Atempo-Digital Archive (ADA) user case
The post production company MSV Post, part of the Tinopolis Group, is one of the largest independent television producers and suppliers to major broadcasters. MSV Post handles post production for all broadcast genres including sport, drama, reality and digital media.
The high volumes of precious footage require constant protection and all data archiving workflows are handled by Atempo’s Digital Archive (ADA) software. We recently spoke with Edurne Bengoa, MSV Head of Post Production and she gave us her take on Atempo and MSV Post’s long-standing collaboration.
ADA has consistently provided MSV Post with a secure and robust archive workflow tool which has evolved with technical requirements over the last 6 years. ADA's key role is to ensure rapid and secure handling of archiving to tape of high resolution programs and rushes. The favored storage support is a 120-slot LTO7 IBM library with a total capacity of 700 TB plus an additional 1.5 PB of data stored offline on tape in the company’s Hammersmith premises. MSV Post uses AVID Interplay as their favored MAM (Media Asset Management) tool.
"Data volumes and file access NEEDS impose workloads that would be impossible without ADA orchestrating everything”
Ed Bengoa, Head of Post Production at MSV Post
In recent years, MSV Post has changed both their MAM and storage provider. ADA has a clear advantage here thanks to its highly extensive software and hardware compatibility which enables such technology switches: a new API or a different tape format for example. Also, scaling up with growing data volumes is never an issue with ADA.
For Ed, ADA is so much more than simple data moving and data archiving software. The integrated PFR (Partial File Restore) feature is highly appreciated. PFR enables engineers to extract a specific sequence in low resolution format, work on this sequence and then restore it in high resolution to its original location. This is particularly useful for sports clips where regular extraction and editing save time by not having to upload complete assets. It also considerably lowers the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of each project since teams can be more productive and concentrate on the job of editing rather than enduring lengthy upload bottlenecks.
| "ADA has always kept pace with our requirements and we know it will grow and scale to our needs in the future. We appreciate ADA’s vendor-agnostic approach and open format which provides us with flexibility, visibility and security looking ahead." |
In terms of transferring data from disk to tape, a single ADA Data Mover is currently enough for MSV Post teams. Ed knows that additional Data Movers can be added if extra bandwidth and processing power are needed further down the line.
In an ever-changing environment, MSV Post are looking at future evolutions such as using Object Storage to enable offsite or cloud transfers. ADA is already fully compatible with this technology and can adapt and scale to include hybrid solutions with offsite data archive alongside current tape storage.