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.'"

Comments

Hm ...

[ScrewMaster]

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.

Re:Hm ...

[blair1q]

Efficient is the key word here.

He's probably aware that anything he'd choose is adequate for the job that he'd put it to, and he's probably right that just choosing one and saving a few tens of thousands of dollars of meeting, ordering, installing, and evaluation time is plenty better than trying to find one that will increase their total efficiency by that much.

Re:Hm ...

[Dahamma]

I don't know... I think that "gut feeling" was actually caused by a noise 92 cents below the lowest octave of E-flat.

I figured maybe..

[twocoasttb]

...Cartman roshamboed someone for it.

They took jer job

[rolandog]

I'm pretty sure that their providers of DL Tape are probably saying "They took mah job!"

Full quote... WTF?

[Red Flayer]

"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.

Re:Full quote... WTF?

[daveschroeder]

Must be nice to have money to burn, but "gut feeling" is a very, very poor way to select hardware.

Well, we purchased 35 Xserve RAID arrays for a single installation, for a total of 200TB of storage, after real research and comparisons as opposed to a gut feeling.

The installation is described here, with pictures. It is NOT a University-wide service; this was installed for one research project. We have much more storage around campus from EMC (in our two primary datacenters), Apple, Sun, and Storagetek, among others.

It has been up and running for almost a year now, and the only problem, across all 35 Xserve RAID units running 24x7, has been one failed disk. One alternative looked at was building whitebox PCs in huge tower cases and packing them with disk. Ultimately, it was decided that a major commercial vendor, from which 24x7 support and 4-hour on-site response is available for 3 years, was a good choice. And it was much cheaper than competitive commercial solutions. And at a cost of around $1.60/GB for enterprise storage, you can't really go wrong. And for the Mac OS X-haters out there, there is no Mac OS X as part of this solution. We are using commodity 1U servers running Fedora Core. The Linux boxes see it as generic fibre channel disk, because that's all it is. The servers are monitored with Apple's excellent Java-based, platform independent RAID Admin tools, and some command-line tools we wrote ourselves.

It's proven itself to be rock-solid. And that matches with my experience with the 20 Xserve servers we have installed, starting since around mid-2002: zero hardware failures, of any kind. Franzen had a good gut feeling. And, of course, given Apple's track record with reliability and lack of need for repairs (generally number one) when compared with other vendors from organizations such as Consumer Reports, guessing that the reliability of another Apple product will be good is probably a reasonable guess. ;-)

Re:Full quote... WTF?

[daveschroeder]

Does Apple still support this when you're not running Mac OS X?

Yes, they do. Support, though the project hasn't needed it, is one of the main reasons we got it.

With AppleCare Premium, 24x7 telephone and email support is included, as well as 24x7 4-hour on-site hardware service. Apple supports it as fibre channel storage, and they don't care what it's attached to. See also Apple's non-Mac OS X certifications for Xserve RAID. No, it doesn't include Fedora Core, but they still support the product itself.

Overheard at SP productions when hw came in

[FerretFrottage]

Sweeeeeeeet, but you get your bitch ass back in the kitchen and make me some pie!

Re:Overheard at SP productions when hw came in

[WorldRimWalker]

"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."

The fat white guy's name is Michael Moore.

respect my vector

[hostingreviews]

Dear Trey or Matt: Switch to vector graphics methods, not raster! Save many disks of whatever. Kthnksbi.

Re:respect my vector

[tinrobot]

Why do that? You'd lose all the things that makes South Park look the way it does - paper textures, realistic shadows, and so on...

It's much better that they do the show in Maya. Not only do you get the photorealistic rendering that gives it that low-tech "animation stand" look, you get Maya's great animation and scripting tools, which make the animators and tech directors happy.

Re:respect my vector

[quantax]

They aren't doing Southpark in 3D for the realistic shadows or paper textures, they're using Maya since it allows them much more freedom in the long run with the characters and animation, the very reason they would not use flash or any other 2D program. Character animation in Maya is great & intuitive, especially with animation as simple as Southparks, so they have all their characters in 3D which can be place in any position, any perspective, etc within their scenes. When a character turns around in the show, the animators have keyframed the characters poses, and instead of having to have an artist draw a cell of animation for each perspective of the character (front, rear, side, etc etc etc), they just turn them around in 3D, flatten the animation curves to give it that instant-motion look and they gotta working scene. A majority of their work is very likely the character animations, scene creation, lip-sync and post-render touch up to remove anything that might not have rendered the way they like.

If they used a 2D program, they would be spending more time dealing with the technical aspect of animation rather than just moving the characters around and putting them where they want them. This is not because 3D is better but simply because it is far more efficient and allows them more flexibility. As far as the paper-look, thats simply a matter of the render engine & post-render effects, nothing that couldn't be done with a 2D program either, but does take a decent amount of time to get looking good, atleast to the degree that post-render touchup will not take much time.

I would not be surprised if most cartoons in the future moved to 3D since the time-savings can really add up if you get a good setup going, and most cartoons animation movement quality is low to begin with so they can save themselves money on all aspects of it from time saved in the character animation phase.

Re:respect my vector

[tinrobot]

When a character turns around in the show, the animators have keyframed the characters poses, so they have all their characters in 3D which can be place in any position, any perspective, etc within their scenes.

You know absolutely nothing about how South Park is set up. It is done in a 3D package, but the characters are by no means "3D" in the traditional sense -- they are simply flat parts assembled in 3D space, much like the Oxberry camera stand used for the original shorts.

Characters are built "flat" using NURBS curves and surfaced using the "make planar" function, which trims a plane to the outline of the curve. The characters are simply an assemblage flat bits of geometry - the digital equivalent of a cutout bit of paper. These flat bits are textured using scans of actual construction paper.

Animation is done using set driven keys on the visibility tracks of these parts. These keys are tied to the action of a software slider. Running the head turn slider, for example, would turn off visibility on the "right" head and turn it on for the "front" head (I'm simplifying here, but you get the point)

The original decision in 1997 to go with Alias Power Animator 7 was because of the ability to render accurate textures and shadows, as well as the ability to tie sliders to visibility. Back then the sliders were driven by expressions, but Maya allowed the switch to set driven keys, which are more eficient. Flash really wasn't an option back then but 2D software such as After Effects actually were considered - AE could do the textures, but shadows were difficult as were sliders. Thus the decision to go with a 3D package to essentially do a 2D show.

(If you haven't figured it out - I used to work there)

The Simpsons animates in real time for broadcast

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the terrible strain on the animator's wrists.

Re:What does Simpsons use?

[tinrobot]

Seeing as though The Simpsons are still drawn by hand, I would imagine "storage needs" involves warehouse space in addition to digital storage.

this is news?

[ilmdba]

so they dumped some DLT drives and a ciprico array for some LTO drives and some xserves?

wow.

this is news how??

"South park compression"

[Entropy]

Bet they sure could save tons of HD space if they just had one clip of Kenny's death.

Why so huge?

[Cyno01]

Isn't South Park done in flash? I know a lot of Adult Swim is done in flash...

Re:Why so huge?

[Anonymous Coward]

First time I saw the show, I figured it was PowerPoint.

Re:Why so huge?

[EvanED]

LaTeX + Beamer

Re:Why so huge?

[poopdeville]

http://www.spscriptorium.com/SPinfo/MakingOfSouthP ark.htm

Why choose Xserve?

[nystagman]

One word: Hellastorage

As long as...

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Just don't name your machine "kenny." It's not good to have it crash every episode - even if you can reboot it.

Gut check!

[version5]

If you think about it, maybe there are a few missing pieces to the rationale for choosing Apple hardware. But doesn't it feel like the right thing...right here in the gut? Because that's where the truth comes from, ladies and gentlemen...the gut.

Did you know that you have more nerve endings in your stomach than in your head? Look it up. Now, somebody's gonna say `I did look that up and its wrong'. Well, Mister, that's because you looked it up in a book. Next time, try looking it up in your gut. I did. And my gut tells me that's how our nervous system works.

Now I know some of you may not trust your gut...yet. But with my help you will. The "truthiness" is, anyone can make IT decisions. I promise to feel IT decisions!

I've Got To Wonder..

[mpapet]

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"

Re:I've Got To Wonder..

[SynapseLapse]

True the image itself is only 2mb, but they render the show in Maya. So Scripts+models+textures+scenes=100mb.

...and in response Steve Jobs stated

[dickeya]

RESPECT MY AUTHORITAY!!!!

Re:For those of us who are ignorant

[commodoresloat]

it kills kenny faster and more efficiently.

15TB of Xserve RAID storage? What about 200TB?

[daveschroeder]

Why is 15TB of storage news? (And they don't even the full 15TB yet!)

What about the 200TB of Xserve RAID storage for a single project at the University of Wisconsin, which has been up and running for over half a year?

And no, this isn't a project serving a whole campus or an entire university student body. This is one single research project operated by one entity. Oh well, I guess supporting the Large Hadron Collider isn't as cool as South Park. ;-)

why this is important

[commodoresloat]

Only Apple servers will do the job when the South Park guys decide it's time to play "kick the server."

Interview with JJ Franzen

[datafr0g]

http://www.southparkstudios.com/behind/interviews. php?tab=20#3

Interesting stuff - has some background technical info on how an episode is put together and what systems they use to do it all.

Re:For those of us who are ignorant

[Karma Farmer]

For those of us who are ignorant and don't see why someone would use Apple hardware over good commodity stuff, what's the advantage in going with Xserve stuff?

Well, the Xserve stuff is cheaper.

Or, did you mean "commodity" as in "I got my 13 year old cousin to build something from parts he bought online?" Yeah, people who put any value on their data and time don't simply don't do that.

Re:For those of us who are ignorant

[node 3]

For those of us who are ignorant and don't see why someone would use Apple hardware over good commodity stuff, what's the advantage in going with Xserve stuff?

You plug it in and it works.

It's sort of like the underpants gnomes, except there is no step 3.

Tapes can be moved to a secure location,

[winkydink]

which is kind of hard to do with a multi-terabyte NAS. For quick backups, nothing beats disk, but for archival storage, I'll stick with tape. Kind of hard to restore your environment when the building holding the NAS has been destroyed by some natural disaster.

Re:What does Simpsons use?

[ChadN]

The Simpsons is now an all digital production, according to the DVD commentary. It may involve "hand drawing", but that either means hand drawing immediately scanned into a computer (for cleanup and coloring), or drawing on a tablet, etc. that goes directly into a computer. I don't know what software is used, but I haven't searched either.

/.ers' thoughts on "Bloody Mary" being pulled?

[lysergic.acid]

I know this is off-topic, but most of the discussion so far has been pretty uninteresting, so I was wondering how other slashdotters feel about the "Blood Mary" episode of South Park being pulled off the air and basically being censored from TV or any other future reproductions because it offended a few religious conservatives.

Here's another news article on it featured in the North Korea Times.

Re:Spelling Nazi warning

[SleepyHappyDoc]

So the Xserve RAID disk arrays flatter the linear tape setup with words of admiration? (I think they meant to say "complemented").

I'm not so sure. Apple's are supposed to be user-friendly, right?

Re:Who cares?

[harlows_monkeys]

If this wasn't South Park, nobody would care. Is it really news that they are using a new technology?

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.

XServe RAIDs

[Bobartig]

What should be said is that it is NOT PowerPC hardware, there are NO G5's in them, and they don't run OSX. They're a sleek chassis full of RAID hardware, fiber channel connectivity, and 7 independant SATA controllers each with 2 hot swappable drives. Price/GB compared to rival products is extremely competitive, as in worlds cheaper. With 2x 512MB caches and dual fibrechannel connectivity, performance is pretty amazing with a full compliment of drives. The RAID servers are certified to work with Novell, Oracle, Windows Server, MacOSX, RedHat, YellowDog, Emulex, Cisco, ATTO, ADIC, etc. etc. etc. They still need some method of administering it (its just the storage), which may be an XServe, or virtually any other modern computer.

Re:For those of us who are ignorant

[UniverseIsADoughnut]

This is Slashdot, where people think Linux on a Xbox is a solution for something.

Many here will never understand why people buy stuff from actual companies, and things they just pull out of a box and turn on and go on with their life at that.

Re:Apples hardware?

[tfb]

Almost no storage system vendors make hard drives. Many of them probably don't actually make anything in terms of hardware. What they `make' is several things which turn out to be a good deal more important than hardware:

• a system which has actually been properly designed in terms of performance, scalability and so on;
• a system which they will support, so you don't have to grovel around finding a replacement for some disk that has died and which turns out to not be a current part any more;
• a system which isn't designed by some spotty teenager who (a) will have no idea about the above two issues, and (b) will then leave or (worse) have some kind of tantrum and refuse to support it any more.

If your data is worth anything at all, and you are not in the commercially unusual position of being able to do your own system and support it etc (I'm ruling out google here, right) yourself, then it is very unlikely that the spotty-teen approach is better than the storage-system-vendor one, despite the latter having a higher up-front cost and being less fashionable on slashdot. Whether Apple are such a vendor I don't know: I guess they'd like to be.