In this article, we are going to take a look at 3 examples where Avid Nexis has made a difference to the Pro Tools workflow in 2 post houses and 1 educational establishment. Then we are going to look at what is required to set up a Nexis system working with Pro Tools as well as some pricing guidelines.

With the introduction of Avid Nexis software v7.6 and Pro Tools 12.8, Pro Tools is now qualified for use on the Avid Nexis network storage systems, enabling audio creative teams to run Pro Tools sessions off an Avid Nexis storage system sharing projects on a centralised pool of media storage, turning work around faster by eliminating the time wasted moving files between different systems.

Pro Tools 12.8 NEXIS Support Improvement

• Support for much higher Track counts streaming from NEXIS systems
• Improved session load times
• Faster Disk Cache load times
• Added Support for Dual 1 GB connections and 10 GB connection when using Nexis with Pro Tools
• Local Storage of Session Waveform Overview Cache files with quantity preference in Setup > Preferences > Operation allows for substantial speed-up of the session open
• Parallel Task Optimisations setting in Setup > Preferences > Processing increases processor threading, network utilisation, and file/read-write optimisations

With Pro Tools 12.8.1 there were a couple of improvements when working on a Nexis system…

• Destructive Punch Performance Enhancements for NEXIS Workspaces
• Destructive Punch preparation and recording processes have been further optimized for increased performance on NEXIS workspaces

What Is Avid Nexis?

Avid Nexis enterprise-class storage systems (E5, E4, and E2) are designed to offer greater performance for finishing and specialised media workflows, providing up to 28 GB/s of bandwidth with new high-performance storage groups. For smaller environments, Avid Nexis Pro storage provides is designed to deliver real-time 4K performance at up to 2.4GB/s.

Avid Nexis and Avid Nexis Pro also provide real-time creative team collaboration using not only Avid Media Composer but other editorial and creative tools including Adobe Premiere Pro CC, Apple Final Cut Pro X, DaVinci Resolve and now Pro Tools, as well as allowing for integration with third-party asset management systems.

Case Study - Gorilla UK

As with many post-production facilities, Avid Pro Tools plays a vital role in Gorilla’s audio post-production capability. The facility relies on Avid’s world-leading audio editing tool for all its editorial and finishing work, including mixing, editing, and recording across its diverse project roster. 

Gorilla based in the UK is a self-proclaimed “Avid-centric” facility from the get-go back in 1999 and has had a long history specialising in broadcast and film post-production since then. Non unsurprisingly the facility relies on Avid’s audio editing tool - Pro Tools - for all its editorial and finishing work, including mixing, editing, and recording across its diverse project roster. 

Gorilla has over 100 Avid workstations alongside 7 Pro Tools suites and two Pro Tools S6 control surfaces, but media storage was becoming a bottleneck in their workflows and so they started looking for a reliable and efficient solution with a high-bandwidth to manage the distribution and delivery of large files between all their workstations. Rhodri James, technology director at Gorilla, who is responsible for the management and upkeep of the company’s technology explains...

Without a reliable and highly-connected storage system, we can’t turnover work quickly enough to meet client demands. Since merging our Pro Tools systems with NEXIS storage, our picture and audio editorial teams are working in ultimate real-time. The compatibility with Pro Tools benefits everyone, and production processes are much more unified, simplified, and a lot quicker.

Case Study - Monkeyland Audio, California

Over the past 24 years, Monkeyland Audio in Glendale, California, has earned a reputation as a multi award-winning leader in audio post, known for the high quality of its mixes and post-sound services. It’s also managed to maintain its slightly irreverent (its stages are, after all, named after tequilas), friendly yet entirely cutting-edge environment. 

From the beginning, founder Trip Brock, a prominent supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer, looked to combine boutique services with state-of-the-art technology for premium audio services. Today, a dedicated in-house creative team creates custom sound packages for recording, film and television productions of all sizes and across all genres.

They too have been using Pro Tools from the start but with no intention of getting into the mixing side of the post-production workflow until they were persuaded by their clients to offer the full package, mixing, editing, media recording, as opposed to farming out all the different bits.

The nature of Monkeyland’s business requires ingesting large amounts of data every day. Data that must be available to numerous users with different access privileges as quickly as possible. Founder Trip Brock explains...

Before the upgrade, significant time was lost shuttling large sets of files around to local drives throughout the facility, either via shuttle drives or copying over a clunkier network. Far too much valuable time was spent administrating data storage on our servers, as well as on editorial and stage systems. We were constantly clearing out the old to make room for the new.

They too needed a new integrated solution and turned to Avid Nexis. With Nexis, Monkeyland could centralise data and eliminate copying the same files to numerous locations. Everyone throughout the facility could now access the same data from the same place at the same time, streamlining data administration and avoiding clogging local drives with unnecessary and redundant files. Monkeyland uses Nexis primarily as a video server for Monkeyland’s five stages and 10 edit bays as well as a backup deliverables server. Monkeyland’s vice president of post-production services Michael Toji told us...

“We can instantly recall and playback any mix or specific project we’ve done in the last 20 years from any system, in the facility. We found that playing back video over Nexis actually has less latency compared to streaming from a local drive, which is incredible.”

That is a pretty amazing claim from a large post-production house.

Case Study - University Of Stirling

After The University of Stirling saw a sharp rise in the number of students enrolling on their production modules, they realised they needed to increase access to their edit suites, and make it easier for students to move between machines. Dario Sinforiani, Stirling’s Head of Production explains…

We were using Avid with external drives attached to individual workstations, which meant that students were tied to individual machines, and security and backup were both potential issues. Moving to NEXIS has been transformational, in that it fixes those problems, but also in terms of efficiency. At the moment we have over 100 students taking production modules across film, journalism and digital media courses, and next year we’re expanding into masters-level teaching.

The university was keen to stay within the Avid ecosystem because the vast majority of professional production and post houses they have links to use it as well and they wanted to ensure that they were teaching students a modern, industry-relevant workflow. Their Avid Nexis storage system that can be shared by the department’s 27 Media Composer suites and 13 Pro Tools suites simultaneously.  Dario told us…

Students now have the flexibility to access any seat, instead of having access to one workstation which they may have to share with another group. This means that students can work when they need to, rather than being held up because of technology. Nothing holds them back from being able to do all the post-production that’s required, whereas before they’d be limited as to how much they could do in the available time. It allows creativity to happen rather than forcing it to happen between X hour and Y hour because of the requirements of the space.

Avid Pro Tools HD and Nexis Support

The performance will vary depending on how your systems are set up so please review the guidelines below to ensure your system is setup correctly for your workflows in your facility.

New Settings

Multi-Threading Improvements - When using Nexis or any other network attached storage with Pro Tools there is now a new preference setting in a section headed 'Misc' entitled 'Parallel Task Optimizations' in the Processing tab that has been added to Pro Tools HD to optimise for different storage mediums. This optimises how Pro Tools handles non-real-time tasks like audio import and rendering workflows.

You should also adjust where the Waveform Overview Cache files are stored as local storage of Session Waveform Overview Cache files provides a substantial speed improvement in how long it takes to open the session.

You will find this in the Operations tab of the Pro Tools Preferences in the User Media and Settings Location section. 

Network Connection

Pro Tools and Nexis need a minimum of a single 1GB connection between the Nexis unit and the computer running Pro Tools. You can better performance if you have either a dual 1GB connections or a single 10GB connection. The faster your connection is, the higher the track count you will be able to stream from the Nexis, and the quicker your Pro Tools disk cache will fill when you open your sessions. In this table below is the number of tracks that can be streamed from a Nexis to one or more Pro Tools HD Systems. Note that this is total audio files playing back simultaneously at a reasonable edit density, although Avid doesn’t specify what reasonable is in this context. However, since most Pro Tools session does not stream continuous audio on every track for the entire duration of the session, your track count is likely to be much higher than your simultaneous audio file playback.

High-Performance Needs & Disk Cache

If you need higher track count requirements than what is supported in the tables above or need guaranteed more simultaneous Pro Tools HD users alongside other clients using Nexis you can use the disk cache mode. Disk cache enables users to load all of the audio data from the session into the RAM which can enable extremely high track counts to be played back. After the initial audio is loaded, there is little to no bandwidth used on your Nexis network during playback of audio.

All systems that intend to use disk cache with will need to have enough RAM installed to load the entire session and the setting in the playback engine set to accommodate your session. Here is a table that outlines the load speeds various connections with Pro Tools HD and Nexis.

Disk Cache Load Speeds

With Pro Tools 12.8 Disk Cache load times have been sped up when accessing NEXIS storage. Below is a table showing load times for medium size session on various connection types.

Pro Tools HD Avid NEXIS Client Configuration & Slot Order

Check out the Pro Tools HD 12 System Requirements page for system-specific PCIe Slot Order & Client Configuration guidelines.

Proper BIOS configuration is required for best performance on Windows systems. For Windows systems qualified with Pro Tools HD, refer to Pro Tools HD 12 System Requirements page for system-specific BIOS configuration guidelines.  

Gigabit Ethernet Adapters

• Windows systems have been tested with:
  • Embedded Intel I210 Gb NIC
  • Embedded Intel I218-LM Gb NIC - AMT
• Mac systems have been tested with:
  • Built-In Ethernet Port 1
  • Built-In Ethernet Port 2

10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapters

• Windows systems have been tested with:
  • Myricom 10G-PCIE2-8B2-2S - network adapter (in slot 6 on z840)
  • Myricom 10G-PCIE-8B-S - network adapter (in slot 6 on z840)
• Mac systems have been tested with:
  • ATTO Thunderbolt 2 to 10Gb Ethernet (SFP+ LC Optical) with (2) SFP+ module, LP Desktop

Pro Tools HD Avid NEXIS Zone Configurations

Pro Tools HD is qualified as a zone 2 or 3 Avid NEXIS client only.

• Switched Client — Connected to Avid NEXIS via a 1 Gb port on an Avid-qualified layer-3 switch.
• Routed Client — Routed client that resides on an Avid-qualified layer-3 switch within the Avid Production Network. Only one hop (route) is supported.

Pricing

• Avid NEXIS | PRO 20TB Engine £9,300.00 ($11,995.00) plus taxes It comes in a 2U box and includes 10 media HDDs, 2 SSD System Drives, Controller with 10 GbE interface, includes QSFP to SFP+ converter (no SFP+ optics), Dual PSU, rack kit, axle Starter 2-user license.
• Avid NEXIS | PRO 40TB Engine £10,300.00 ($12,990.00) plus taxes. It comes in a 2U box and includes 10 media HDDs, 2 SSD System Drives, Controller with 10 GbE interface, includes QSFP to SFP+ converter (no SFP+ optics), Dual PSU, rack kit, axle Starter 2-user license.
• Dell Networking N2024 Switch - 24 Ports - Managed - Rack-Mountable £1,094.00 Number of 1GbE RJ45 ports: 24