NEW YORK CITY — Goldcrest Post, Key Code Media and OpenDrives recently partnered to create a high-performance post production environment designed to empower storytellers. Located in Manhattan’s West Village, Goldcrest Post (www.goldcrestpostny.com) is a creative hub that has touched Hollywood blockbusters, Emmy-winning episodics and indie passion projects.
“We don’t box ourselves into just one type of project,” explains Goldcrest managing director, Domenic Rom. “Our mission is to support storytellers, and to do that, we need the best tools available.”
The studio’s infrastructure was starting to show its limitations as projects arrived for 4K & 8K color grading and HDR finishing, all while meeting tighter delivery schedules.
“The infrastructure was crumbling, playback issues were constant and maintenance was draining our time,” notes Rom. “We needed a change — one that would let us focus on crafting unforgettable stories, not troubleshooting tech.”
Rom called Key Code Media’s (www.keycodemedia.com) senior account manager Stephen (Steve) Rapanaro, whom he’s collaborated with many times over the past 30 years.
“It’s not just about specs and feature sets,” says Rapanaro. “You have to understand the whole ecosystem — the network, the creative pressure, the deadlines. And you have to listen. We’ve known Dom and the Goldcrest team for years, and when they came to us with their storage challenges, we took it personally. Our goal wasn’t to just provide a solution — it was to make sure Goldcrest had the best post production setup in New York City.”
Goldcrest needed storage that could handle multiple 4K streams in realtime, support heavy creative workloads and eliminate bottlenecks. Rapanaro found a solution with OpenDrives and its Atlas data storage & management platform. OpenDrives (opendrives.com) created a similar workflow to Goldcrest’s at their lab in Los Angeles.
“We hired colorists, mimicked five color bays, tested 4K uncompressed playback, broke things and iterated until it worked flawlessly,” shares Sean Lee, CEO of OpenDrives.
“No other storage provider had ever done that for us and the client,” notes Key Code’s senior director of post production services, Walter Viegas. “By the time it got to Goldcrest, it just worked.”
OpenDrives' Atlas software, which powers the Ultra Hardware Platform, brings together highly performant data storage functionality with other high-value storage management features. Goldcrest Post's solution consists of the Ultimate series, a high-speed, all-flash NAS. This 231TB NVMe storage solution delivers up to 25GB/s throughput, ensuring seamless performance for multiple 4K streams across Goldcrest's five color bays. There are also plans to implement the OpenDrives Optimum series, with a 729TB nearline storage system designed for large-scale data storage. The Optimum series combines HDD-based storage with high-speedy connectivity to handle large volumes of media assets. With the ability to expand to up to 15GB/s throughput, it ensures quick access to files without bottlenecking production workflows.