Authentic Entertainment is a production and post facility located in Burbank, CA, with a special focus on reality shows including Naughty Kitchen and Ace of Cakes. This highly edible entertainment requires many hours of shooting footage and a hardy, reliable back-up system—so that not a single delicious moment is lost.

Will Pisnieski, post producer, shares how Cache-A has streamlined their fast-paced workflow and given them peace of mind.

How long have you been using Cache-A Prime-Cache archive appliance?
I believe we were the first production company to get it back in June when it first came out. I was very impressed by it at NAB. We were doing a new show for Oxygen called The Naughty Kitchen, which we wanted to shoot completely file-based and we needed some kind of long storage solution we could sell the network on. At the time, sending FireWire drives to the network was not an acceptable option.

So how do you send files with the Cache-A?
The Prime-Cache archives to LTO tapes using a format called tar, which has been around for a long time. Basically you can put any Cache-A written tape in any standard LTO-4 drive and read it using tar.

Could you describe the installation process? How was it adjusting to the new system?
The installation process was very simple. It was actually just myself and our IT supervisor. We utilized a CAT-6 Ethernet cable and connected it to our local network. After doing this, we could access the system from any of our 35 edit bays and eight AE stations. That means any of my group can archive footage whenever they need to do so.

How’s the interface?
It has a very user-friendly interface. It keeps a database that tracks every tape that you’ve made. Let’s say hypothetically you’ve got media on a FireWire and that FireWire fails, it’s very easy to go into the Prime-Cache’s interface and locate a tape that you made as a back-up and pull it in the recovery process.

Talk a little bit about your workflow using “Naughty Kitchen” as an example.
We have a digital technician who works in Dallas where the show is shot. He’s given these SxS media cards, which are shot using Sony’s EX3. He offloads those cards onto a primary and a back-up drive, and then ships the FireWire drive back to Authentic every couple days. That FireWire contains just the original MXF files that are recorded on the card. Our assistant editor then begins the process of unwrapping those files, turning them into XDCAM QuickTime files we would use in Final Cut Pro, then takes the MXF files and drops them onto the internal hard drive of the Cache-A device, and then begins to archive them onto LTO tapes. We choose to archive each day on its own tape, even though we probably don’t fill up any of the tapes—the tapes hold about 800Gigs—but we thought it would be easiest for our workflow and the network.

So you’ve minimized FireWire in your workflow?
We still do incorporate FireWire drives in that we store our Hi-Res QuickTimes on those drives. Our company at any given time could be doing between eight to 14 television series so there’s no way to cut all of our shows in full-res. Instead, we take the QuickTime files, recompress them in Final Cut Pro, but make our own proxies that retain the same timecode as the original hi-res QuickTimes. When we have time to rebuild the show, we’ll go back to those FireWire drives and begin a media recovery/relinking process. We’ve had a pretty successful run on this series, but we’ve had two FireWires in the past that, months after archiving to them, failed to light up. Then, luckily, we had the LTO tape that we stored that data on the Cache-A with, in order to rebuild that show. The Prime-Cache has saved us many a time.

Was the LTO tape capability your primary reason for choosing the Prime-Cache?
The LTO tape is very universal to the networks. On top of that it was a very easy installation. Also, the ability to connect it to all of our clients and archive from anywhere in our building was a huge selling point because we do so many shows at our company. There’s no way we can have one device connected to one computer. That computer will never always be available.

How many users do you have for the system?
Four assistant editors on a daily basis that back up to the unit.

Are you starting any new projects that you’re going to adopt this workflow for?
Actually, yes. We have a long-running hit TV show on the Food Network called Ace of Cakes. It’s going HD for the first time next season, in the spring. We want to shoot it on the SONY EX3 or Panasonic P2, the reason being that our camera operators have to work in a very stealthy manner inside the bakery. If they have big cameras with ENG units on their shoulders, they may tend to bump into the people that work there. So using file-based cards is the way to go for that series.

I’m in the process of developing a new workflow for Cakes because that show in particular shoots a tremendous amount of footage — they need to shoot lots and lots of time-lapse footage of the cakes being prepared. It probably shoots three or four times what other series do. So I don’t think it would work to unload FireWires in the field, because of the huge capacity, probably about 180 TB of FireWire. For them to properly store all this footage, I’d like to send out the newer Cache-A Pro-Cache archive appliance, which is larger, into the field and have two digital technicians archiving day and night onto LTO tape. Shipping FireWire back and forth across the country is worrisome—are they going to work when they arrive? I have the security that LTO tapes will survive the journey.