CASE STUDY
Creative Post Builds Solid Infrastructure with Facilis TerraBlock Shared Storage
Situated in the heart of Toronto is one of Canada’s largest independent post production houses and stereo 3D DI leaders – Creative Post, Inc. Founded in 1986, the robust shop specializes in TV and feature films, and offers full service post production, visual effects, broadcast design and more. The company’s client roster includes some of the industry’s most revered filmmakers, broadcasters, Fortune 500 companies and advertising agencies. Spearheading its team of 85 employees is industry veteran and stereo 3D pioneer Ken MacNeil, president, Creative Post, Inc.
Seven years ago Ken invested in two Facilis TerraBlock shared storage servers and recently purchased a third to help with a growing amount of encoding. The three TerraBlock servers form the facility’s central storage hub. They are connected to multiple Avid, Final Cut Pro and Quantel workstations, Autodesk Flame and Inferno, a render farm, asset management system, SGO Mistika 3D DI system and more. “TerraBlock is absolutely essential to the efficiency of our business; it’s the most important infrastructure of our facility,” said Ken MacNeil, president, Creative Post Inc.
“We save a lot of time and energy with everything connected to the TerraBlock. It makes the process of accessing and retrieving files from different workstations virtually seamless,” he added. “If I have to make a change, I don’t have to rely on booking the same studio where the project started, because I can access it anywhere on site through the TerraBlock.”
Facilis’ technology plays a key role in managing Creative Post’s data flow. MacNeil and his team developed a proprietary system that leverages the TerraBlocks to organize data into partitions by project name and editor. The system makes it easier for employees and freelancers to locate and identify the owner of each partition, the reason it exists and the ways it should be used. “We’re working with thousands of gigabytes of data every day, and we need a clear, actionable way to manage it,” he noted. “TerraBlock’s management features ease the creation of partitions and data sharing in a way that I haven’t seen other storage solutions operate.”
MacNeil also commented on the simple learning curve for TerraBlock and extensive support he and his team receive from Facilis, “The system is so easy to learn and use that even a freelancer with just an hour of training can go into the TerraBlock to complete any necessary tasks. Everything else is just a call to support, who knows exactly who we are, how we work and what we need.”
As Creative Post grows and expands its business, the team is constantly loading up the TerraBlock systems without experiencing any degradation. “We throw more at the TerraBlocks everyday, and they continue to perform solidly. TerraBlock is one of the most reliable solutions on the market, and I can honestly say that in all these years, we’ve never lost a single file on any of our TerraBlocks,” MacNeil concluded.
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