused by small storage solutions or a lack of concurrent
accessibility.Workflowsslowandareerrorproneinmovingfilesaround.Thisresultsinislandsof
creativity and increases the complexity and cost of project management, limiting your productivity.
•
Each NLE suite has a unique eco-system, limiting the quantity of vendors you can work with,
thesupportedworkflowcomponentsyoucanimplementwhichstiflestheadvantagesofopen
competition.
•
Several of the NLE solutions are very limited in their ability to really scale or add capacity easily –
either in number of user who can access a project or in the capacity to store projects.
•
Inthecurrentsituation,attemptingtooutsourcelaborrequiresnotonlyfindingtherighttalent,
but trying to match NLE systems as well.
•
Most NLE storage solutions do not provide guaranteed throughput, resulting in dropped frames
or miscues. Redoing long sequences which wastes valuable time, creative resources and increases
frustration.
Theideaofcombiningeditingsuitesinasharedworkfl owhasbeenattemptedinafewways,butnoneofthe
implementationshasprovidedfortheease,effi
ciency,orprotectionrequiredmakingthemviableoreffi
cient.
The ideal solution would allow NLE suites from Apple, Avid, Adobe, and more to connect simultaneously to
thesameprojects,media,andstorage–evenforthehigherresolutionworkflowslike2K,4Kandbeyond.
Ideally, it would allow for easy migration by allowing the users to connect to both old and new storage, be
easily scalable – and provide the high performance required for shared access and collaboration.
THE SOLUTION
IntroducingDDN’sUnifi edWorkflowSolutionforsimultaneoussharedaccessfromAdobe,Avid,and
Apple NLE suites. This tightly integrated solution combines the DDN | GRIDScaler® storage platform
and FilmPartner’s™ MXFserver media server and the all of the professional services, licensing,
installation,optimizationrequiredtointegratetightlyintoyourworkflow(s).
DDN.COM
| 1.800.837.2298
UNIFIED WORKFLOW SOLUTION
AVID, APPLE, AND ADOBE IN ONE WORKSPACE
CONTENT DISTRIBUTION
& CLOUD ARCHIVE
MXF SERVER
ACQUIRE
SHARED
PROJECTS

SHARED
STORAGE
DISTRIBUTE, ARCHIVE.
COLLABORATE
DDN’s unique shared editing workgroup solution provides:
•
Shared access from Apple, Adobe, and Avid NLE products to the same shared projects and media
•
Complete project management, tracking, and security
•
Overall user and quota management, unlike any other solution in the market place
•
Simultaneous access using the highest resolutions
•
Supports the combine of ingest edit and play out into a single multi-use system
•
Browser-basedanywhereaccesstohighresolutionmediaanddailies
•
The ability to work with multiple high resolution video sources with no delay when editing or scrubbing
•
Independent scaling of storage performance or capacity
•
Unique read, write, and predictive caching options to greatly improve performance and make
scrubbing back and forth even with multiple very high resolution audio and/or video tracks on the
timelineinstantaneousandflawless
•
Open, free APIs for integrating with the system from your own application
•
A Microsoft®WindowsServer2008® and MySQL® database based solution for easy IT management
and integration with custom applications
•
Access to the storage system via Ethernet or Fibre Channel
•
Integration with Active Directory®
•
Highdensity,simple,effi
cient,lowTCOstoragesolution
ThisUnifiedWorkflowsolutioncreatesseveraluniqueandvaluablebenefits:
DDN.COM
| 1.800.837.2298
•
Improvedworkflowandprojectoutput
•
Happier talent, as your creative people are using their tool of their choice
•
Easy migration path between solutions, enabling you to choose the best application from any
•
Increased collaboration, allowing your teams more productivity and less interruption of technology
during the creative process
•
Efficient, automated mixed suite workgroups that work as well as homogeneous ones
•
Easy storage expansion, as resolutions and the quantity of projects and workers increase
•
Future-proof infrastructure, to handle the high resolution workflows of today and tomorrow
•
Less downtime and wasted time, due to the limitations of traditional storage technology
•
Easy setup, management, and maintenance
•
Freedom to try, mix, switch, and upgrade without fear
SOLUTION PARTNERS
FILMPARTNERS BV
FilmPartners started over 30 years ago with the rental of film camera crews and equipment. Over the years
professional video became a part of FilmPartners Facility Company. From special effects to candid camera
operations with serious amounts of cameras made FilmPartners grow into a specialty house based on the
early experiences in special needs with film. In 1999 the company specialized in portable studio systems.
A year later it got its assignment from the Endemol® Company to facilitate Big Brother® in a number of
countries. This brought along the need to go much deeper into automation as there were hardly any
systems that could handle these needs. In 2007 technology at FilmPartners peaked with the building of
a highly automated 107 camera operation at Talpa® ‘Golden Cage’ in The Netherlands. FilmPartners is
now part of the European Media Choice Broadcast Group, with offices in The Netherlands, France, United
Kingdom and Germany, The FilmPartners company is split into a hardware rental and software division.
Both are based at the Mediapark, Sumatralaan 45 in Hilversum, The Netherlands.
DDN.COM
| 1.800.837.2298
ABOUT DDN®
DataDirect Networks (DDN) is the world’s leading big data storage supplier to data-intensive, global
organizations. For more than 15 years, DDN has designed, developed, deployed and optimized systems,
software and solutions that enable enterprises, service providers, universities and government agencies
to generate more value and to accelerate time to insight from their data and information, on premise and
in the cloud. Organizations leverage the power of DDN technology and the deep technical expertise of
its team to capture, store, process, analyze, collaborate and distribute data, information and content at
largest scale in the most efficient, reliable and cost effective manner. DDN customers include many of the
world’s leading financial services firms and banks, healthcare and life science organizations, manufacturing
and energy companies, government and research facilities, and web and cloud service providers. For more
information, visit our website www.ddn.com or call 1-800-837-2298.
SALES@DDN.COM +1.800.837.2298
©2015 DataDirect Networks, Inc. All Rights Reserved. DataDirect Networks, GRIDScaler, WOS, Web Object
Scaler and ObjectAssure are trademarks of DataDirect Networks. All other trademarks are the property of their
respective owners.
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