With commissions for several documentary series, Whisper invested in a large-scale EditShare storage network and access facilities to extend its creation and management capabilities.
UK production company Whisper is well-known for its sports, live and entertainment coverage, including some of the largest global events. The company won a BAFTA for the 2022 UEFA Women’s EURO and earned an International Emmy nomination for a documentary series on the 2021 British & Irish Lions tour. Now venturing into new projects including game shows and documentary, the company is in fact keeping to its original focus, putting entertainment value first, ahead of genre.
Having recently secured commissions for multiple new documentary series, it has invested in a large-scale storage network and access facilities. “We already have two EditShare storage nodes that we rely on, and which have proven very reliable over a number of years,” said Gareth Steven, head of post production at Whisper.
“One of our new projects calls for content to be created and managed over an extended period of time, with large production teams accessing and editing the content simultaneously. EditShare and systems integrator Tyrrell Systems showed us that the scalability and workflow functionality met our requirements.”
The new installation is comprised of three EditShare EFS 300 storage systems, each with 256 TB capacity, which present to users as a single namespace for simplicity and security in operation. The storage network can be expanded continuously over time to reach capacities exceeding a petabyte if required.
The system was designed and implemented in conjunction with Tyrrell. “Content security was also a key requirement for Whisper,” said Simon Wocka, account manager at Tyrrell. “Media storage is like a bank vault: the assets it contains are priceless and must be protected above all else. Security is a core part of the EditShare architecture, providing the best protection at every stage without compromising operational ease and flexibility.
The EFS systems are supplied bundled with software applications to address common video production requirements, including security. Ark Media Archive is used to to set up automatic backup tasks for critical media assets and to park unused assets in nearline disk and offline tape storage. Ark users can also restore backups from nearline and offline destinations.
EditShare's Manager application enables system administrators to manage users, permissions, quotas, workspaces, projects and reporting. FLOW Production Asset Management adds file-based ingest, logging, cataloguing, searching, cuts-only editing and drag and drop functionality to NLEs like Final Cut X, Premiere Pro and Avid Media Composer and others.
“EditShare also allows access directly within the key post tools that will be used on these shows,” said Simon. “Artists using Adobe Premiere Pro or Blackmagic Design DaVinci can use EditShare integrations within their software environment, allowing them to access content directly. They don’t need to change workstations or learn new commands and structures – it removes barriers and makes workflows much simpler.”
The new storage network was installed in February 2024 and is now supporting documentary productions at Whisper. www.editshare.com
