By Staff, June 27, 2007
Hewlett-Packard announced that Warner Bros. Entertainment has deployed the company's media storage technology to help transform the complex post-production of new films, as well as the restoration of older titles, from the traditional process using celluloid to one that is entirely digital.
HP Media Storage is helping Warner Bros. move to an environment that uses 4K Digital, the industry's highest resolution format for digital video, which now provides four times the resolution quality of high-definition television.
By doing so, Warner Bros. can streamline its post-production processes, while maintaining the high resolution quality that the studio considers essential for the creative community making new films and the audiences that enjoy them. Warner Bros. relied on HP Media Storage to produce "Ocean's 13."
Using HP Media Storage, creative teams can store and retrieve 4K files in real time. A 4K digital master preserves enough information to guarantee the value of the film for future generations and presentation technologies.
Designed specifically for the entertainment industry, HP Media Storage is compatible with Apple's Final Cut Studio through the use of Apple Xsan software.
Warner Bros. is the only major studio that has created an infrastructure that allows it to do high-resolution image post-production digitally on its own lot.
"HP studied our post-production processes and worked with us to deliver a flexible storage solution that supports our directors' creative needs -- and allows us to work at the quality we consider essential," said Chris Cookson, president of Technical Operations and chief technology officer, Warner Bros. Entertainment. "Working in 4K generates enormous amounts of data and HP has made storing and retrieving that data effortless, while helping to streamline the post-production process. The bottom line is we can now meet the creative needs of filmmakers as well as the image quality demands we have as a studio. HP has helped us make that possible."
At its Motion Picture Imaging (MPI) facility, Warner Bros. uses HP Media Storage to support high-resolution post-production tasks such as dailies, 4K digital intermediates, color correction, mastering for cinema and high/standard definition video, digital clean-up, and laser film recording.
The HP Media Storage solution at Warner Bros. MPI includes HP StorageWorks 8000 Enterprise Virtual Arrays and Linux-based HP ProLiant servers and HP BladeSystem server blades as well as multi-core processor HP workstations. HP partner Quantum provides its leading storage management software, StorNext(R), to manage the data via a heterogeneous file system that allows the data to be accessed by all clients.
HP also provided specialized consulting and integration services, working closely with Warner Bros
. MPI to provide discovery workshops to understand the existing post-production workflow and design -- and to deploy the entire solution.
Through the use of StorNext, HP Media Storage provides a single, "virtual disk" view across all the different tiers of storage. This includes high-performance disk for fast, concurrent file sharing for active data, near-line systems for reference or older data, disk systems for back-up, and off-line tape for archived data.
Expanding on its support for the Linux, Windows(R) and HP-UX 11i operating systems, HP Media Storage now supports Apple Mac OS X and Windows XP connectivity to the Fibre Channel-based HP StorageWorks EVA SAN arrays. With this addition, HP Media Storage now supports all the major operating systems used in post-production.
"HP is committed to helping the entertainment and communications industries meet the technical challenges -- and tap the huge opportunities -- in digital content," said Ananda Subbiah, vice president, Solutions, Communications, Media and Entertainment, HP. "HP Media Storage is a key part of our strategy, and our customers have shown that it is delivering positive business outcomes."
HP Media Storage has been deployed by content creators and distributors around the world, such as Starz Entertainment. Recently the British Film Institute (BFI) worked with HP to begin the task of making available to the public Britain's film heritage of more than 230,000 films and 675,000 TV programs. With HP Media Storage as a backbone, the new Mediatheque at BFI Southbank in London will provide free access to historic film records such as the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and England's World Cup victory in 1966.
"We are proving time and time again that there is a real public appetite for archive film. The BFI cares for the world's most significant moving image collection and this partnership with HP represents an important step forward in our long-term investment to open it up to the public," said Amanda Nevill, director, British Film Institute. "It is a great example of culture, commerce and technology coming together in an innovative way to enhance public value."
In related news, Stephen McKenna has been named vice president of HP's Communications, Media and Entertainment unit. McKenna will lead HP's effort to help the world's media and entertainment companies take advantage of opportunities in digital content.
More information on HP's Communications, Media and Entertainment offerings is available at www.hp.com/go/cme.
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