Making editing easier at The University of Stirling

After The University of Stirling saw a sharp rise in the number of students enrolling on their production modules, they realised they needed to increase access to their edit suites, and make it easier for students to move between machines. After a successful tender, root6 (part of the Jigsaw24 family) set them up with NEXIS shared storage so students could experience a full, professional Avid workflow.

By Liz Sunter April 12, 2018

“We were using Avid with external drives attached to individual workstations, which meant that students were tied to individual machines, and security and backup were both potential issues,” said Dario Sinforiani, Stirling’s Head of Production. “Moving to NEXIS has been transformational, in that it fixes those problems, but also in terms of efficiency.”

Increasing student and staff access to material

“At the moment we have over 100 students taking production modules across film, journalism and digital media courses, and next year we’re expanding into masters-level teaching,” explained Dario. “We’re not a technical course and we don’t have a massive amount of contact time, so we needed to know our workflow was simple and efficient enough that students would understand it from the word go, and that we had things like sufficient storage, and the flexibility to pull up individual students’ work easily from a single workstation.”

The university were keen to stay within the Avid ecosystem because the vast majority of professional production and post houses they have links to use it, and they wanted to ensure that they were teaching students a modern, industry-relevant workflow. root6 specced and installed an Avid NEXIS shared storage system that can be shared by the department’s 27 Media Composer suites and 13 Pro Tools suites simultaneously. “Students now have the flexibility to access any seat, instead of having access to one workstation which they may have to share with another group,” Dario told us.

“This means that students can work when they need to, rather than being held up because of technology. Nothing holds them back from being able to do all the post-production that’s required, whereas before they’d be limited as to how much they could do in the available time. It allows creativity to happen rather than forcing it to happen between X hour and Y hour because of the requirements of the space.”

 

“We’ve known root6 for a number of years now, and they’re great to work with. Ever since the installation of the NEXIS system, the support we’ve got from them has been absolutely fantastic. They go the extra mile for their clients, and we have a really positive relationship.”

Ensuring peace of mind with backup and support

“The NEXIS has really benefited us in terms of knowing that the architecture is giving us sufficient backup, and that we can now teach students how to set a project out in terms of workflow and folder structures,” said Dario. “Following that model, we haven’t had any major issues. We’ve found the NEXIS really easy to use and administer.”

Part of what has helped Stirling transition so smoothly is support from root6. “We had to go through a formal tender process for the NEXIS, and root6 won not just because they were good on price, but because they provided added value in terms of ongoing support,” Technical Manager Michael McDonald told us.

“Ever since the installation of the NEXIS system, we’ve found their support to be absolutely fantastic. They’re good guys who go the extra mile for their clients. We have a really positive relationship with them, and we know that on the odd occasion a wrinkle in the system needs ironing out, they’ll be there to help us.”

Download the full case study here. To find out more about how shared storage can improve your editing workflow, give us a call on 03332 409 306 or email broadcast@Jigsaw24.com.