Montage is one of Dubai’s premier post-production facilities. Offering a vast repertoire of post services from sound design and composition to VFX, motion graphics, editing, and color grading. They provide these services to some of the largest advertising, film, and television companies in the region.
As the industry continues to push towards higher and higher resolutions, many post-production studios are finding the backend technology that keeps their shops running is becoming strained.
Gaby Feghali, Managing Director at Montage, found that having many storage devices spread among their 4 Avid Media Composer suites, 2 DaVinci Resolve color grading suites, and several VFX, audio, and graphics workstations had thrown their workflow into complete chaos.
To complete a project, media would have to to go through dozens of duplications — files were copied to local drives and when changes needed to be made they would have to be exported, copied, and uploaded again and again.
This slowed the editorial process down to a halt.
Tackling a demanding full-service post workflow
To overcome the challenges holding back them back, Gaby and his team set out to find a centralized storage system to make their workflow more efficient.
The first step for Montage was to weigh the pros and cons of various shared storage solutions. Gaby consulted with several of the largest storage manufacturers, and after considering several options — including many traditional IT storage solutions — he found only one system that had the ideal feature set and performance.
After narrowing down his choices, he decided that the EVO shared storage system was the best option.
Montage turned to EVO for its extensive feature set and flexible configurations that allowed them to create unique user permissions and workspaces suited for their online Avid, color grading, VFX, and graphic design workstations.
A central hub for for editorial, color, and beyond
EVO now serves as the central hub for Montage’s post-production workflow.
“Performance is flawless for all our users, whether they are on Avid Media Composer, Blackmagic Resolve, or our VFX workstations,” he added. “EVO provides the bandwidth we need to manage all our projects and media across our online storage.”
By using native Avid Project & Bin Sharing the edit team collaborates in real-time within Media Composer. They can then export .AAF files to an EVO volume where the finishing artist can access it directly from the server and start their grade. “Now we can access projects from any edit suite without moving or copying files to grading or graphics suites, because the projects and media are not linked to specific edit suites,” Gaby said. “EVO speeds up the process, keeps us organized, and reduces redundancy.”
Moving forward
It’s important for companies to make sure they stay flexible and ahead of the curve — as technology continues to advance, many creative businesses are struggling to keep up with the changes.
One of the ways Montage stays ahead of the competition is by providing cutting edge services. Like remote color-grading provided by The Mill, where Montage provides regional clients with virtual access to the award-winning grading team, working as if they were in the same room.
The remote network is setup with monitors that are identically calibrated, run via a dedicated internet feed, and seamlessly stream HD-perfect pictures from grading suites and project rooms. Remote grading is an example of how Montage thinks about their business — with a strong desire to provide the best of the best.
“We are constantly improving our internal workflow to accommodate the fast pace required by the changing media landscape and our clients’ demands. We’re twice as productive now thanks to EVO.”
Read more user stories or contact SNS now to see how the EVO shared media storage server can help your company.