ION Media Networks Adds EditShare XStream Technology

Friday, April 17, 2009

ION Media Networks has expanded its EditShare shared media storage with the deployment of two new EditShare XStream high-performance systems. The XStream units with a total of 64TB of storage support the HD production by the ION Creative Services team. Utilizing content creation tools from Avid, Apple and Maya, the Creative Services professionals produce on-air promotions, graphics and branding for all of ION's company-owned stations and networks from their West Palm Beach, Florida facility.

"With our move to HD, we upgraded all our editing systems and we looked to the EditShare XStream because it gives us the high performance to support the intensity of an all-HD workflow with unlimited expandability," says Robert Cummings, Director of Engineering for ION. "We've had great experience with our other EditShare servers. The ability to share media with EditShare really brings efficiency and organization. To handle the HD workflow, speed and scalability were the big drivers for bringing in the XStreams."

"XStream is specifically designed for the most extreme and demanding media sharing workflows, handling high volumes of simultaneous users as well as very large numbers of video streams," says Andy Liebman, CEO of EditShare. "We've incorporated the latest technologies including PCIe connectivity between the XStream chassis and faster drives to provide extremely efficient use of bandwidth and maximum performance. And to grow the system, it's quite simple and affordable to connect another chassis full of drives."

ION elected to configure the two EditShare XStream systems with one 32TB system acting as primary storage handling only HD content and the second 32TB system operating as a backup with automated, scheduled synchronizations. The EditShare storage servers which were installed in late 2006 and 2007 are still being used to handle SD production work for some older television series which are only available in SD, as well as for web content, audio and graphics. EditShare's Extreme Scalable Architecture (ESA) allows multiple EditShare servers to operate on a single network. ESA makes the process transparent for editors who simply work on designated media spaces. System administration is simplified with smart management tools that can be used from any workstation to manage across systems.

Labels: EditShare, EditShare-XStream-Series

<< Home

Previous Posts