ACMEworks Deploys BlueArc

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- BlueArc Corporation, a market leader in scalable, high-performance unified storage, today announced that ACMEworks Digital Film Inc. upgraded their film capture, editing, and conforming technology through the deployment of a BlueArc Titan 2000 storage solution. With BlueArc, ACMEworks scans films and works on editing projects simultaneously, which was not possible with previous solutions. The Titan’s ability to work in parallel without slowdowns in their workflow is saving ACMEworks at least two hours a day, increasing their productivity.

“Our business is experiencing dramatic growth. The old system wasn’t keeping things moving fluidly or keeping up with production. We had to stop work during film scanning and could not render in real time,” said Jocelyn Goddard, general manager of ACMEworks. “With BlueArc we have improved quality without sacrificing productivity; in fact, we have seen it accelerate with BlueArc.”

ACMEworks Digital Film, a Calgary, Canada based company, is a specialized post-production service company dedicated to digital film recording. ACMEworks uses ARRILASER film recorders to flawlessly transfer video and digital data to motion picture film. Companies such as Cartoon Network, Warner Bros. Animation, Universal Cartoon Studio, Stretch Films, Curious Pictures, and Walt Disney TV Animation turn to ACMEworks to get their jobs done.

For the purpose of developing a film out archive and meeting the needs of future broadcast in high definition, broadcast media depends on ACMEworks’ digital film recording ability to flawlessly transfer video and data to film after the programs are aired. ACMEworks’ editors match the SD broadcast master with the high definition files from animation and production studios and deliver a file out in high definition. At the core of their success are Apple Final Cut Pro workstations and a BlueArc Titan 2000 unified network storage system.

With the demanding task of conforming broadcast masters to HD content, ACMEworks was also experiencing a slow-down in the frame rate on their Apple Final Cut Pro workstations. By leveraging BlueArc Titan’s hardware-based architecture and higher levels of performance, ACMEworks achieved a threefold improvement in frame rate, reducing wait times for the editors. In addition, during the final quality control check, ACMEworks discovered that they are now able to render in real time off the centralized Titan storage, rather than batching it overnight, saving valuable time and accelerating the delivery of ACMEwork’s projects. These improvements have helped ACMEworks improve their own quality, meet and exceed deadlines and work on more projects simultaneously.“ACMEworks is outputting 26 half hour shows per month. Before we were running the BlueArc Titan, we had to bring down our editing suites for at least two hours a day when we were doing film capture. That wait forced us to work long hours in the evenings and weekends,” said Goddard. “Now we are able to work on both in real time and get more done during the day.”

In a separate release:

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- BlueArc® Corporation, a market leader in scalable, high performance unified storage, and Texas Memory Systems, Inc., maker of the World’s Fastest Storage®, today announced the two companies have jointly tested and certified product interoperability of BlueArc’s Titan 2000 unified storage system family and Texas Memory Systems’ RamSan-400. The combined solution offers joint customers the highest performance storage solutions, featuring hardware acceleration throughout the deployed offering, from storage to controller. The solution also enables customers to connect clusters of servers via Ethernet to the Titan 2000 and rapidly access shared data on the RamSan, which is connected to the Titan 2000 via fibre channel.

“BlueArc and Texas Memory Systems have conducted extensive testing to ensure that customers can have extreme storage performance, with assured interoperability,” said Woody Hutsell, Executive Vice President at Texas Memory Systems. “The RamSan solid state disk provides what is currently the fastest possible data access, and complements BlueArc’s Titan 2000 unified storage system family. E-Commerce, database and rendering sites need distributed, shared access to data and have small block, random I/O patterns. By combining BlueArc and Texas Memory Systems, our customers can confidently exploit Ethernet connectivity and still receive the benefits of high speed solid state disk.”

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