Expandable System Supports Collaboration on Avid, FCP7, Premiere Pro, and Lightworks, Fits in a Carry-On Bin

EditShare, which specializes in solutions for editing over a Gigabit Ethernet connection, said it has begun shipping its Field 2 portable shared-storage system. The Field 2 is a chassis for up to four drives, with four Ethernet ports for direct connection to client computers.

The Field 2 can hold up to four 3.5-inch drives, or up to eight 2.5-inch drives, in a RAID-5 or RAID-6 configuration. An optional expansion unit is the same width and depth as the main unit, but slightly over half as tall, and doubles the capacity. Configurations range from 4 TB to 32 TB, depending on what drive types are being used.

Configured with four 3.5-inch HDDs, the Field 2 supports eight streams of ProRes HQ or DNxHD 220, the company said. An eight-drive system packed with 2.5-inch HDDs increases performance by about 50 percent, EditShare estimates, while using SSDs instead increases performance by six times.

Connectivity is expandable, with the option of adding up to 10 more Ethernet ports, a 10 Gigabit Ethernet card, an SAS host bus adapter for connecting an EditShare Ark Tape library or single LTO drive, or a Flow SDI ingest card for recording up to two channels of HD footage directly to Field 2 storage during capture. With the SDI card, two users can process the two file-ingest channels concurrently via EditShare's included Flow asset management software. Also included is Ark software for archiving to compatible tape libraries, including models from Quantum, HP, and Spectralogic.

In collaborative environments, EditShare supports file-level sharing, which allows multiple clients to write to the same volume at the same time. EditShare's technology has long been designed to play nice with the Avid, allowing different workstations to share media without corrupting each other's database files, and it's been extended to support Final Cut Pro 7, Premiere Pro, and EditShare's own Lightworks NLE. The Sync Tool allows media to be sent to another EditShare system over the Internet.

EditShare originally announced the Field 2 at NAB, when it also detailed improvements to Flow, which includes ingest, logging, and browsing tools. The new AirFlow module enables collaborations through a web browser interface over an Internet connection, while improvements to Flow Ingest include support for segmented clips on P2 and XDCAM media.

For more information: www.editshare.com