04.21.09

NAB SHOW, LAS VEGAS, April 21, 2009- DataDirect Networks, Inc. (DDN) the data infrastructure provider for the most extreme, content-intensive environments in the world-including the largest online gaming and music sites, social networking applications developers, photo and video sharing services, high performance computing environments, and more than 400 broadcast and post-production facilities, today announced that the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE), has selected the S2A9900 storage system, to power its brand new, state-of-the-art post production facility.

SGAE is a Spanish organization devoted to the management and defense of intellectual property rights for its 80,000 plus members including cinema directors, screenwriters, composers, playwrights, choreographers and mimes. CATA, the technical branch of SGAE, was tasked with building a brand new, technically advanced post-production facility for audio, video and movie post-production, built around a centralized storage system, to support the ground-breaking infrastructure for end-to-end 2K and 4K digital workflows.

CATA selected the S2A9900, the pinnacle of DDN's Silicon Storage Architecture^TM (S2A^TM) technology, DVS CLIPSTER® Digital Intermediary workflow and DVS SpycerBox as intermediary storage for ingest from the film scanners. It also chose DVS, a DDN partner, to implement the solution and integrate the S2A9900 into the SAN storage environment.

The DDN storage system provides 120TB of primary, online storage capacity for real-time projects, along with 60TB of near-line storage for archiving and content protection. Although the system was originally designed to support six 2K streams and one 4K stream, the S2A9900 at CATA was easily able to scale up performance to support four concurrent 4K streams per S2A9900 array, each at 1.2 GB/sec. It also easily supported eight 2K and one 4K streams at the same time. The easy to manage, centralized storage solution dramatically accelerates project completion and thus accelerates revenue generation, while increasing workflow efficiencies and overall productivity.

"The DDN storage provided us with the scalable capacity, small datacenter footprint and extremely high performance that we needed in order to design this advanced post production facility - and having the system support four concurrent 4K streams each running at 1.2 GB per second is proof of that, said Roberto Quintanilla Herranz, Supervisor Post-production and Chief Image Department for CATA. "We chose DVS to implement the whole solution to ensure that all of the components would integrate and work well with each other. Also knowing that DDN and DVS have successfully deployed numerous solutions together was key in our selection process."

CATA wanted a storage system that would minimize construction costs for the new building, so density, power and cooling requirements, were key factors in the decision-making process. Another requirement was to be able to easily scale storage capacity, so CATA could grow its environment to support a number of parallel 2K and 4K projects throughout the world. And lastly the storage system needed to integrate with other infrastructure investments which it had already made.

Core editing systems include AVID® and Apple® Final Cut Pro®. 2K and 4K film scanning is done with an ARRISCAN® scanner and 4K film restoration is done with HS-ART® Diamant®. Compositing software available at the facility includes Adobe Studio®, Shake® and Toxic® and Autodesk® Flame® and Smoke®. 3D work is done with Autodesk Maya® and 3D Studio Max®. Encoders come from Digital Rapids® and conforming is realized by DVS CLIPSTER and DCI Mastering. A number of projectors are used to proof the results, including a Dolby-certified Sony 4K RSX-105, as well as 2K, HD and 35mm projectors. A Cinevator® five film printer, one of only a dozen in the world, provides 24fps real-time film printing including subtitles and audio. Furthermore - in order to provide complete services to clients - CATA also provides a 300 square meter stage. It is quickly becoming one of the leading 4K post-production facilities in the world, when looking at the sophisticated systems and software it makes available to its members.

SGAE has already completed several highly visible projects in its new studios with leading industry luminaries. Projects such as the audio recording for the latest Pedro Almodovar film "Broken Embraces", featuring Oscar winner Penelope Cruz, soundtrack work by composer Alberto Iglesias for Oscar winning director Steve Soderbergh's film "CHE", Marc Foster's Kite Runner and color grading and DVD and BLURAY® authoring for "Seven Days", a documentary by Norman Foster. In addition CATA's facility has been used for postproduction for the Spanish Music Awards and the Spanish Arts Awards.

"DDN and DVS have been outstanding partners throughout this project, said Ángel Quintanilla Vega, Director for CATA. "Their service has been fantastic and we are absolutely impressed with the solution. It has far exceeded our expectations and we are looking forward to working with them again to further expand the solution in our environment."