Featured Client Story: World Wrestling Entertainment

As part of their facility-wide HD upgrade initiative, World Wrestling Entertainment turned to Control Group for an all-out upgrade of their Final Cut production workflow and infrastructure, without a break in the action.

WWE’s craft editing group creates content for promotions, DVDs, and online distribution, while working against tight deadlines in a broadcast facility that operates 24 hours a day. Moving this group to an HD workflow meant reevaluating every element of the production infrastructure: from edit suite software and hardware, to networking, storage, and backup systems; plus, WWE needed a system that incorporated redundant storage and recovery in the event of accidental file deletion.

Control Group’s broadcast technology team was enlisted to design and implement an integrated solution that involved simultaneously upgrading all edit workstations and deploying a new SAN. Working closely with engineers from Quantum, Promise, and Apple, CG implemented a new StorNext SAN, built with VTrak storage from Promise. Since WWE’s editors are always working on deadline, CG worked closely with WWE’s production manager to design a schedule for the deployment and minimize downtime. One at a time, edit suites were moved to new Mac Pros running Final Cut Studio 2 and connected to the new SAN. Once all suites were upgraded and running on the new system, the old storage was decommissioned and repurposed as nearline storage. CG leveraged StorNext Storage Manager for hierarchical storage and nearly instant data duplication, providing redundancy and data protection.

WWE’s new SAN is undoubtedly an improvement over the previous system, satisfying their need for increased storage capacity for HD workflow. The upgraded editing machines provide flexible and fast HD editing and have cut Final Cut Pro render times in half. The new system has provided WWE with improved HD editing capabilities, data redundancy, and room to grow in the future.