ColorTime

ColorTime

Based in North Hollywood, California, ColorTime is a post-production studio offering creative services and digital media services specializing in all aspects of digital media content creation, management and distribution for television. ColorTime’s talent has many years of industry experience and they have at their disposal the greatest technological solutions.

Spectra StorCycle, BlackPearl Converged Storage System, Object Storage Disk and Spectra Stack Tape Library

Spectra’s StorCycle storage management software was exactly what we needed to scan and move files to free up space on our storage area networks (SAN), enabling us to reduce spending on additional SAN clusters. Partnering with Spectra has been a pleasant, cooperative relationship from sales to implementation.

– Bill Womack, Chief Technology Officer, ColorTime

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The Challenge

ColorTime handles large amounts of data on a regular basis for media projects in television. In addition to ingesting raw camera footage to which they perform color correcting and editorial services, ColorTime also scans original film for storage as high-resolution digital intermediate files. Film scanning means that they process millions and millions of single, small 5K files as part of their media workflow. Content from both of these sources was growing quickly, overrunning their storage area net­work (SAN). ColorTime needed a way to solve the resulting bottleneck on their Primary Tier of storage, and went looking for a solution that would give them the ability to migrate digital assets off their primary storage.

Working with Spectra has been seamless from sales to implementation and we are confident in the solution’s future roadmap and our long-term relationship with the company.

– Bill Womack, Chief Technology Officer, ColorTime

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The Solution

ColorTime deployed a Spectra® BlackPearl® Converged Storage System, BlackPearl® Object Storage Disk, a Spectra® Stack Tape Library and a permanent license of Spectra’s StorCycle® storage lifecycle management software, Linux edition. StorCycle identifies and migrates inactive data and completed projects from their SAN to multiple storage targets in a Perpetual Tier of storage via the BlackPearl Converged Storage System. StorCycle’s ability to re-use predefined migration jobs allowed ColorTime to automate cleanup of production storage on an ongoing basis. In addition, the software provides seamless, familiar access and recovery of single files and entire projects, which enables ColorTime to easily search and restore their media assets. The solution also allowed ColorTime to repurpose an existing NAS pool in their storage workflow, protecting their previous storage investment.

Environment Snapshot

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"When we set out on our search to find a storage solution capable of preserving Imperial War Museums’ substantial digital archive, there were specific criteria on which we were not willing to compromise. Spectra met all of our requirements and then some, and now continues to deliver with StorCycle’s storage lifecycle management capabilities."

– Ian Crawford, Chief Information Officer, Imperial War Museums

"We appreciate the collaborative relationship and Spectra’s attentiveness to incorporating our feedback and ideas into solution enhancements. Our continuing investment into Spectra technology on behalf of our organization has proven invaluable in helping us implement the next level architectural model taking us into the future."

– Eric Grau, Manager – Media Asset Management, Joyce Meyer Ministries

"The new library has just shy of 14,000 slots for tapes. We were able to easily move all 70 petabytes of existing data into the new system and have grown to 104 petabytes in size and have plenty of room for at least a year or two before we have to start thinking about expanding."

– HPC Linux Systems Engineer, OLCF

"We have to store a lot of data for long periods of time. A single microscope can capture 10TB of data in as little as a few hours, and a published breakthrough on cancer research can take anywhere from a few years to a couple of decades. The BlackPearl and tape solution from Spectra provides a scalable and cost-effective way to store multiple data workflows with varying retention requirements."

– Jeffrey McDonald, director of IT, Hormel Institute at University of Minnesota

Contact Us

USA/CAN: 1-800-833-1132
INT: 1-303-449-6400

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