AMG select SGI server for facility in California

Ascent Media Group (AMG), a long-time customer of Silicon Graphics and an industry leader in content creation, postproduction and distribution of film and television, selected SGI server, storage and networking technology as the heart of a new state-of-the-art facility in California.
The SGI hardware and software is part of AMG's data-centric production network solution, known as ProdNet, which offers studio clients ultra-secure methods for accommodating a large variety of deliverables.
With content piracy estimated at $3.5 billion annually, the 100,000-square-foot building, which was gutted to the walls, has been rebuilt to be one of the most modern, most secure, all-digital facilities in the world. SGI Professional Services worked hand in hand with AMG to design and integrate the ProdNet system, which is dedicated to manufacturing, repurposing, and distributing large media assets in huge volumes, with no concession to bandwidth limitations.
Ascent Media Group's deliverables include digital intermediates in HD, 2K or 4K resolution for a host of Hollywood blockbusters, postproduction and satellite delivery of television programming as well as digital cinema masters, multi-language versions for home video, DVD, and a variety of entertainment content for the exploding market in wireless mobile devices.
With studio clients requiring more efficient postproduction workflow for film releases and-in another effort to combat piracy-reduced time-to-market for home video and DVD releases, AMG searched for a partner to facilitate these requirements. AMG chose SGI as prime contractor for the equipment and services as SGI has had considerable success in achieving efficiencies and increased productivity in designing and deploying state-of-the-art Digital Intermediate facilities in Hollywood, London, Madrid and other cities worldwide. SGI products, solution design and services specifically address the problems of faster turnaround in a 4K data-centric media environment.
SGI InfiniteStorage CXFS shared filesystem was a major delivered product component for AMG, particularly in the telecine department, where each frame must be handled as an individual file as opposed to a portion of a larger file. The frames add up to 24 files for each second of film. In addition to these enormous numbers of files, the file sizes range from moderate to large, depending on whether they are high-definition, 2K or 4K resolution. Moreover, the process requires not only opening and closing a lot of files consistently, the files have to be on time.
(CD/GB)