In Broadcast - October 2016 - 68


68

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 6 - Issue 10 | October 2016

InMedia

Building An Empire
EditShare helped to provide the building blocks for Empire Post...

E

mpire Post is quite literally the
product of Digby Hogan's blood,
sweat and tears. Between the seven
creative minds that work for Empire
and the high-level projects they
take on, the Australian-based postproduction house is known for putting
its all into every step. Between projects
for PayPal, Vodafone, Subway, Google
and more, its repertoire is reminiscent
of the first thoughts when founding the
company: "I want to build an empire."
And he is. Digby began his career as
a freelance offline editor with skills in
2D motion graphics and animation.
He worked on everything from
commercials to feature films, and from
his work, an idea was born. He wanted
to bring his passion to life in the form
of a post-production company that
specialised in commercials, music
videos, online content and more,
and he started taking on projects
specifically of that nature.
Rome wasn't built in a day, and
neither was Empire. The company
started with two team members
working off a dining room table into
the late hours of the night. They
took on spots for clients throughout
Australia and the world, and when
the demand for work began to pick up
speed, Digby had to make a choice. It
was either expand Empire or limit the
work intake. The answer was obvious.
The two-man team moved to a small
office in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane,
remaining there for about a yearand-a-half. The team then moved to a
larger office in the same area, added
more team members and to date, they
are Empire.
Expanding Empire
It wasn't long before Digby and the
rest of the Empire team needed to
implement a hardware platform that

Empire's EditShare 64TB XStream

would support the growing client
project demands, for both short and
long-form. However, implementing a
straightforward storage system would
not do. Many of Empire's projects
came with ultra-high resolution, highbandwidth demands. A traditional
storage platform simply could not
handle the throughput requirements
and therefore, stability was at the top
of the list. Familiar with EditShare
from previous positions, Digby
investigated EditShare's new line
of XStream Shared
Storage
platforms
and landed on a
64TB XStream as the
cornerstone of the
Empire facility.
"EditShare supported
the
10-gigabit
workflow, which is
ideal for the eight work Empire
workstations
stations we now have,"
Digby says. "We have a full sound
suite. We've got online and offline
editorial, grading, motion graphics
and visual effects work stations.
From this one platform, we can store
and manage the media for all of our
systems with tools to actually share
project files."
The EditShare XStream's open
platform is especially helpful for the
Empire team as they work in a handful
of different editing programmes at any
given time, including Avid, Final Cut
and Adobe Premiere Pro, and need
an NLE-agnostic platform to manage
files and collaboration across projects
thanks to EditShare's advanced project
sharing capabilities. EditShare governs
the access to project files, ensuring
no editor ever overwrites another's
work without permission, while giving
the team the freedom to see work in
progress and collaborate on content
development. Digby says, "This type of
stability and content safeguard really
allows me to sleep at night."
Most importantly, implementing the
EditShare XStream means that the
Empire team is also setting itself up for
future success. The connected, secure
workflow and stable platform offers
them more than enough space to store
all of their files and, when the time
comes, support multiple, simultaneous
long-form, high-resolution projects.
Also playing into their future is the

A glimpse of Empire

EditShare Flow MAM Mapping A Campaign
they have installed
With a history of outstanding
and ready to go. For work long before Empire, influential
long-form projects, agencies and brands from around
Flow will provide the world reached out to Empire for
an efficient way to creative work. The team recently
manage
editorial worked with Jack Morton, Creative
review,
asset Agency, to do a high-impact project
tracking and, if need for Google who was hosting an
be, complex transcoding. Flow will also important company conference in Las
provide proxy video files - smaller file Vegas. The project featured many 3D
sizes of 4K content - to allow a more elements and took about eight weeks
efficient and storage-friendly workflow to complete. The content needed to be
for the large-scale data/format projected on one of the largest screens
intensive projects.
the team has ever encountered,
By future-proofing Empire with measuring 90 feet by 20 feet in
EditShare XStream and Flow, the team dimensions with a resolution of over
can continue to expand the company 7,000 by 2,000 live pixels. For data
without having to stop to upgrade the safety, Empire used EditShare as its
infrastructure to manage the work.
main back up system.
Empire approached Digistor, a
Empire has big plans for the future,
well-known network and storage including both long and short-form
infrastructure reseller and systems projects. Thanks to the infrastructure
integrator,
for
guidance
and that is already in place, the team will
affirmation that they were indeed be able to continue on the path to
heading in the right direction. success.
After discussions with tech support
"I always say that you're only as
regarding their requirements, it was good as your last gig," Digby says. "We
determined that EditShare was the put our all into each project at Empire
"most effective fit" for the Empire's Post because we really care and we
needs.
love what we do. The tools we use,
Andrew Hogan from Digistor noted: like EditShare, allow us to focus on our
"We already hoped EditShare would creativity without worrying about the
work as a solution for Empire before mechanics of it all, and we're thankful
our tech guys gave it their blessing for that."
for this installation. This was
Audio workstation
based on prior experience with
the product for Digby and me
knowing EditShare provides
one of the best support services
from the vendors we deal with.
We could be confident knowing
it was a solution that would
work today and be scalable for
their future requirements."
http://www.inbroadcast.com http://www.theempirepost.com/ http://www.theempirepost.com/ http://www.editshare.com/products/xstream
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