South Park Turns to Xserve for Storage Upgrade 324
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.'"
Hm ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether you end up with the best tool for the job is another story.
Re:Hm ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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 ... (Score:5, Funny)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Interesting)
Such subtle, arcane humor. I love it!
Clearly this was posted... (Score:2)
Re:Hm ... (Score:2)
Whether you end up with the best tool for the job is another story.
I think that all depends on how good his gut is. I've had chitterlings several times now, and I can say that some guts are better than others.
Re:Hm ... (Score:3, Funny)
Are you sure it comes from your gut?
I think that special feeling might come from the cockles of our hearts, or maybe below the cockles, maybe in the sub-cockle area, maybe in the liver, maybe in the kidneys, maybe even in the colon. We don't know.
Don't jump to conclusions that these feelings come from the gut. My colon tells me you could be wrong.
Re:My gut feeling tells me that... (Score:2, Funny)
There, see? Sometimes it works.
I figured maybe.. (Score:5, Funny)
They took jer job (Score:5, Funny)
Full quote... WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:2)
Re:Full quote... WTF? (Score:3, Informative)
While the performance of MacOS X as a MySQL server was well-documented by Anandtech to be sub-par, I haven't seen any benchmarks showing any performance problems with the xRAID/xServe combination as a file server. And last I checked, it was extremely competitive on a dollar-per-GB basis for the claimed performance and reliability levels. If they just need something to store lots of files online, and have it be easy to administer, it doesn'
XServe RAIDs (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Full quote... WTF? (Score:2)
Re:Full quote... WTF? (Score:2)
Yes, but I tell myself that I was using the best information available to me at the time. I only regret my decisions when I didn't use due diligence in making the choice.
"When you justify the purchases with the execs. It is different because they all may have different gut feeling and with 4 People with a Gut Feeling of 55% of being right. There
Re:Full quote... WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [alienraid.org], 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 [apple.com] tools, and some command-line tools [alienraid.org] 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? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Full quote... WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
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 [apple.com]. No, it doesn't include Fedora Core, but they still support the product itself.
Re:Full quote... WTF? (Score:2)
I normally have to justify every purchase three times in three different ways to three different execs... just like they send out procedural memos.
Quite. The South Park guys, on the other hand, have to wedge a new show out the door once a week and maybe procedural memos and purchase justifications jus
Re:Full quote... WTF? (Score:2)
he does not wish to disclose or even hint about at this time.
The GF (gut feeling) could just be a convienent explanation.
Re:Full quote... WTF? (Score:2)
I know my employer gets discounts from companies that advertise with us (print media)... a lot of the time, we get freebies, too (iPods, for example).
Overheard at SP productions when hw came in (Score:4, Funny)
Some other comments... (Score:2)
Aye! Woman!!!
Aye! Why don't you stop dressing me up like mailman, and
Re:Overheard at SP productions when hw came in (Score:5, Funny)
respect my vector (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:respect my vector (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:2)
Re:respect my vector (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I just wrote a book on Maya (which isn't video software, btw...) and I own several seats of it.
Re:respect my vector (Score:2)
Re:respect my vector (Score:2)
Re:respect my vector (Score:2)
Re:respect my vector (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Re:respect my vector (Score:2)
this is news? (Score:3, Insightful)
wow.
this is news how??
Re:this is news? (Score:2)
Re:this is news? (Score:2)
wow.
this is news how??
Especially since the DLT7000 is 1995 technology.
Mod parent down. (Score:2, Interesting)
When 50-60% of the comments are Slashdotters bitching that not everything on Slashdot is news.
Shut the hell up and go read another article.
"South park compression" (Score:3, Funny)
Why so huge? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why so huge? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why so huge? (Score:2)
Really, I'd love to see an article on how many of these kind of cartoons (like the Flash ones CN plays, and any other cartoon that is not made using "tradition" methods) are made.
Re:Why so huge? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why so huge? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why so huge? (Score:2)
Re:Why so huge? (Score:2)
Yes, Keynote.
Re:Why so huge? (Score:3, Funny)
Why choose Xserve? (Score:3, Funny)
As long as... (Score:5, Funny)
Gut check! (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Re:Gut check! (Score:2)
I've Got To Wonder.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.. (Score:3, Insightful)
the many layers?
Re:I've Got To Wonder.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I've Got To Wonder.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I've Got To Wonder.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Because it's most likely not 800x600, but rather 4096x4096 just in case they would want to zoom in on something having the texture. Also, bear in mind that many of the backgrounds are probably still there from "Bigger, Longer, Uncut" movie and many others are probably made for possible future use in a new feature film. Rendering for the silver screen takes a bit higher res than 800x600...
Re:I've Got To Wonder.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Surely you jest, it takes a lot more than 100 millibits to make a background.
ppi has nothing to do with the final file size if you've already set the raster size.
Seriously, the article says "up to". If you have a crowd of a lot of people, with several layers being buildings, trees, mountains, sky and clouds, that can add up to a lot.
Re:I've Got To Wonder.. (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest issue that results in needing more space than your calculations would imply is the fact that you just picked numbers out of your ass with no basis in reality. First off, the 72ppi is non-sensical in this context, has no meaning, and doesn't effect the file size. Second, they have the backgrounds done in a much higher resolution than 800x600.
You see, they do the backgrounds as large pieces tha
2MB per frame (Score:3, Informative)
He is also probably talking about assets pre rendering. Every character has textures associated with it, and the geometry, while not that huge, adds up.
...and in response Steve Jobs stated (Score:3, Funny)
Xserve RAID units are really, really nice. (Score:2)
Details on our setup here [umbc.edu].
They're not even very interesting (Score:3, Informative)
Last time I was buying this stuff, a 24 tape auto-loader was around $15,000 and the tapes were $50 each. That's only about 6 terrabytes before you have to manually change tapes. If you look at how much it costs to build a multi-terrabyte NAS server with 250GB+ SATA drives (way less), and how much faster and easier to deal with it is, you have to wonder what the point of tape is nowdays.
Of course the South Park people's data isn't very big at all. They've only got two terra-bytes to deal with! That's nothing by today's standards. I built a system five times that size two years ago. For less than they paid for the Apple Xservers today too.
Tapes can be moved to a secure location, (Score:4, Interesting)
15TB of Xserve RAID storage? What about 200TB? (Score:5, Interesting)
What about the 200TB of Xserve RAID storage for a single project [alienraid.org] 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 [web.cern.ch] isn't as cool as South Park.
Re:15TB of Xserve RAID storage? What about 200TB? (Score:3, Funny)
Once they dupe the story 7 times they will be able to handle 200TB.
Re:15TB of Xserve RAID storage? What about 200TB? (Score:3, Funny)
Are you kidding? The south park guys would love the Large Hardon Collider.
erm, what?
Interview with JJ Franzen (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting stuff - has some background technical info on how an episode is put together and what systems they use to do it all.
/.ers' thoughts on "Bloody Mary" being pulled? (Score:4, Funny)
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 [tv.com] of South Park being pulled off the air [eonline.com] 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 [northkoreatimes.com].
On the next episode... (Score:3, Funny)
Nothing like trade
Sweeeeeet! (Score:3, Funny)
There's actually some interesting infor here... (Score:3, Interesting)
They started out with DLT7000, which I don't think you can buy anymore, but those drives could only backup about 32MB/s with compression. Compare that with a modern day LTO-3 drive which can backup 80MB/s WITHOUT compression. Even if they just installed 3year old 1Gb/s FibreChannel HBAs, and upgraded the tape drives, they would have had a better set up. Hopefully they upgraded their backup servers otherwise they'll hit bottlenecks just trying to drive faster tape and disk.
Even though they went with a Xserve based upon a 'gut feeling', the Xserve, while not the greatest array out there (even in the midrange/low end segment), I've seen worse.
I think the bigger news in the article is that they kicked out Legato. For a small shop like this, Legato might be over kill.
Good to see they are upgrading with the times.
South Park == New television business model (Score:3, Interesting)
Adult swim has taken this sort of guerilla approach, picking up cheap, quick turn around projects. There's no huge capital outlay (unless you're buying an old fox show that was a failure and will probably never see the light of day again.....) and even if it fails, you can drop something fresh into it's slot in no time.
I wonder if the business plan ripoff has contributed to the Viacom / AS fued? Or if viacom just can't remove their heads from thier asses...
Yeah, but Cartman takes up most of that space (Score:3, Funny)
-Eric
Re:What does Simpsons use? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What does Simpsons use? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What does Simpsons use? (Score:2)
They switched to computers a few seasons ago.
Computer ink and paint only. (Score:3, Informative)
Film Roman here in LA does design/boards/layout, while several studios in Korea do the actual animation as well as the digital ink/paint.
Re:What does Simpsons use? (Score:5, Informative)
The Simpsons animates in real time for broadcast (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What does Simpsons use? (Score:2)
Because its way better.
The Simpsons are great, and I hope they go on for many more years... but I wish there was a way to convince Groening & Co. that reviving Futurama will be a success as well! I've become a big fan of it since rediscovering it on Adult Swim, and I know I'm not the only one. I feel Futurama still has a lot of potential material to explore... please Mr. Groening, at least test out one year (if not on Fox then Adult Swim), us fans will not let you down!
Re:What does Simpsons use? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What does Simpsons use? (Score:2, Funny)
great is ok...but amazing would be great.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's like those kids on "Ain't It Cool News" constantly bitching about how lame the articles are, how much of a sellout Harry Knowles is, and how everyone there should get out of their basements. Without the slightest sense of irony.
Why not just post on an article you do care about?
Advertisement! (Score:2)
Re:For those of us who are ignorant (Score:5, Funny)
Re:For those of us who are ignorant (Score:2)
Re:For those of us who are ignorant (Score:2, Insightful)
"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!!!!!!
Re:For those of us who are ignorant (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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:For those of us who are ignorant (Score:5, Funny)
You plug it in and it works.
It's sort of like the underpants gnomes, except there is no step 3.
Re:For those of us who are ignorant (Score:2)
Are you insane? A 2% failure rate for a specific part is catastrophic. No amount of kool-aid ch
why this is important (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, hence why it's on Slashdot... us nerds like the show and like to hear stuff about it. It's called entertainment, but if you'd prefer boring, humorless technology reports 24/7 might I recommend this site [zdnet.com].
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The real question (Score:2)
Quit making slashdot so god damn gimmicky.
Re:Spelling Nazi warning (Score:3, Funny)
I'm not so sure. Apple's are supposed to be user-friendly, right?
Re:No one cares (Score:2)
If any other company released a product into an already highly developed market and began to have success I would like to know. It points to the company doing something "right".
Re:Apples hardware? (Score:4, Informative)
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.