Macs in a professional environment

I recently attended an event in Auckland at which representatives of the Renaissance Apple Division hosted a presentation about Maori Television's  recent implementation of Apple technology within the organisation.

Apart from all the Apple goodness being demonstrated, what was interesting is that we were given a synopsis of the process Maori Television went through to arrive at the Apple solution.

This was given by Bruce Eagles, Maori Television's Project Manager, a very well respected industry veteran.

You might imagine that the Apple solution would be the turf of cutting edge companies with money to burn. Maori Television may be cutting edge, but does not have money to burn.

The solution was arrived at after looking through all available options from their existing broadcast partners from far and wide. And, said Eagles, the Final Cut answer worked well within our strategy and budget.

Chris Parnell, National Manager - Broadcast & Post-Production at the Renaissance Apple Division - told me "When we first engaged with Maori Television Service in December 2007, they had one Mac in the building; a Pro Tools Audio Suite."

By December 2008, things had changed a lot at Maori Television. In March that year they had launched a brand new channel called Te Reo and then a new workflow, driven by this and utilising Apple technology, was born.

Here we have a local corporate business running a considerable amount of Apple technology happily alongside their existing Windows infrastructure.

How much Apple technology is now deployed at Maori Television?

Nine Mac Pros (for Promos, Finishing and Central Tape Admin) - SAN attached.

One Mac Pro Pro Tools suite has replaced the older Pro Tools suite.

One 17-inch MacBook Pro mobile edit stations.

Two 15-inch MacBook Pros, a 13-inch MacBook and two Mac Minis all being used for Admin.

Seven Xserves (SAN attached) managing Final Cut Server, Xsan Metadata, File Serving and Directory Services.

This is a big change from December 2007!

Of course, with any digital television production workflow, you need storage. Until the Apple solution was implemented, Maori Television worked mainly from tape and therefore needed just 4TBs of central broadcast storage.

Now on top of the above list of Apple technology, there's 70TB of Promise/Apple VTrak storage to provide the nearline media for Transmission and the collaborative environment for Promotions. All of this is driven by Apple's Final Cut Server and a workflow that was architected and engineered by Tim Benson, Thomas Bauer and Carl Gamble, all Consulting Engineers at the Apple Division of Renaissance.

The Apple storage area network (SAN) also incorporates a section for Maori Television's IT based backup strategy.

So the new Macs are integrated into the pre-existing Windows infrastructure, something that Maori Television had stated as a critical part of the project.

"A key requirement for this deployment was integration. Maori Television made it absolutely clear that any solution had to integrate with its existing broadcast and IT environments.

"Integrating Macs within a Microsoft Windows environment is not a problem anymore and something we have been doing successfully for a long time.

M'ori Television use a couple of applications that are critical to the business operation and therefore anything we put forward as a solution had to fully integrate with these too. Well, fortunately at Apple, integration is very high on the agenda.

"The open nature of Mac OS X and Final Cut Server provided us with the necessary tools to make this happen and in a seamless manner," said Parnell.

Talking of integration... two of the Windows Servers are integrated into the Apple Xsan too... see, that's two-way integration.

For any creative environment you are likely to come across the Adobe CS4 family, and Maori Television is no exception. Both Adobe CS4 and Final Cut Studio 2 are installed on all of the Mac Pros (except the Pro Tools Suite), thus providing all of the creativity you could imagine for an editor.

When a corporate organisation such as Maori Television introduces any new technology vendors into their environment, training is necessary. Renaissance provided all of the necessary Apple training required.

This included training for Final Cut Studio 2, Final Cut Server, Xsan and Mac OS X, all delivered within the timeframes of the project.

At the presentation I attended, Maori Television seemed more than happy with the Apple plant and support; I couldn't help wondering if the two-channel broadcaster might be enticed by more Apple equipment in future.

Chris Parnell said "This is an exciting site for us and one that we are extremely proud of. To scope, build and deploy such a solution at this price point and in this timeframe was amazing. With Mac OS X being an easy development platform and the skills we have in the team, we were able to write a couple of custom applications that really glue the whole workflow together providing seamless automation across the business.

"The Maori Television/Renaissance relationship is very strong and something that I think they value greatly too. We continue to work closely with them and are discussing other workflows to assist within their business."

Was it a cost effective solution? Mark Bullen from Maori Television said, "It was certainly a cost effective solution and one we are very pleased with."

This solution is scalable and puts in the building blocks for future growth.

- Mark Webster mac.nz