Pink Sneakers Relies on Small Tree’s Cost-Effective Shared Storage Solution During “Miami Social� Post-Production

Best known for developing and producing original programming, such as “Hogan Knows Best� and “My Big Redneck Wedding,� Pink Sneakers Productions recently relied on shared storage solution technology from Small Tree to help improve workflow during post-production on Bravo’s “Miami Social.�

Designer of simple-to-install, inexpensive networking and shared storage products for professional video and audio editors using MAC OS X, Small Tree provided Pink Sneakers Productions with a bundled Ethernet solution reaching Fibre Channel performance. The installation was completed by Bob Zelin, a respected independent video engineer with more than 30 years experience in the television industry.

Headquartered in a 20,000-square-foot facility in Orlando, FL, Pink Sneakers Productions features 12 full editing bays, often working simultaneously. Understandably, the production company was facing drive management issues. To facilitate workflow, Zelin installed Small Tree’s Edge-corE ES4524D, a 24-port Gigabit Ethernet switch, along with its PEG6, a 6-port Ethernet card. According to Ed Stahr, infrastructure and equipment manager at Pink Sneakers, this solution easily handles the bandwidth requirements of Final Cut Pro Studio II running concurrently across the facility’s multiple editing suites.  

“Installing the Small Tree equipment has definitely helped increase productivity, as our editing team no longer needs to spend valuable time swapping drives in order to collaborate on projects,� said Stahr.  “This has made us much more efficient, as we’re able to more easily meet strict deadlines. The system’s performance has been exceptional. The speed has been great and there have been no instances of stuttering with up to nine editors working simultaneously across the server.�

In addition to the challenges at its Orlando studio, Pink Sneakers faced difficulties surrounding post-production of “Miami Social� from its satellite studio in Miami.  Rather than buying 40 to 50 drives to be shipped back and forth between the Miami and Orlando studios, Pink Sneakers simply installed a Small Tree shared storage solution in its Miami studio. Now, they can maintain a clone of the footage at each location by using one drive to provide footage from one studio to the other.    

Along with utilizing the Small Tree solution on “Miami Social,� Stahr says Pink Sneakers plans to use the technology during post-production work on VH1’s “Brooke Knows Best� and other future projects.

Small Tree is the Mac Networking Expert, making networking child’s play. Small Tree provides a complete portfolio of Ethernet-based networking and storage solutions for Apple Mac OS X customers.  Small Tree’s team of networking developers has extensive experience in high performance computing, and knows how to achieve the demanding application requirements of Mac customers.  Small Tree also provides contracted programming services for the Department of Defense.  For more information about the company and its products, please call 1-866-STC4MAC (1-866-782-4622), or visit www.small-tree.com.