Audio Post-Production House Jazzes Up its Workflow with Small Tree TitaniumZ-5 Shared Storage

Ott House Audio, an audio post-production company experiencing tremendous growth, recently installed a TitaniumZ-5 shared storage system from Small Tree. Working on audio for film and TV projects for well-known brands, such as the Smithsonian Channel and National Geographic, Ott House required an affordable solution that would facilitate collaboration.

We tend to collaborate a lot on projects, so we needed a budget-friendly solution that would prevent us from being bogged down by where we were working and what files we were using, said Cheryl Ottenritter, head honcho and creative director. With Small Tree's Z-5, our editors are able to work on the same media simultaneously, which is far more efficient and effective.

A five-drive, all-in-one Ethernet-based system supporting 2TB, 3TB or 4TB disk drives, TitaniumZ-5 is simple to set up and manage, allowing the storage to be available to multiple editors within minutes of initial start-up. The TitaniumZ-5 offers optimal flexibility with the ability to work across multiple protocols (AFP, SMB, NFS and iSCSI) and platforms, including Adobe Creative Suite, Avid Media Composer, Avid Pro Tools, Apple Final Cut Pro 7 and Apple Final Cut Pro X. According to Ottenritter, the system's compatibility with Pro Tools was critical in her decision to install the TitaniumZ-5.

Pro Tools works better across different platforms, so there was no way we could introduce a shared storage solution that couldn't handle that application, Ottenritter remarked. Additionally, the pool of available freelancers using Pro Tools is far larger, so it's easier to find support for projects whenever necessary.

Providing high-performance sharing, quickly and directly from the RAID, TitaniumZ-5 includes simplified setup and management, RAID protection for multimedia editing and Small Tree's industry-leading tech support, a value-added benefit to small, but growing post-production facilities such as Ott House.

Small Tree's willingness to go above and beyond with its technical support is unlike anything I've seen before from a manufacturer, Ottenritter commented. At one point, they took the time and effort to discover that a memory chip on a computer was bad and helped with resolving that situation. They didn't back away from an issue because it wasn't their issue; they took ownership to make sure their system was working properly.

Six workstations, featuring Macbooks, Mac Pros and iMacs, are connected to the TitaniumZ-5 at Ott House. While the six workstations aren't always in use, having the capability for all six to be running and accessing media concurrently provides much-appreciated peace of mind to Ottenritter and her team.

We tend to expand and contract as needed, Ottenritter admitted. Recently, I went in to review a project and only one other station was in use at the time. However, when I came out, all six systems were running to meet client deadlines and Small Tree's Z-5 handled everything perfectly.

For more information about Small Tree and its growing line of shared storage and networking products, visit http://www.small-tree.com. Follow Small Tree on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/SmallTreeComm or on Twitter@SmallTreeComm.

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