USA: StorageDNA Supports Cameron’s ‘DEEPSEA CHALLENGE’

StorageDNA, Inc. announced that DNA Evolution™ was selected as the archive workflow solution for Digital Pictures’ customized RANGER Data Cart for the National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence, James Cameron’s “DEEPSEA CHALLENGE”.

Digital Pictures chose the LTFS LTO-5 backup solution for this challenging archive and retrieval project based on their experience with DNA Evolution. The performance and speed of the DNA Evolution gave them the confidence to put two systems on a ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with Cameron for approximately three months.

Digital Pictures’ RANGER Data Cart is designed to manage the demands of a production in a mobile or remote location with one efficient data management system. By empowering the cart with DNA Evolution, Digital Pictures gives their clients a fast tapeless pipeline, combining dailies and post. The customized mobile cart for Cameron’s “DEEPSEA CHALLENGE” includes two DNA Evolution systems running in parallel, each with dual LTO-5 drives, allowing the production team to run four archives simultaneously. As a result, they are able to process massive amounts of data at impressive speeds; archiving at speeds of over 500 MB per second.

James Cameron’s “DEEPSEA CHALLENGE” project is a historic solo dive to the deepest place on earth, the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean. “This is a very complicated project because it’s a multi-camera shoot with every kind of file format you can think of. DNA Evolution allows us to handle all of these formats, and pull back all of the different kinds of media,” said Nic Smith, technical director of Digital Pictures. “The systems have also been extremely reliable which is critical for this production.”

Digital Pictures has used DNA Evolution as their archive workflow solution for multiple clients’ productions since July 2011. “The DNA Evolution LTO-5 archive workflow has allowed us to save tremendous time and costs for our clients,” added Smith. “Since we’re now working in a digital pipeline, the need to ingest has been eliminated and the conform process has been fully automated. The reason we chose this LTFS archive solution is we needed maximum performance and reliability since we often deploy in the field for our clients, and DNA Evolution met all of our rigid requirements.”

[mappress]

Subsea World News Staff , April 10, 2012;  Image: National Geographic News