Taking Video Business to New Heights
At an elevation of nearly 8,000 feet and just across the highway from the famous ski town’s single-strip airport, the modest TV production space of Aspen 82 sits on the floor of a lush valley, bounded by steep hills nestled within a range of snow-capped crags. From the air, Aspen appears impossibly, almost claustrophobically, dwarfed by the Rocky Mountains, an isolated speck of civilization left to fend for itself. This is a fair metaphor for Aspen 82’s storage predicament. In a world of towering bandwidth and capacity demands, the little video company — Aspen’s only 24x7 TV station — has made do. Like so many other growing businesses around the world, when Aspen 82 needed more storage, it bought another drive. Eventually, the company could boast three small network attached storage (NAS) enclosures and a stack of USB and FireWire drives tall enough to reach the studio’s ceiling.
At an elevation of nearly 8,000 feet and just across the highway from the famous ski town’s single-strip airport, the modest TV production space of Aspen 82 sits on the floor of a lush valley, bounded by steep hills nestled within a range of snow-capped crags. From the air, Aspen appears impossibly, almost claustrophobically, dwarfed by the Rocky Mountains, an isolated speck of civilization left to fend for itself. This is a fair metaphor for Aspen 82’s storage predicament. In a world of towering bandwidth and capacity demands, the little video company — Aspen’s only 24x7 TV station — has made do. Like so many other growing businesses around the world, when Aspen 82 needed more storage, it bought another drive. Eventually, the company could boast three small network attached storage (NAS) enclosures and a stack of USB and FireWire drives tall enough to reach the studio’s ceiling.
Unfortunately, non-strategy would prove unsustainable for Aspen 82. The video industry has already moved into HD, and 4K is coming up fast. To get the kinds of glossy sports footage people expect from a renowned skiing destination, crews sometimes capture footage at up to 900 frames per second. Aspen may have a population of less than 7,000, but with workloads ranging from a 30-second commercial to two-hour concert videos shot from six cameras, Aspen 82’s production needs are anything but small-town. With having to capture, edit, manage, and archive ever more terabytes of footage, content was an avalanche slowly burying the little company.Unfortunately, non-strategy would prove unsustainable for Aspen 82. The video industry has already moved into HD, and 4K is coming up fast. To get the kinds of glossy sports footage people expect from a renowned skiing destination, crews sometimes capture footage at up to 900 frames per second. Aspen may have a population of less than 7,000, but with workloads ranging from a 30-second commercial to two-hour concert videos shot from six cameras, Aspen 82’s production needs are anything but small-town. With having to capture, edit, manage, and archive ever more terabytes of footage, content was an avalanche slowly burying the little company.