CASE STUDY – IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tribune Builds the 4K Future with Facilis
Hudson, MA - The Chicago Tribune Media Group is one of the USA’s
longest-established publishers of newspapers and magazines. While
retaining the strengths of its established brands – like the Chicago
Tribune– it has now developed into an innovator in digital and online
content.
As part of this transformation, Tribune’s Creative Services department
provides an in-house resource for content. Mason Pierce is its senior
video producer. “We directly support video for Marketing, Targeted Media, Editorial and anything in
between,” he said. “Short and long-form; web; social media – whatever our titles and brands need, we
are an internal agency there to create it.”
Now Mason and his team are adding 4k Ultra HD production capabilities to the mix. Content is already
being produced in 4k, and material is added to the archive for future repurposing.
The Creative Services department has a team of editors, graphic designers and animators who produce a
huge amount of output each year. Managing all the content, and providing visibility of projects to the
producers and commissioners in Tribune’s business units, calls for a sophisticated means of handling
video.
The solution lies in the TerraBlock 24D from Facilis. At the beginning of 2015, Tribune upgraded its
facilities with two new 96TB units. The story began seven years earlier, though.
“Back then, we needed to jump from analog SD to digital HD,” recalled Mason. “We knew we needed a
completely fresh approach to the way we worked, because we could see we would build up a huge
amount of HD content.”
So Mason and his team realized they would have to find a solution that was simple enough for them to
manage on their own, while also providing the storage bandwidth required. “We needed to set it and
forget it, without a dedicated IT professional constantly baby-sitting the appliance.”
Having surveyed the market, Facilis provided the solution. It gave them the flexibility to manage the
work through volumes and projects, and most important, it could all be done by their in-house staff, not
through an IT specialist. “With Facilis we were able to increase our workflow significantly,” said Mason.
“We were able to share projects more efficiently and access content directly, not wait for files to be
pulled down.”
One particular aspect of TerraBlock was central to the way Tribune works today. It supports both Fibre
and copper – gigabit Ethernet – connectivity. The operation uses this to streamline its productions.
“We have power users – editors, animators, graphic designers – who are connected by Fibre and have
fast access to all the content,” Mason explained. “But we have a number of other users, who might be
the producers, or the brand managers in the business units, or the copywriters, who do not need
multiple streams of full resolution content. We give them controlled access, and we connect them over
copper so they can be anywhere in the Tribune network.”
Tribune uses the volume functionality of TerraBlock to manage content. Not only does this restrict users
to the projects they are entitled to see – so producers from one business unit cannot look into what
others are doing – it also makes the system easy to use, minimizing the need for technical support.
Today the power users are creating content using Adobe Premiere, SpeedGrade, After Effects and Maya,
and occasionally Cinema 4D, all connected directly to the TerraBlock. Traditionally acquisition has been
on Sony XDCam and DSLRs. However, the ambitions of the department have stretched to 4k acquisition
and finishing.
The success of the in-house department, supported by the Facilis TerraBlock, meant that over the years
since the original installation, its output had grown three-fold. With the increased work, and the desire
to future-proof content through 4k acquisition and finishing, it was time to expand the department’s
technical infrastructure.
Even though they loved the power and ease of use of the TerraBlock, Mason and his team looked
around at what was available in the market, recognizing that technology had moved on. Despite
intensive research, nothing came close to doing what Facilis could deliver as standard. With the help of
leading reseller and systems integrator, KeyCode Media in Chicago, Tribune’s Creative Services
department recently upgraded its existing Facilis storage system with two new 96TB TerraBlock 24D
shared storage systems.
“We have invested in Sony FS700 cameras with Convergent Designs recorders, capturing in 4k ProRes,”
according to Mason. The Sony FS700s also create and record an HD proxy on the fly, so as soon as the
crew gets back to base the content is dropped into the TerraBlock and is available.
In general, the practice is to edit with the proxy, then do a final conform and grade in 4k. But even this
may not be necessary, according to Mason: “We have discovered that the Facilis system does not even
blink when editing 4k. So we know if we have a quick turnaround project we can do it all online, with the
4k in our normal ‘work in progress’ volume.”
With the ever-growing rate of acquisition and production, archiving content was also becoming an issue.
Another advantage of the Facilis solution is its close integration with Storage DNA and its LTO data tape
archives. For Tribune, this provided a seamless route to long-term protection of the content with easy
and accurate retrieval for high-res conform workflows.
“We looked around, but no-one else could offer even the basic requirement of connecting to copper as
well as Fibre without a workaround,” he said. “As they say: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, so we got two
96TB Facilis engines, and filled them with everything we need.
We’re happy we have the right platform to carry on delivering great content, quickly and efficiently.”
About Facilis Technology
Founded in 2003, Massachusetts-based Facilis Technology, Inc. designs and builds affordable, highcapacity, turnkey shared storage and archiving solutions for post production and content creation
professionals working in the film, television, education and audiovisual markets. Its production-proven
solutions are fast and intuitive – making it easier for creative professionals to collaborate and work more
efficiently. Flexible, scalable and compatible with industry-standard creative solutions, Facilis’ products
blend seamlessly into any studio environment – boutique, mid-size or large – and have been installed in
more than 2000 facilities worldwide.
http://facilis.com/
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