The Media Brothers Creative Hub Uses Avid NEXIS | PRO

From AVIDblogs.com Dutch production company The Media Brothers is a creative hub for a collection of producers, directors, journalists and composers that produces a wide variety of television programs, from dramas and documentaries to children’s series and sports shows. Founded by managing director/producer/composer Luc Schinkel, who works alongside his brother, director/producer Robert Schinkel, the firm has premises in Amsterdam that incorporate an in-house facility that was recently upgraded through the installation of an Avid NEXIS | PRO server. Media manager Klaas-Thijs Postma oversees the post-production operation, and here he outlines the role that the new storage system plays in The Media Brothers’ program-making activities.

“I have been working for The Media Brothers since it started six years ago. I was the first employee and so have witnessed its growth over the years, with more colleagues — including filmmakers and researchers — joining us to produce more and more programs. Really, it’s a band of friends from all kinds of businesses coming together. We knew each other from other projects and have similar attitudes to what we do.”

“My responsibility as media manager is for the in-house technology. We work only on Avid, which we use mainly for editing, using Apple computers and Windows-based operating systems. Last year the business grew rapidly, going from a staff of 10 up to 20 or 30 employees. Because of that, it was necessary to upgrade our facilities, including the Media Composer edit suites. We had three editing rooms before, and we added a fourth.

As part of the upgrade, we decided that it was the right time to look for a central storage system that would allow everyone to work together or alongside each other. Sometimes programs can be lost because of hardware failures, so we looked into many options for reliable shared storage.

The systems we saw were very expensive and beyond our budget, but when the Avid NEXIS PRO came out, we saw it was not only the right time for us to buy a system, but also the perfect solution at an affordable price. Our Avid NEXIS PRO was installed in October of last year, and thanks to its compact size, we were able to house it in a small machine room. It is connected to the Media Composer suites over 250m of CAT6 cabling with a Dell switcher.”

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