OPTICAL SANDWICH DEPLOYS GLOBALSTOR’S EXTREMESTOR-DI TOWER FOR REAL-TIME PLAYBACK ON KISSES

July 16, 2008

Source: GlobalStor

Globalstor Data Corporation, a premier OEM integrator of high performance RAID, SAN and storage/video servers, is pleased to announce that Dublin’s Optical Sandwich tapped its Globalstor ExtremeStor-DI Tower to support the post house’s first 2k digital intermediate (DI) project, the feature film Kisses.

The studio relied on an ExtremeStor-DI workstation running SCRATCH® DI software from ASSIMILATE™ for conforming, color grading and finishing on the picture, resulting in a stunning end product.

For Kisses, colorist Bart Verraest and other core members of the Optical Sandwich team took S16mm negatives scanned at 3k, down-sampled them to 2k, conformed them in SCRATCH, and output shots for VFX and fixes to ASSIMILATE’s SHAKE compositing system. All the frames were then conformed back to SCRATCH to create a multi-layer color grade to output to 35mm as 2k DPX files.

Working with such large amounts of high-resolution material required a hardware platform that could rapidly and seamlessly process such data, and Optical Sandwich found that Globalstor’s ExtremeStor-DI Tower was a perfect fit for the job.

“When grading uncompressed high-resolution 2k DPX data in a file-based workflow, it’s important that the hardware is capable of playing back those files in real time at 25fps, without any dropouts or other issues” explains Verraest. “You have to be able to look at the footage at that speed to get a sense of the film playing out in front of you. As for hardware, you don’t want a system that acts up because that forces you to take time away from the creative process. With Globalstor’s ExtremeStor-DI, this doesn’t happen. It does the job so well that you don’t even notice it. In my line of work, it’s a great feature.”

“With the increasing amount of post houses utilizing the DI process, Globalstor Data Corporation recognized the need for a highly functional workstation that rapidly processes the large amounts of high-resolution images associated with this type of workflow,” says Globalstor Data Corporation President Scott Leif. “Combined with the SCRATCH software from ASSIMILATE, our ExtremeStor-DI Tower gives post professionals the flexibility, speed and reliability to concentrate on the most important element of their jobs – performing the best possible grades on video and film projects.”

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