"Fast access to and efficient management of data, and hardware, and particularly software innovations, such as Tiger Technology’s metaSAN, are the catalysts for success in today’s collaborative, heavy-bandwidth work environments."

 

Robi Roncarelli, Market Analyst, PIXEL Inc.

"I am giving metaSAN five stars! If I ever end up working in another facility that needs to implement a SAN, I will definitely recommend it. I’d also recommend it to anyone involved in video that needs a file-level sharing SAN."

 

Joe Kirby, Assistant Chief Engineer, FOX 54 – WZDX TV

"With metaSAN/metaLAN in place, every artist has instant access to data by simply clicking on the local hard drive in “My Computer” – and all this without having to perform sophisticated network administration."

 

Alex Rizov, FX Supervisor, Topform Studio

"I recommend metaSAN to anyone investigating a shared storage solution, especially to anyone Final Cut Pro based production house wanting to maximize their multi-station editing workflow."

 

Graeme Nattress, President of Nattress Productions Inc.

"metaSAN is the ideal SAN management solution for Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and Gigabit Ethernet networks. So far, we have tested metaSAN with Huge Media-Vault and Fibrenetix Storage systems, Qlogic SANBox switches, and Atto Celerity host bus adapters and have never experienced any compatibility issues."

 

Jörg Hoffman, PSIBER GmbH

"I’m using an HP xw9300 with 4 x SATA2 drives and a Bluefish444 HD Lust board. Whenever trying to capture DPX files, the system would run for 100-250 frames and then drops frames. After installing metaSAN and using DDO and FSO the system can now capture DPX files without any problem!"

 

Gerbrand De Ridder, Trans Tec bv

"Our customers have been clamouring for tools that will help them add intelligence to their workgroups. We are very pleased to be working with Tiger Technology to address this demand."

 

Howard Solomon, President, Integrity Data Systems

"By turning off-the shelf storage and networking components into versatile, easy to support, and highly scalable shared storage workgroups, metaSAN is ideally suited to solve a wide range of workflow configurations at a great price."

 

John Connolly, Midwest Media Group President

"metaSAN’s unique ability to allow multiple cross-platform users to share content and collaborate efficiently while maintaining very high bandwidth will afford us a highly efficient, reliable, centralized and secure storage solution."

 

Michio Fujii, CEO and President, MIC Assosciates, Inc.

metaSAN makes the cut on the 2007 PGA tour!

Telegenic, the leading supplier of outside broadcast (OB) production vehicles in the UK, took metaSAN on the PGA tour this year. Telegenic offers among the finest mobile production facilities available anywhere in the world. These OB units are used by the world’s blue-chip broadcasters: ABC Skating in St Petersburg, The MTV Music Awards, CBS’s Winter Olympics coverage, Rugby Union, Super League and Premiership Football for Sky Sports and many more concerts.

Just over a year ago, as he saw increasing demand for HD production and post-production, Peter Bates, Managing Director of Telegenic, turned to UK-based Polar Graphics’ professional advice for building a high-performance SAN. Garry Davis recommended metaSAN/metaLAN because of the stability, performance characteristics, flexibility and cost effectiveness of the software he had experienced previously with other customers.

The SAN was built around four Ciprico MediaVault 4210 and delivers enough bandwidth to feed four Leitch Velocity HD realtime suites. The 2.5TB storage has been configured as 2x 4-way stripes to achieve optimal performance and security. Each workstation can capture or edit at least one stream of HD 1080i @ 59.97fps. In addition, five eyeon Fusion 5 compositing and rendering nodes are connected to the SAN cluster through metaLAN, which provides them with block-level access and dynamic load balancing over low-cost Ethernet.

“metaSAN has been at the heart of this HD mobile production unit for over a year now and has enabled Telegenic to offer its clients a better workflow” says Bates, “We love the flexibility we get with metaSAN. For instance, after the initial edits are made, our editors can save a copy of their project on the SAN. They can continue working the effects and finish their piece. The saved project can also be opened on another suite where VO can be worked on. When done, the VO track is inserted back within the original program, which is then completed... This kind of workflow makes a tremendous difference!”

The entire SAN was recently flown to Tulsa, U.S.A. to be used by Sky TV for their HD coverage of the 2007 US PGA Championship. As in any sports event coverage, the workflow is intense. The High Definition material is ingested on the SAN from Host Broadcaster feeds, as well as ENG field cameras. The editors are editing highlights throughout the day and are editing new opening title sequences overnight, to be ready for next day. In addition they must edit music sequences, and prepare features on the various players, depending on who’s done particularly well in the tournament that day.

“We’re very pleased with the expertise and support we’ve received from Polar Graphics. Since metaSAN has been up and running, we’ve not had a single issue with it! During the 2006 Ryder Cup in Dublin, we’ve had people working on all 4 suites, 24 hours a day, for 10 days straight without a glitch! And as our clients depend on us, this means a lot to our business...”