November 21, 2012 - Founded by Marc Savoie in 2006 with only 600 square feet of studio space and one online editing suite, The PostMan has grown to become one of Canada’s largest post production studios, with two state-of-the art facilities in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. From film and episodic TV projects to commercial work, documentaries and more, Savoie and his savvy team of creatives collaborate with clients around the world to provide exceptional audio and video post, color correction, animation, VFX and project management.

Earlier this year, Savoie upgraded The PostMan’s existing shared storage system. After extensive research, he found the ultimate solution in Facilis’ TerraBlock and purchased both a TerraBlock 24 EX and 24D for 60TB of combined storage. “TerraBlock had all the features we wanted in a shared storage system – supporting our existing Fibre Channel infrastructure and also giving us the flexibility to work with Ethernet in the future. Cost also played a huge factor, and the price per terabyte on the TerraBlock was very competitive,” Savoie shared.

With several 4K and 2K projects on the horizon, Savoie was confident that the advanced speed of the TerraBlock would also help his team accelerate turnaround. “More is happening in the computer chain today, which means a lot of exporting and copying in file-based workflows. A strong central storage server is a must and we knew TerraBlock would provide the raw speed needed to move files through quickly,” Savoie explained.

Over the last year, the TerraBlocks have quickly evolved into the storage backbone for The PostMan across both of its facilities. The systems currently support Avid® Media Composer® offline editing suites, online editing suites running Avid® Symphony® and Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve, visual effects workstations with The Foundry’s Nuke and Adobe® Creative Cloud™ for compositing, multiple audio editing suites running Avid® Pro Tools®, and Cache-A for archiving – all connected to TerraBlock via Fibre Channel or Ethernet.

“TerraBlock is one of the fastest storage systems available. Between the agility, economical benefits and seamlessness of it all, it’s been a perfect match for our production environment,” Savoie noted. “Since upgrading our suites to 16 GB Fibre Channel, we’re moving files at ridiculously fast speeds and are working at an accelerated rate.”

TerraBlock has also afforded editors and visual effects artists at The PostMan access to the same raw footage without the need to recompress – making it easier for the team to collaborate across multiple projects simultaneously. “The TerraBlocks speed up our productivity, because we don’t waste any time waiting to copy, export or recompress footage. Files are available to all of us whenever we need them,” said Savoie. “Our TerraBlocks are working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, yet they continue to deliver solid performance. Having the systems in place is really like having additional employees, except it costs less.”

Since installing TerraBlock, The PostMan has completed post-production on several projects including the popular HBO Canada series Call Me Fitz, which called for more than 100 deliverables to five different distributors and producers.

About TerraBlock
Facilis TerraBlock is a high-capacity, multiplatform, shared storage system for post-production and content creation. It fosters collaboration, supporting Fiber channel and Ethernet, volume and file-level control.

About Facilis Technology
Founded in 2003, Massachusetts-based Facilis Technology, Inc. designs and builds affordable, high-capacity, turnkey shared storage and archiving solutions for post production and content creation professionals working in the film, television, education and audiovisual markets. Its production-proven solutions are fast and intuitive – making it easier for creative professionals to collaborate and work more efficiently. Flexible, scalable and compatible with industry-standard creative solutions, Facilis’ products blend seamlessly into any studio environment – boutique, mid-size or large – and have been installed in more than 2000 facilities worldwide to date. http://facilis.com/

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