ActiveSAN Joined By High-Capacity On-line Storage and Near-line Archive Components for Adaptable Production Platform

LAS VEGAS (Storage Visions), January 9, 2012 – Active Storage, the leader in high-performance storage solutions for media and creative professionals, today announced the mMedia platform, a complete end-to-end workflow storage solution for post and broadcast production.

The mMedia platform centers around an enhanced ActiveSAN high- performance metadata controller appliance, and adds two exciting new products, mRAID and mVault (also announced today, see related releases), along with optimized management software; all were combined and demonstrated for the first time, live, on the Storage Visions show floor to reveal a complete, unified mMedia platform installation.

With scalable performance and capacity, mMedia provides content producers the components to assemble complete storage solutions that meet their individual needs plus the integration and management software that lets them choose the best production tools in the industry. Together mMedia is more than a collection of components; it’s a complete media creation storage platform for storing and managing content from ingest to archive.

“mMedia is the platform of the future for broadcast production,” said Alex Grossman, founder and president of Active Storage, Inc. “mMedia provides an integrated workflow storage platform with the performance, scalability and configuration flexibility to meet nearly every broadcast and post-production facility’s ingest, on-line and near-line archive capability.”

The mMedia platform leverages Active Storage’s strong partnerships with industry leaders by offering an open platform that works with other production solutions.

“The mMedia platform is a very exciting development for the Levels
Beyond Reach Engine,” says Art Raymond, CEO of Levels Beyond. “We deploy to some of the largest and most demanding creative workflow sites in the world, including major MSO’s, Studios, Broadcast Networks and Live Sports distributed globally. We’re very enthusiastic about the potential of deploying our solution leveraging the new mMedia Platform to deliver even tighter integration, speed and management for a more advanced customer experience than exists in the market today.”

“Our technology on Active’s mMedia platform can support significantly more capable Media Asset Management solutions for Adobe Premiere, Apple Final Cut and Avid workflows,” says Danny Gold, VP Client Solutions of Levels Beyond. “The combination of Reach Engine and the new mMedia Platform is a complete game- changing way to deliver cost-effective, seamlessly integrated high- performance archive solutions.”

About Active Storage:
Active Storage, Inc. is the innovative storage leader for media and creative professionals, broadcast, post-production, on-line and archive solutions. Fast, reliable and easy to deploy, Active Storage products deliver a best-of-breed user experience, marrying award-winning industrial design, unmatched speed, reliability and customer service. Ease of use and robust performance make Active Storage the first choice for complex professional storage deployments.

318 is an Active Storage reseller and can work with you to plan for and acquire Active Storage products into your storage environment. For more information, contact your 318 Professional Services Manager or sales@318.com if you do not yet have one.

Additionally, some other new features including custom starting timecode, the new Tribute theme, GPU-accelerated exports, One-step transitions, media stems export and of course, XML support. XML support is very important as it introduces the ability to integrate Final Cut Pro X with asset management systems or APIs from other applications. The ability to interact with other tools helps to plan and implement an automated workflow, reducing the labor for reoccurring tasks common in media environments.

Apple also now provides a free 30 day trial to Final Cut Pro X. If your organization is considering migrating from Final Cut Studio into Final Cut Pro X, or if you have a Final Cut Server based asset management solution that you would like to migrate to something newer and supported, then please feel free to contact your 318 Professional Services Manager, or sales@318.com if you do not yet have one.

For more information on the new Promise x30, see:

http://www.promise.com/storage/raid_series.aspx?region=en-US&m=1053&sub_m=sub_m_8&rsn1=40&rsn3=48

To discuss how 318 can assist your organization in leveraging these new tools from Promise, from integrating a fleet of MacBook Pros with Xsan to bolting on additional storage for the always-full Xsan, contact your 318 Professional Services Manager, or sales@318.com if you do not yet have one!

For more, see http://www.promise.com/storage/raid_series.aspx?region=en-US&m=1054⊂_m=sub_m_8&rsn1=40&rsn3=49

1. Improved filesystem reliability
2. Improved cvfsck (the Xsan filesystem repair tool)
3. Resolves QuickTime reporting “invalid public movie atom found” on playback
4. Eliminates “An unknown disk has been inserted” message when mounting Xsan volumes (occurs in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard only)

One of the most marketable and best features of Final Cut Server is that it is a way to catalog assets. These assets can be stored anywhere you want, provided that they are reliably accessible by the server. Given a username and password, users of Final Cut Server can then access the assets whether or not they can actually get to them using server shares or flat file systems. This allows Final Cut Server to bring logic to an otherwise chaotic form of storing data.

Once catalogued you can then tag assets with metadata. This means that when you go to find assets in the future you can do so quickly and easily. You can preview, annotate and then download those assets, no matter where they are stored – even on a Drobo or some large Firewire media sets. And if you decide to edit-in-place in the future, the fact that assets are stored in a logical space (called a Device) means that if you see the value, that you have an easy upgrade into more online media, such as an Xsan volume – but you don’t have to do it all at once to start seeing value.

And value is the key aspect of Final Cut Server. You can spend as much or as little as you need in order to get value out of the product. Sometimes the smallest features are what organizations will derive the most value out of. Not always, but sometimes… And when you see the value of the smaller features you can then make a decision based on your organizations goals and workflows what else will be of value. If you’d like to discuss a Final Cut Server implementation, whether it’s the basic initial installation, complicated workflow integration or custom scripting, contact 318 for more information. We’re here to help, whether or not the implementation is on the cheap.

Vguard, also by Vicom Systems, is based on the technology included in Vmirror, the LUN mirroring solution, but goes a step further. Vguard allows you to setup another Xsan and use that SAN as a backup. We’re not going to go so far as to call it a snapshot, but it’s everything but.

Overall, Vicom integrates well with Xsan and fills some of the holes that the product itself has. For more information on Vmeter, Vguard or Vmirror, contact your 318 account manager today.