Istituto Luce Cinecittà Optimizes Media Workflow with Thunderbolt 3 XCubeNAS

SUMMARY

Istituto Luce Cinecittà: From Fascist Propaganda to Global Cinema Legacy

Istituto Luce was founded in 1924 as a stock company, and then Benito Mussolini through a Royal Decree ruled it as non-profit “moral institution” governed by public law.

In July 1925 the Presidency of the Council of Ministers sent out a circular to the Ministers of Interior, Education, Economy and Colonies asking them to use exclusively Istituto Luce for their educational and propaganda purposes. In 1927 it created the newsreel Giornale Luce, intended to be screened in all Italian cinemas before the screening of their films. In 1935, the Istituto Luce established the Ente Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche (ENIC), a branch dealing with film production: one of the first films produced was the 1937 blockbuster Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal by Carmine Gallone. In 1936 the Institute ceased to depend directly on the prime minister and went under the MinCulPop.

After the war the company continued to engage in production of numerous documentaries and films (directed, among others, by Pupi Avati, Marco Bellocchio, Claude Chabrol, Liliana Cavani, Mario Monicelli, Ermanno Olmi, and Ettore Scola). In 2009 the company was merged with Cinecittà Holding SpA, setting up a joint stock company: Cinecittà Luce SpA, which in 2011 was renamed Istituto Luce Cinecittà. Filmmakers such as Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, Sergio Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Mel Gibson have worked at Cinecittà. More than 3,000 movies have been filmed there, of which 90 received an Academy Award nomination and 47 of these won it. Actually Istituto Luce Cinecittà is considered as the oldest public institution devoted to production and distribution of cinematographic materials for didactic and informative purposes in the world, with over 30,000 movies in its archives.

INDUSTRY

REGION

PRODUCT

CHALLENGE

Upgrading to Thunderbolt™ 3: A Modern Shared Storage Solution for Film Restoration

We need to replace an old Thunderbolt 2 DAS with a Thunderbolt ™ 3 solution that can be able also to share data among film restorers using different MacOS workstations.

SOLUTION

Accelerating Photo Restoration Workflows at Cinecittà

We needed a NAS that could be dedicated to the workflow of photo editing, between our centralized SAN in the central archive and the different workstations deployed in Cinecittà.The XN5004T is actually used as a transit area for photographic image files for research and/or digital restoration purposes.

It’s also the temporary residence of the restored images that periodically are sent to our centralized SAN to be archived definitively. The Thunderbolt 3.0 speed, the product stability and the easy management made sure that all outward processes are shared using NAS.

INDUSTRY

COUNTRY

SOLUTION

PRODUCT

RESULT

Istituto Luce Cinecittà: Accelerating Media Workflow

Challenge & Needs

  • Replacement of an ageing Thunderbolt 2 DAS with a more modern Thunderbolt™ 3 solution.
  • Ability to share data among film restorers using different macOS workstations.
  • A NAS dedicated to photo‐editing workflows, positioned between the central archive SAN and various local workstations at Cinecittà.
  • Serve as a transit area for photographic image files used for research and digital restoration.
  • Temporary storage (“temporary residence”) for restored images before they are finally archived in the centralized SAN.

Solution & Outcomes

  • Deployment of the QN QSAN NAS solution with Thunderbolt 3 connectivity.
  • Achieved the speed of Thunderbolt 3 for direct-attached usage, while also enabling easy file sharing between different operators.
  • The product delivered high stability and simple management.
  • Restored images are periodically moved from the NAS to the centralized SAN for permanent archiving.
  • Positive feedback: “very easy to install and manage … very satisfied by the speed of the Thunderbolt 3.0 card compared to the DAS solutions … Thunderbolt 2.0.”

"The QSAN NAS was very easy to install and manage. We are very satisfied by the speed of the Thunderbolt 3.0 card compared to the DAS solutions we were used to, equipped with Thunderbolt 2.0."

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