Fusion-io Supercharges Stereoscopic 3D Film Production, Eliminates Hollywood Bottlenecks
Fusion Powered I/O Enabling Industry Veterans to Create the 3D Generation of Wizards, Warriors, Spaceships and Blue Aliens in Record Time
28 July 2010 Source: www.fusionio.com
Fusion-io, pioneer of a new memory tier of flash-based solid-state (ioMemory) technology, have revealed its work with some of Hollywood's premiere entertainment companies. To bring a spectacular new breed of visual entertainment to the big screen, Fusion-io products have now been used in the production of several stereoscopic 3D movies, including Alice in Wonderland, Avatar, How to Train a Dragon and Clash of the Titans - with many more Fusion Powered blockbusters coming soon in a theatre near you.
Stereoscopic 3D film production requires frequent reviews of real-time, full quality playback with double the throughput of regular movies, putting immense stress on current film pipelines and often crippling studios' production pipelines. With Fusion-io's new tier of high speed persistent memory, studios can now playback and write data at the same time, meaning artists can start review sessions of their work as soon as they have enough shots copied.
Fusion-io technology also makes it possible for directors and artists to conduct mini-reviews between major sessions, ensuring that creative teams don't sit idle while waiting for feedback on their progress. Previously, this time-consuming process forced artists to transfer data and review among multiple workstations. Before the advent of Fusion's ioMemory technology, this process could cost studios several weeks of production time.
By significantly speeding workflow and review sessions, Fusion-io eliminates hours of labor needed to sequence data for playback and defragmenting hard drives, while completely eliminating the risk posed by RAID crashes and data recovery. In addition, the implementation of ioMemory technology is much more simple and streamlined than the alternative of adding RAID arrays.
Studios can now eliminate this cumbersome legacy infrastructure, and instead deploy Fusion's easily implemented and monitored solution to significantly reduce IT overhead, improve data security and accelerate production. With ioMemory technology, the power of a high-performance SAN can be realized in every production workstation.
Utilizing Fusion-io, Prime Focus, a global leader in entertainment services, completed its S3D conversion of Warner Bros' Clash of the Titans in just under eight weeks. Prime Focus' timeframe for the project represents a significant breakthrough as standard stereoscopic conversion projects typically take six months or longer.
"Fusion's ioDrives really helped us meet a tough deadline. With typical VFX projects, we complete about 20-30 shots per day. The ioDrives scaled our data load capabilities by about twenty times. This improved our productivity about two to four fold," said Sean Konrad, Project Manager for Stereoscopic Conversion. "Using Fusion-io drives, each review session covered far more shots and we could continue cycling work in between sessions. We don't have to worry anymore about defragmenting disks, rebuilding RAIDs, or swapping out disks. We are buying many more ioDrives to implement throughout our different locations."
"No other company today provides the entertainment industry with the lightning-fast access to data that Fusion-io offers, making it possible to radically accelerate film production and save studios valuable time and effort in bringing their products to market," said Vincent Brisebois, Director of Hollywood Alliances for Fusion-io. "We look forward to working with Prime Focus and other studios to help reinvent the cinematic experience for 21st Century audiences."
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