BREWING BEAUTIFUL IMAGES WITH CODEX MEDIA VAULT
CODEX, part of the X2X Media Group, has partnered with The Future Store in the Netherlands to bring Media Vault to market.
The Future Store, led by co-owner Paul van Asseldonk, is the main technical partner for video production and media workflows in the Netherlands. Whether it concerns shared storage and media workflows or the necessary hardware and software to connect up the Media Vault storage solutions, the Future Store team is always able to recommend and consult on the best solution for any production or post workflow.
CODEX met up with Paul to learn more about their latest customer, Rinie Jansen, owner of MacGyver Media Production, who use Media Vault in their facility to connect their creative team.
Tell us about MacGyver and the type of services the team provides and who their clients are?
At MacGyver Rinie Jansen leads a creative team of Directors and Photographers and they provide a ‘one-stop-shop’ for production and post-production
or any part of the process where they can provide creative value. They cater to the Dutch marketplace and provide production and post services for the
leading global advertising agencies such as VMLY&R, Publicis, BBDO, Ogilvy, McCann, GUC, Fitzroy, and Joe Public with their marketing campaigns.
"Let's brew something beautiful together.” Rinie Jansen at MacGyver has been quoted as saying.
MacGyver provides fast, creative and a cost-effective range of production and post-production services. MacGyver has a first-class creative team of directors and photographers that can write, consult, provide production crews and production assistance. MacGyver’s services also extend to post-production with picture editing using Avid Media Composer, including online conform. MacGyver also provides visual FX and compositing services plus motion graphics and 3D design, sound design, and color correction. MacGyver is a full service facility with a compact professional team that can assist across all of stages of the production process. MacGyver gets involved in conceptual work as well as production supervision. Being involved on the front-end allows their team to efficiently guide any project through the post process up to completion. Jansen says “We pride ourselves on the ambience of our suites. We have placed great emphasis on comfort, building a creative space with light and airy cutting rooms and comfortable furnishings throughout the place. At MacGyver we maintain an open and friendly environment and you can be assured that our commitment to helping you realize your vision, whatever the requirements, is our main focus.”
Paul van Asseldonk from The Future Store, was able to ask Rinie Jansen about the experience with Media Vault in use at MacGyver.
Are the creative demands of your customers across all of the multi-media platforms you service?
“MacGyver services clients in the advertising industry for high-end productions across all media platforms including Streaming TV, Radio and Online Social marketing.
Does MacGyver Media Productions provide bespoke services to clients or are the creative concepts in support of multi-media campaigns?
“In the Netherlands marketplace, most of the agency clients are producing content with about 50% of the jobs being cross platform and the other 50% of
the projects being fully online campaigns that are mobile and social media based in design.”
How big is the MacGyver team?
“For all of the services we offer, our team is relatively small, with just nine core team members. Of course, as projects come and go,
based on the size of the advertising campaign, the production crews scale up but the creative team at MacGyver is usually the same group.”
Do you manage all projects in-house or do you scale out of house with remote freelancers?
“All of our projects are done in-house with our team. With the multi-media deliverables, it’s so important to have all of the project
assets in one easy to access, shared storage solution, like Media Vault. This has been key to delivering projects on time. Based on the large storage
density of Media Vault, we were able to migrate and consolidate all of our projects into one central location and get them into the “vault”
so we could share the media with our post-production team of editors, colorist and visual effects artists.”
What creative applications are you utilizing in-house and on what platforms? Do you have a mixed creative platform with macOS and Windows
applications being used with Media Vault?
“MacGyver was the first totally Mac based post-facility in The Netherlands. It’s literally in our name…”MAC”Gyver.
Everything is macOS based. The Future Store, our technical partner has been a great help in getting us set-up. Paul at the Future Store recommended
Media Vault which we purchased and have proceeded to connect up and use with our full suite of creative tools including AVID Media Composer,
Adobe Creative Suite with After Effects and Photoshop. We use Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve for color correction and are excited that Media Vault
supports the BMD collaboration tools. This will help our team manage projects even faster. Our 3D and VFX teams are accessing Media Vault
for 3D design and compositing using Autodesk Maya and The Foundry’s Nuke software.”
How has the Media Vault improved on your previous workflow? Any feedback on how to make the product better?
“It has been very easy to use and it is quiet. It’s been relatively plug and play. We could use a few more features and I am glad that we are able to
talk directly with CODEX to provide this feedback and hope these suggestions become incorporated into the products. We have a very stable power network
in Amsterdam but this year we have had multiple power shutdowns already. It would be great if Media Vault had a data-connection to a UPS battery; in case
the power is lost, it would shut itself down automatically when it runs on the UPS. Media Vault is much smaller than previous SAN solutions we have had in-house.
It is easier to transport and has less power consumption so no need for in-room air cooling. We also very much like the 4 x 10GB onboard connections which
make it easy to connect up our creative team. Media Vault offers everything in one box. Due to Coronavirus, more and more reviewing will be done externally.”
“Easy remote access via 3rd party tools would be useful. It will be great when we can use Media Vault storage as the backbone for this type of work, so we won’t have any storage limits. I look forward to what’s coming and learning more from The Future Store and CODEX, and what they are planning for cloud-based workflows.”
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