IT in cinema: the Rajtaru story

Indian cinema has become sophisticated in its use of technology. Post-production houses have started adopting cutting-edge technology to obtain the technical finesse that is expected in modern entertainment. VENKATESH GANESH looks at how Rajtaru Videosonic, a leading post-production facility, uses direct attached storage to get its work done quickly and on time

RAMESH AGGARWAL says that Seagate’s hard drives are an integral part of Rajtaru’s success story

THE growing need for digital processing has forced the Indian film industry and its sub-segment of production houses to adopt advanced storage devices. With the quality bar of Indian cinema being raised—at least when it comes to special effects if not in terms of stories—computer-generated imaging and the amount of digital content used in a feature or ad film or even a music video has been rising. The natural corollary to this trend is that advanced storage solutions have become the norm at these production companies. This is the tale of how Rajtaru Videosonic, a leading Indian production house, used disk storage to speed up post-production.

Post-production is complex work. First, a concept must be shaped. Then it has to be translated into words, and a script has to be written after which it’s time for lights, camera, and action. Post-production follows after the shoot is completed. This process involves extensive use of computers and software tools to create the illusions we take for granted.

Behind the scenes

Rajtaru is a specialist post-production house that caters to all aspects of post-production including traditional and CG (computer graphics) animation, digital visual effects and non-linear editing. All these services require massive amounts of storage. While hard disk drives are commodity items, an industrial strength hard disk drive can contribute significantly to the performance of a post-production company’s systems.

Says Ramesh Aggarwal, chairman and managing director, Rajtaru, “We started investing in Seagate drives in 1996. Earlier, in the case of high-end graphics, a lot of work used to be sent abroad as Indian post-production suites did not have the requisite expertise.”

It is interesting to note that there was a boom in the Indian IT industry in the mid 1990s. The ICE (information, communication, entertainment) sector was hot. Apart from Indian entertainment players, global giants such as Disney and Warner zoomed in on this sector. In this situation, having a world-class post-production suite was a must. Rajtaru invested around Rs 50 lakh to set up a fully-equipped post-production house in Mumbai at that time.

“We always go with the leader who understands the business, so Seagate was the automatic choice. Its hard drives have definitely paved the way for us to deliver the best solutions…they are an integral part of our success story,” affirms Aggarwal.

No longer linear

Before the coming of disk-based technology in the mid-1980s, post-production at the facility was done using sprocket-based editing machines such as German-made Steenbecks. These machines had a serious limitation: they only allowed for sequential editing. That’s all changed; today audio-visual data can be written and retrieved in a non-linear fashion.

A shot from the film “Main Hoon Na”, showing Matrix-style bullet effects Courtesy: Rajtaru

In the past, production houses followed a process of machine-to-machine editing that led to several complications. Firstly, tapes were the preferred storage medium. Repeated use of tape (forwarding and rewinding) led to wear and tear. Even a slight change in the depth or perspective of the image gets magnified when projected onto a big screen. Add effects to the mix and storage becomes critical especially if you’re doing high-end rendering work.

Along came near-line

Rajtaru’s storage system is based on near-line RAID storage that consists of several hundred Seagate Cheetah 10,000 RPM hard drives. Besides providing high-performance data throughput and the huge storage capacity needed for complex image processing, it also helps maintain a low cost of ownership. (The company invested Rs 5 crore in the RAID system.) Using these drives, Rajtaru has built a speedy, error-free 9 terabyte storage silo that lets directors preview SFX sequences in a continuous run. Directors can view two hours of the complete film at a stretch. The nearline disk subsystem lets directors see changes that they have made to the film in real-time using a proxy rather than viewing it from start.

Recently the company did some work for Main Hoon Na. For that film, the company executed a Matrix-style seven-second shot that required 120 frames with a running length of five seconds to be merged and synchronised. At 24 frames per second, each frame hogged 51 MB of disk space. Image manipulation for real-time rendering required 1.5x additional in-process storage.

Back to the future

Rajtaru wants to upgrade to the new Cheetah 15K.3 drives that it believes will provide better results. Indian audiences are hooked on Hollywood-style special effects, and our filmmakers are well aware of this. They are relying on production houses such as Rajtaru to help them approximate the quality and excellence delivered by global hotshops such as ILM and Weta Digital.

Goodbye tapes, hello hard drives

Tapes tend to wear out quickly with repeated use because of forwarding and rewinding. Even a slight change in the depth or perspective of an image gets magnified when it is projected onto a large screen. Hard disk drives allow post-production suites to write or retrieve audio-visual data at greater speeds by using non-linear editing methods. Directors can preview edited sequences in a continuous run of two hours.

venkatesh@expresscomputeronline.com