root6 aid UNIT’s expansion
Apple-only machine room lays foundation for world’s largest
Final Cut facility
Following its May launch, Unit Post in Soho’s Carlisle Street has enjoyed phenomenal growth with its original 10 Final Cut Pro HD suites soon to become 18 following the much publicised investment of Mike Luckwell.
A new all-Apple machine control room (MCR), designed with the help of the Systems Integration arm of Apple re-seller root6, will ensure a smooth transition as expansion continues.
The MCR set up is completely unique in its design and networked via Fibre Optic to UNIT's Xsan central storage. Rather than devote a large proportion of the budget on complex video & audio switching, Unit invested in five of the latest Mac Pro workstations running Final Cut Pro with Kona3 capture cards, which are integrated into the same 4GB Xsan fabric as the edit suites. They can work as stand-alone units for capturing and laybacks or as part of a cluster for high-speed rendering.
Tim Burton, Unit’s Technical Manager explains, "The MCR has enabled us to keep the edit suites cutting 100% of the time, and streamline how we execute ancillary tasks. The biggest gains have been in digital delivery and rendering times, by moving these tasks from the workstations to a 20 processor cluster we have seen a five-fold increase in speed. Root6 completed the installation to an extremely high standard and It was a pleasure to work with Phil Crawley as he took the concept and helped develop it into a rounded solution within weeks. We have only scratched the surface of what this technology can offer and are continuing to expand and refine our systems and workflows."
The five powerful bays enable Unit's technical staff to work simultaneously and seamlessly on client projects, as well as delivering valuable added services such as digital delivery, tape transfers, standards conversion and DVD creation. Traditionally, edit suites are wired into a video switch, with the requested deck patched in, enabling the user to stop and capture the footage. Now a tape is simply captured into its relevant project in the MCR and the media is instantly available to any suite working on that job, with no need for client or operator to stop working.