Cache-A Corporation today announced the availability of Simul-Copy, a new LTO-tape duplication and verification capability that the company says slashes the time needed to create multiple LTO-tape copies.
“Safeguarding content is a chief priority for completion guarantors, production companies and post production houses today,” said Jim Totman, sales director of UK reseller XTFX, which specifies camera-to-post workflows on features and TV shows. “With Simul-Copy, Cache-A has broadened the LTO safety net. The ability to make simultaneous, duplicate LTO-tape copies delivers huge time-savings and greater levels of reassurance that content is properly protected.”
Simul-Copy dramatically improves archiving workflow by speeding-up the delivery of LTO-tape copies for production, post-production, working archive and offsite disaster recovery. It is especially helpful on long form projects that can produce several Terabytes of RAW camera data every day.
First adopters of Cache-A’s Simul-Copy include RedLab Digital, a leading digital lab and post-production facility in Toronto, Canada, and Now Productions, in Los Angeles, California.
“One of the biggest challenges we face is dealing with, and being responsible for, vast amounts of data. On major productions this can easily amount to a couple of Terabytes per day for the duration of the shoot,” said Andy Hunter, owner and Flame artist at RedLab Digital, whose company has provided post and archiving services to Sony Pictures’ 3D stereo motion pictures Resident Evil: Retribution and Pompeii.
“Traditionally we have run 24/7 making dual LTFS LTO copies back-to-back of the day’s RAW camera footage. However, Simul-Copy on Power-Cache6 has slashed the delivery time in half, as we can now make two LTFS LTO-6 copies simultaneously. It’s a rock-solid capability saving us many hours, providing greater security to our clients and the larger capacity of the LTO-6 comes in very handy too,” said Hunter.
"We have over 80,000 pieces of original audio and video media going back over 40 years and, as we ingest, we're protecting it on dual LTO-tapes stored at separate Hollywood locations," said Richard Price of Now Productions, which uses Simul-Copy on Power-Cache, plus several Pro-Cache units, in its archiving and original media workflows. "The beauty of Cache-A's Simul-Copy is that while I am archiving to two LTO-tapes in tar format at the same time, I can also upload my next project to the Power-Cache. Simul-Copy is a major, time-saving step forward for us, and shows Cache-A's deep understanding of the tools media professionals really need today."
Simul-Copy is available for Internet download as a standard software update for Cache-A systems running v3.0 at http://www.cache-a.com/uprequest.php.
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