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Maximum Throughput's Sledgehammer Chosen by MPC to Accelerate Post-Production Workflow on Harry PotterExpansion
at The Moving Picture Company Fuels Increased Bandwidth Demands
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MONTREAL, February 24, 2004 – Maximum Throughput Inc. (www.max-t.com), a developer and provider of high-performance, networked storage and media management solutions, announced today the sale of a Sledgehammer system to The Moving Picture Company (www.moving-picture.co.uk). One of the world's leading post-production facilities, MPC creates high-end digital visual effects and computer animation for the advertising, music, television and feature film industries. The newly acquired Sledgehammer will initially be used in support of MPC's post-production work on the next Harry Potter film. Sledgehammer provides growing operations like MPC with the ideal centralized storage solution by supporting simultaneous access from huge numbers of clients – including render farms. With this in mind, MPC purchased Sledgehammer specifically to address increasing bandwidth requirements in their Digital Film department. Sledgehammer has been installed to more efficiently manage the volume of 3D content rendered daily by the company's recently expanded 1000+ processor render farm. This includes the 3D contents's approval and release, as well as its subsequent use by the 2D compositing artists working on Harry Potter. “With disc drive prices being what they are, it's no longer merely a question of capacity, but also reliability, availability and access,”says Steve MacPherson, Technical Manager at MPC. “For Harry Potter 3, we needed a high-speed ‘"data bridge" between our CG and Compositing (2D) departments. During periods of peak activity, we needed a system that could catch a high volume of CG rendering while simultaneously releasing that material on approval to the next step in our pipeline. This involves a huge amount of writes (from CG) and reads (to 2D). The Sledgehammer is deployed in exactly this capacity and has performed flawlessly.” Mike Grieve, Max-T Business Manager for EMEA adds: “Applications and the platforms they run on have rapidly become commodity items. So most companies now have similar, if not the same tools, and experience more competition. The result – they realize leaner margins. So what can facilities do to increase their margins and remain competitive? The answer is increase efficiency, and improving throughput is an effective method. This is exactly what Sledgehammer was built to accomplish.” MacPherson agrees. “Our concern is that lower-cost systems can represent a false economy. There is no performance headroom, so once the system bottles out, there is nothing left. But in the case of Sledgehammer, we have that extra margin that will accommodate the changing load profile – not just a fast system, but a fast and flexible system that accommodates changing priorities without penalizing us. If we have a critical job sitting on Sledgehammer and we need to throw multiple render resources at it, we are that much more confident it will respond to the increased load. In observation, the more we throw at it, the more comfortable Sledgehammer seems with the load.” Sledgehammer is a networked storage solution, optimized for moving digital content at unparalleled speeds onto or off an IP-based network. Sledgehammer HD!O can consolidate all the storage needs of a post-production facility, including HD material, regardless of the data sets in use. Sledgehammer HD!O also provides real-time SD and HD resolution video I/O capabilities, via a web-based interface. New Sledgehammer SD!O delivers the benefits of HD!O but is tailored to SD work and SD budgets, offering an affordable migration path to HD. And since Sledgehammer HD!O and SD!O are true NAS devices, all networked users (Windows, UNIX, Linux, Mac, etc.) can access the same data at the same time.
About Maximum Throughput Maximum Throughput Inc. (www.max-t.com) is a networked storage and media management tool developer. Max-T's storage solutions deliver SAN level performance over TCP/IP. The company's unique solutions provide many times the storage bandwidth of other NAS and SAN products, using smart software that runs on industry standard hardware. The media management tools are integrated within the storage, delivering enriched functionality in one versatile solution. Having pioneered the development of a Network Attached Media Bridge to serve heterogeneous operating environments over both data and video networks, Maximum Throughput's products offer unparalleled performance, capacity management, and capacity availability, as well as having the lowest total cost-of-ownership in their class.
About The Moving Picture Company Based in Soho, London, MPC is a purpose-built facility with a digital infrastructure designed and built for the future. Their facility is inspirational, spacious and welcoming, creating both an intimate and professional environment. MPC works with, and continually invests in, new technologies. However, their priority lies with their creative talent, their production services to their clients and the quality of their product. Testimony to this quality are the projects they work on – with high profile ad campaigns for Nike, Levi’s, Stella Artois and Adidas, features including Harry Potter, Tomb Raider and Troy, as well as landmark drama, history and science programs for the BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery channels.
For more information, or to book interviews, please contact: Giovanni Tagliamonti Maximum Throughput Inc.
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