Dublin’s Ballyfermot College of Further Education prides itself on its mix of academic and practical courses to prepare students for rewarding careers. The college offers advanced and degree professional programs in many fields including Business, Engineering, Art, Media, Music, Journalism, TV and Film, and Social Services. Media courses generate a lot of interest with nearly half of the fourteen hundred students enrolled in the various offerings

The Challenge

John Moriarty, head of Ballyfermot’s TV and Film Department, welcomed the growing interest in the craft-editing courses, but the added demand put pressure on the department’s three stand-alone Avid suites. With about 150 students in editing courses each year, suite logistics got complicated. Students often had to queue for a particular suite because their project was “stuck” in the local storage whenever the suite was being used by someone else. Those delays didn’t serve the goal of giving students hands-on time to hone their editing skills. As the college planned for a new purpose-built Media Building, Moriarty envisioned additional edit suites and a networked, server-based storage system to enhance productivity.

The Solution
Evaluating the options with Eurotek, a regional broadcast supplier, Ballyfermot determined that an EditShare shared storage system removed the pain points associated with their current workflow by allowing students to spend more time in the Edit Suite as opposed to waiting for it . EditShare systems are Networked Attached Storage (NAS) devices that are highly optimized for video editing -- both in their hardware and their software. Unlike many standard SAN devices, EditShare technology supports file level sharing - allowing multiple editors to write to the same volume simultaneously. Source material, work in progress and finished packages are shared and instantly available to all users on the EditShare network. Eurotek Managing Director Kevin Moore explained why EditShare was a perfect fit for Ballyfermot. “One of the things Eurotek understands very clearly is how professionals work in the real world. We have the breadth of experience in broadcast and post production so when we consult with customers in education, we’re able to help them tailor their courses and workflow to what students will actually see in the industry environment. It’s important that students understand the collaborative workflow that EditShare allows. It’s really the industry norm

And, especially important in a teaching environment, EditShare’s rules-driven workflow ensures that no data is ever overwritten or accidentally (or maliciously) destroyed. The rights and permissions structure in EditShare protects the media - allowing access by only the right (authorized) students to specific content. EditShare integrates seamlessly with Avid editing systems – a necessity for Ballyfermot - as well as with other standard editing and compositing systems.