HD RV HITS THE ROAD
Issue: HD - April 2006

HD RV HITS THE ROAD

AUSTIN, TX - Confidence Bay (www.confidencebay.com)
is a new mobile HD suite that made its debut at the recent South by Southwest Film Festival. According to Confidence Bay CTO Sam Crutsinger, the RV was created to support feature projects.

The mobile unit is equipped with an Apple PowerMac G5 quad 2.5 GHz Tower and an Apple PowerMac G5 dual-core 2.0 GHz tower; Apple’s Xserve RAID, providing 2.7 TB of RAID-5 storage; three Dell 24-inch wide-screen LCD panels and one Dell 5100MP projector. Both workstations are running Final Cut Pro, and a laptop with the application is also available.

Crutsinger says they will be purchasing two AJA Kona 3 cards and a fibre channel switch that will connect both Macs to the full RAID with no compromises. It will also allow for the future addition of Xserve RAID chassis, providing dozens of terabytes of storage.

“I'm well aware of the fact that our current RAID will only handle a thimble of 4:4:4 HD,” says Crutsinger, “but I also know how to work in a rack of RAIDs to solve that issue.”

The rig was designed by Crutsinger, Confidence Bay president Michael Weis and company CFO Laura Weis. The mobile unit calls Austin Studios home base, but is its own independent company. The truck and will head to New Orleans this month for the annual Jazz Fest.