Rimage Gives the Team a No-Fail Solution
“I didn’t want a lot of hard drives sitting on the shelves…they are pricey and unreliable. Who knows if those drives would work three or four years down the line.”
Customer
A professional football franchise
Challenge
- Securely archive digital footage
- Easily retrieve files for rapid distribution
Solution
Rimage Professional™ 5400N with DVD and Blu-ray Disc™ drives
In the fast-paced sports world, timing is everything. Just ask the video management director of a professional football franchise. From game footage to practice film, all football-related recordings must be managed. Working under a no-fail directive, the coaching staff knows that downtime and data loss are not an option in today’s game. Coaches, scouts, and players require quick and easy access to team footage, at any time. When the video department left their tape-based recording model for a digital format, their video director needed a file-based archival solution for long-term data storage and easy distribution.
“I didn’t want a lot of hard drives sitting on the shelves…they are pricey and unreliable. Who knows if those drives would work three or four years down the line.”
The video director of an professional football franchise
The Challenge
Three years ago, the team’s data archive system consisted of shelves and rows of beta tapes. If team footage needed to be retrieved, the coaches simply went to the shelf, pulled down a tape, and put it in a player. The tape was the archive. This method was efficient until the digital wave hit. Like many other sports video departments, the team eventually moved to digital cameras, and the old way of video tape archiving was outdated.
The switch from tape to digital was necessary—files are faster to edit and digital media provides better quality. But with this change came a big hurdle to overcome. The team needed to plan for emergencies and contingency issues with the new file-based recording system. “What happens if I lose a file?” a coach questioned. “How do we archive that data, and what if there’s a server failure? How quickly can we restore or create a backup and turn content around for coaches, players, and scouts?”
The Solution
The organization’s video director looked at acquiring portable hard drives, but he quickly realized the drawbacks. “I didn’t want a lot of drives sitting on the shelves,” he said. “This media is pricey and unreliable. Who knows if those drives would work three or four years down the line?”
When he discovered the Rimage 5400N System, he knew he had finally found what he needed—a reliable offline digital archive system that allowed easy, in-house access to footage for quick file sharing. The 5400N, automatically exports data to DVD and Blu-ray Disc (BD). Each disc has abundant storage space for bulky digital files and is a highly compatible means of content distribution. As one coach said, “It was a no-brainer decision.”
The Results
Next Generation of Archive
The 5400N plugs right into prominent sports editing software—a smart addition to the sports video world, which is becoming increasingly digital. The 5400N automatically exports online content to DVD/BD for secure archive and distribution. Both forms of optical media have large storage capacities (8.5 GB for dual-layer DVD; 50 GB for dual-layer BD), a predicted long lifespan (50-100 years), and a thermal printable surface that is scratchproof and waterproof. This also makes the discs easy to identify. Once an archived disc is retrieved, the video department can view digital content via a DVD or Blu-ray disc drive or player—no proprietary software necessary.
Better Media, Faster
The 5400N system’s automation and network capabilities drastically improve the video department’s workflow. One staff member says, “The automated recording of content to DVD and Blu-ray Disc is huge. It allows us to be more efficient and focus on other tasks.”
The team’s video director also benefits from the 5400N’s integrated Everest 400 thermal retransfer printer. “Our inkjet system needed to be upgraded,” he says. The Everest 400 prints permanent, full-color or monochrome images directly to the disc—no fading, scratching or smudging. “The printable media is great, and our discs look better than before.”
Cost Effective Solution
Compared to other archive systems that the organization has experienced, the Rimage 5400N is a better up-front investment. Both portable hard drives and tape backup machines are costly and potentially unreliable, and technology used to read drives and tapes may not be available or functional in the future.
The 5400N system’s reliable robotics and disc-based workflow reduce technology enhancement and upgrade expenses. Optical media is compatible across industries, and content travels well with little cost. With such an efficient solution on the team, the video director sees how the Rimage System can be used in other parts of the organization. “We hope to grow the use of the Rimage system in other areas,” he says. Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of incorporating the 5400N is Rimage’s support capabilities. The quick uptime and problem resolution impressed the organization’s video director. As he says, “For every issue we have encountered, Rimage has had a solution. That is a huge benefit in our fast-paced environment.”
“The 5400N system’s automation gives us a plan of attack for our archiving process. No more tape—this is the next generation of archiving.”
The video director of a professional football franchise