Optimum Productions Chooses Small Tree for Shared Storage

 Small Tree shared storage was selected to aid a growing company looking to function at top speed while maintaining a large capacity for file storage. Optimum Productions, an award-winning video production agency located in Alpharetta, Georgia, switched to Small Tree to meet the increased need for storage capacity by its growing number of editors.

A video marketing agency founded in 2007, Optimum Productions focuses on helping clients solve marketing challenges through creative video content. The company, whose work ranges from customer testimonials to product overviews, includes notable big brands such as Coca Cola, P&G, SunTrust and HD Supply as clients.

Optimum Productions currently utilizes five workstations connected to the Small Tree system. The team primarily works on Macs, but a PC is also being utilized. Optimum uses a wide range of software from After Effects to Cinema 4D and for editing they are fairly exclusive to the Adobe Suite. Prior to moving over to Small Tree’sTitaniumZ-8 shared storage unit, Optimum relied on using a two-terabyte network-attached storage (NAS) to support post-production efforts.

Danny Gonzales, Executive Producer at Optimum Productions, said that there were several driving factors they considered when switching to Small Tree. Primarily, they were maxing out their NAS server, and as they transitioned into 4K production, the file sizes increased to the point where a storage upgrade was essential.

“The biggest jump really was bandwidth. We tend to deal with a ton of different projects and have multiple people working on those projects simultaneously,” said Gonzales. “Getting an increase in bandwidth was really important because it gets down to efficiency and time. The Small Tree solution allowed us to address our bandwidth needs.”

Small Tree’s TitaniumZ-8 is an affordable, full-featured, all-in-one Ethernet-based shared storage system with advanced file sharing capabilities. Offering the right levels of capacity and storage software to keep users working efficiently, TitaniumZ-8 is built on an open source operating system that was customized to be easy to use, feature-rich, reliable and perform at a high level. Supporting all popular multimedia applications, TitaniumZ-8 is available from an eight-drive system with 2TB drives up to a 40-drive system with 8TB drives.

Gonzales said that another benefit of Small Tree’s affordably robust system is the efficiency the unit brought to the team’s workflow. Before switching to the TitaniumZ-8, Optimum Productions’ team was required to archive a majority of their video footage. While they still do that to some degree, the new unit has greatly reduced that need. “It’s definitely improved our time,” Gonzales admitted.

Want to simplify your video-editing process while keeping in mind your company’s future growth? Visit www.small-tree.com to find out which Small Tree shared solution is right for your facility.