Introduction

Pickathon Music Festival, an event spanning five days, aimed to capture thousands of hours of content from various performances and interviews. The challenge was to process and store this vast amount of data seamlessly throughout the event, allowing the post-production team to work on the media without any delays or lags. Additionally, a reliable storage solution was required to continue supporting the team's post-production efforts at their facility for the remainder of the year.

Background

The Pickathon Music Festival, often referred to as Pickathon, is an annual three-day music festival held at Pendarvis Farm, located just outside Portland, Oregon. Since its inception in 1998, the festival has garnered a reputation for its exceptional music lineup, featuring artists from a wide range of genres including indie, rock, rap, folk, and bluegrass. With its diverse musical offerings, Pickathon attracts a dedicated following of music enthusiasts who eagerly anticipate the event each August.

Challenge

With a large crew capturing performances, interviews, mini-docs, and art pieces, the festival encountered challenges in effectively managing and processing the significant amount of media content generated during the event. Pickathon needed a storage system onsite that could ingest from the 240 camera cards captured a day and allow editors to start working on media right away without any lag.

This same system would then be moved to their facility for the remainder of the year as the primary storage solution for the post-production team to work off of until the next event. Recognizing the need for a comprehensive solution, Pickathon sought the expertise of DigitalGlue and their innovative //AUTEUR system to optimize their media workflow and storage capabilities.

Solution

Designed to empower creative teams to collaborate in real-time with high-resolution media, the //AUTEUR was the perfect solution to handle Pickathon’s live event needs. The system built for Pickathon was the entry-level //AUTEUR, which came half-filled with 12 10TB drives for a total of 120 TB of RAW capacity and plenty of room to grow.

“During a live event, communications with dailies is limited, so creating a LUT to use while shooting was paramount to capturing everything right in camera. The ability to view and use not just proxy files but actual 4K RED RAW footage was an absolutely game-changer for our operations.”

Ryan Stiles
Head Producer, Pickathon

The monitoring tools included in the creative.space web app UI allowed Pickathon to monitor usage in real-time, quickly Identify any bottlenecks in their workflow, and keep production flowing efficiently. The //AUTEUR was provided as part of creative.space’s unique On-Premise Managed Storage (OPMS) offering, with hardware, software, and support as a monthly service. For Pickathon, this meant personal delivery and setup of a turnkey system. 

“The experience has been amazing. It’s not just the equipment but the service. It was set up for us and 16 workstations started to pull and push to it within hours. Never had any lag or scrubbing issues with our video."

Ryan Stiles
Head Producer, Pickathon

Having approached DigitalGlue late in the process, the system needed to be ordered, built, shipped, and installed in record time to be ready for the event. Pickathon was planning on purchasing and building a DIY solution. According to Pickathon’s Head Producer, Ryan Stiles, “This would have taken time, effort, not included customer service, and cost us an additional $3-4K for an equivalent system.”

Results

With the //AUTEUR, Pickathon’s post-production team was able to finish the ingest of over 47 TB of captured media within just four days of the festival’s end. Exceeding Pickathon’s expectations, ten machines were able to edit off of the storage during ingest without any lag or scrubbing issues. Pickathon was even able to use the additional bandwidth provided by the //AUTEUR to experiment with a new workflow.

“Our film crew of over 700 members operates 24 hours a day for 5 days capturing thousands of hours of content, from over 200 performances and an additional 38 crews filming mini-docs, interviews and art pieces. There are over 240 camera cards being transferred daily and the system ran smoothly the entire production”

Ryan Stiles
Head Producer, Pickathon

Unlike purchasing or leasing storage, the OPMS offering empowers Pickathon to adapt to their changing needs. When they need to support more users or add capacity, they won’t be forced through a new acquisition process. Instead, they can augment their existing contract and adjust their monthly payment. As a service, Pickathon can write-off their creative.space storage as an operational expense on their taxes. Beyond the storage, the included support turns DigitalGlue’s team of industry-veteran engineers into an extension of Pickathon’s in-house team. 

“Our growth plan and onsite storage needs expand every year. Eliminating an in-house IT position and utilizing DigitalGlue’s personnel both by phone and the local rep will be our road to scaling for years to come.”

Ryan Stiles
Head Producer, Pickathon

Conclusion

DigitalGlue's //AUTEUR provided Pickathon with an efficient, high-capacity storage solution that streamlined their media processing and storage challenges. The system's ability to handle massive amounts of data, support on-site editing without performance issues, and provide real-time monitoring capabilities greatly enhanced Pickathon's workflow and overall productivity. Additionally, the flexibility of DigitalGlue's offering allowed Pickathon to adapt and scale their storage needs easily, making it a long-term solution for their evolving requirements. By partnering with DigitalGlue, Pickathon successfully optimized their media operations, paving the way for continued growth and improved efficiency in the years to come.