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The Holy Grail for film editors (like those on location in Miami) is the ability to review footage in digital format mere hours after it is shot. When the dailies process goes digital like this, ordinary analog dailies become "digital dailies." Hollywood is falling in love with digital dailies because they eliminate the longstanding method of having to manually ship film from far-flung locations to the desks of studio executives in Los Angeles. Moreover, they provide studios with the luxury of immediately correcting any problems while actors are still on location and film sets are still in place, thus making the entire filming more efficient and cost-effective. Quite simply, digital dailies are the difference between sending a letter by mail or quickly transferring it via email. The ability to produce digital dailies is something every film production organization desires and is currently demanding from post houses like Matchframe. Once Matchframe receives film reels from clients, it transfers the film into digital files through a process known as telecine. The problem then is getting those files back to the client in a timely manner. "Our major studio client no longer wanted to wait 24 hours before receiving dailies," says Jeff Bass, Matchframe's director of nonlinear operations. "They wanted to get dailies within eight hours for a project, even though the location was across the country." Unless Matchframe came up with a solution to this time delay problem, it seemed obvious that the client studio would find another post house (probably one in Miami) to telecine their dailies. When it came to digital dailies, however, Matchframe knew it had to look outside its own company for help. Matchframe found its answer in Digital Fountain. The Fremont, California-based company is deploying technologies that help media and entertainment companies make digital dailies a reality. Its flagship product, Transporter Fountain, is designed to save time and add certainty to the delivery of massive files like digital dailies over broadband Internet connections. Using patented "meta-content" technology, the Transporter Fountain can guarantee fast content delivery, regardless of packet loss, latency, and congestion on wide area networks. Matchframe considered many solutions before choosing technology from Digital Fountain—including courier services—to deliver digital dailies throughout the country. However, none of the other solutions met all of their requirements. The cost of standard technology options, such as a Virtual Private Network, was too prohibitive—for both Matchframe and its clients. "Transporter Fountain was the only product that could solve our problem affordably and with complete reliability," says Bass. "We're now sending digital dailies safely and inexpensively over the Internet, and not on an airplane." Bass also liked the way the Transporter Fountain fit seamlessly into Matchframe's existing technology infrastructure and integrated easily with their existing systems. "Media and entertainment companies have long dreamed of shooting motion pictures and TV series anywhere in the world while still being able to use the very best post-production facilities in Los Angeles," says Cliff Meltzer, CEO of Digital Fountain. "To date, however, producers and editors have had difficulty getting digital dailies back to L.A. for timely review. With Transporter Fountain, we're making daily review of digital dailies practical. For Matchframe, Digital Fountain can securely deliver data three to thirty times faster than traditional methods at a fraction of the cost." Since Matchframe's studio client started shooting its latest project in Miami, it has managed to compress two-day cycles to one-day, which ultimately shaves many days off the entire post-production schedule. By using Transporter Fountain, Matchframe is able to beat their client's expectations and win new business from other customers who will demand the same level of efficiency. "We couldn't have won this business without Transporter Fountain," says Michael Levy, vice president/general manager of Matchframe. "It allowed us to meet the client's tight deadlines and transfer the digital dailies out of our Avid Unity storage systems in Burbank directly to the cutting room in Miami."
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