IDC LA
Lights, Camera, Automation! – How Intelligent Data Orchestration Helps IDC LA Streamline Production
IDC LA is the West Coast arm of the International Digital Centre (IDC).
Situated in the heart of Hollywood, IDC LA supports blockbuster movie houses and television production companies with creative post-production, digital media processing, and localization to produce media including several crowd favorites streaming on Netflix.
At the cutting edge of media & entertainment, IDC LA had grown organically by scaling to suit increasingly large and complex post-production projects. More and more workflows and data silos led to bottlenecks that slowed down production time, and they realized they could never scale if tech investment continued to grow linearly with customer demand.
The lightbulb moment
As a full post-production house with complex workflows, IDC LA leverages high-performance tools like R&S Clipster, BlackMagic Resolve, Interra Systems Baton, Colorfront Transkoder, and Telestream Vantage. Historically, local storage would be purchased to support each software tool, but this creates multiple data silos over time. A performance and operational slowdown occurred whenever data was sent to Online Edit, Color Grading, Transcoding, or Quality Control.
Serving a broader audience meant having complete control of any and all client data and workflows – no matter where they “lived.” At the same time, they refused to compromise on compliance. They committed to meeting their studio customers’ strict security and retention policies to avoid leaks and enable quick action on unexpected changes before content release.
Because streamlining data workflows and eliminating the need for physical “data wranglers” would free up valuable resources across their entire operation, the next step became clear. IDC LA went looking for automation.
Casting Call: Storage with a Mission
Simple storage boxes would not do. While plenty of vendors could offer fast shared storage, IDC LA wanted to find a partner that also aligned with their mission streamlining operations for the entire media and entertainment industry.
After researching established and up-and-coming storage solutions, IDC LA chose pixitmedia for its scalable systems and commitment to M&E excellence.
In pixstor, IDC LA found one of the only offerings in production that wouldn’t result in its “high-performance core” becoming yet another island of storage to manage. To create simplicity without compromising security, IDC LA used pixstor’s multi-tier storage solution to build a single namespace for all its teams from data IO, high-end production, automated services, and file delivery.
To satisfy their secuity needs, pixstor offered segmented containers to keep customer data separate and safe. And because ngenea, functioning as a data management layer, famously takes a “no lock-in” approach, they were able to introduce their existing data into the pixstor namespace without the need for traditional data migration or fear of data being held for ransom later by their software provider.
Sayonara, Data Silos
With pixitmedia NG-Box, IDC LA got DPU-enabled storage to deliver high performance with the smallest possible on-prem footprint. As needed, data could be automatically placed on the right class of disk (NVMe or nearline) using a powerful policy engine. IDC used ngenea to combine their new storage investment with an existing TrueNAS system and cloud archive.
The policy engine kept data in the right place at the right time, either on the high-performance tier, the most cost-effective storage, or in archive. All data was visible to users through the pixstor namespace regardless of where the data was at rest.
3 Benefits of NGenea Pixstor
- PERFORMANCE
- Using 2 Kalray NVMe storage blocks and a Seagate nearline disk array, IDC LA experienced upwards of 60GBps of performance.
- AUTOMATION
- pixstor enables streamlined workflows with intelligent and dynamic data orchestration within its own disk tiers while ngenea integrates existing storage devices for minimal disruption to the business.
- DATA PROTECTION
- IDC uses Backblaze and Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 storage for backup and disaster recovery. ngenea’s compatibility enables a smooth experience by seamlessly integrating with both, offering a reliable and efficient solution for secure data backup and rapid recovery. By connecting ngenea with AWS, IDC LA can confidently deliver sensitive and time-critical projects to Hollywood’s top studios, knowing that data is both secure and accessible – no matter what.
Lights, Camera, Automation!
Reflecting on the collaboration with IDC LA, pixitmedia product VP Andrew Wierzan likened the process to auto racing: “Performance isn’t just about the engine in the race car. It’s about how fast it completes all the laps in the race. And for that, you need powerful, intelligent, and dependable systems for the entire car plus an awesome pit crew, played here by IDC, making sure you get to the finish line first.”
IDC LA can now enjoy a high ROI with less staff and in less time because policy-led automation ensures data is always in the right place at the right time. The system mitigates unnecessary data movement which easily becomes time-consuming and creates bottlenecks. ngenea’s extensive compatibility with existing storage enables IDC LA to maximize ROI across the board: wrapping around existing NAS infrastructure in their LA office and playing well with Backblaze for cloud archive.
The end result? IDC LA is running faster and serving more clients, helping to bring our favorite content to the screen.
