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South Park Turns to Xserve for Storage Upgrade
Lam1969 writes "Computerworld reports that South Park producers are turning away from digital linear tape and direct-attached disk storage to a linear tape open setup complimented by Xserve RAID disk arrays. The show's creators never thought South Park would last nine seasons, so a storage hardware upgrade was necessary. J.J. Franzen, technology supervisor at South Park Studios in Los Angeles, says he chose Apple hardware based on a "gut" feeling. From the article: 'While South Park may appear technologically amateurish with its character cutouts, over the past nine seasons the cartoon series has added a great deal of storage-consuming detail, including backgrounds and crowd shots that can take up to 100MB of memory each.'"
Well, his method of choosing one vendor's product line over another certainly is efficient. Just go with your "gut feeling" and buy whatever your feelings tell you.
Whether you end up with the best tool for the job is another story.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
"Franzen said he chose Apple hardware based on a "gut" feeling that its technology would be good, and so far, he has not been disappointed."
Bad, bad Franzen. Must be nice to have money to burn, but "gut feeling" is a very, very poor way to select hardware... although this is a good example of brand awareness and marketing in action.
OTOH, it must be nice to have a job where you can make purchasing decisions based on a gut feeling, I normally have to justify every purchase three times in three different ways to three different execs... just like they send out procedural memos.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Dear Trey or Matt: Switch to vector graphics methods, not raster! Save many disks of whatever. Kthnksbi.
Why would you trust a testimonial when choosing hosting?
Seeing as though The Simpsons are still drawn by hand, I would imagine "storage needs" involves warehouse space in addition to digital storage.
so they dumped some DLT drives and a ciprico array for some LTO drives and some xserves?
wow.
this is news how??
What, exactly takes 100mb about a background shown at 72ppi and 800x600?
GIMP tells me that's about 2mb.
I've got to try that "gut feeling" in a meeting with my clients sometime real soon.
Client: "So, why exactly should we install PKI infrastructure?"
Me: "I've got a gut feeling that you need it"
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I think it is rather interesting of you to mention apple hardware over other platforms, but the interesting part of the article is this statment following.
"J.J. Franzen, technology supervisor at South Park Studios in Los Angeles, says he chose Apple hardware based on a 'gut' feeling"
Gut feeling huh, that is an interesting way of making a tecnology choice!!!!!!
It's news because South Park is pushing certain limits much farther than anyone else, and so it is useful to know what technology they use. Think back to shortly after The Simpsons became a hit, and then every other network tried to jump in with animated prime-time shows, and pretty much all failed. This is discussed on one of The Simpsons DVD commentaries, and Matt Groening and the others explain what these other shows did wrong. The big thing was trying to use too few people. These other shows would hire one or two big name writers, and expect them to write a whole season. On The Simpsons, on the other hand, they had a dozen writers, with most writers only working on one episode for a season. They had many directors, with each directory only responsible for an episode or two. So, it is not surprising that these other shows sucked...how can one or two writers and one or two directors produce year after year (or even one year) of quality on a weekly TV series?
But look at South Park. They do all the things that for those other shows were fatal mistakes. Most episodes are written by Trey Parker, or Trey Parker and Matt Stone, or by those two and Pam Brady. And besides writing, Parker and Stone direct. They write original music, and perform it. And they do a large number of the voices.
And on top of that, they do it on an insane schedule, sometimes not finishing a script until days before the episode must air.
Yet, it works. They produce a great show.
To do this requires very good technology. They aren't sending stuff off to Korea, to come back weeks or months later. They've got deadlines much tighter than any other animated series, and so they need technology that is very fast and very reliable, much more so than any other series needs.
You're missing something: A warranty and support contract.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
If I slip and break a leg in my bathroom it is no news, if the pope does it is. Weird, isn't it?