Case Study: Fox Sports International achieves rapid HD file-based ingest, edit & play-out with DataDirect Networks

Racing to Transition to HD, Speed Needed a High Velocity File-Based Workfl ow for Flawless Ingest, Edit & Play-Out

SPEED, a Fox Cable Networks channel devoted to motorsports and automotive programming and available in over 78 million North American homes, needed to move from an SD tape-based workflow to an all-HD, file-based production environment. Fox’s Engineering & Operations team had to design a SAN-based solution that could ingest HD content, create low-res proxies, support Dalet transfers for 75 concurrent users, serve more than a dozen Final Cut Pro editing bays, and be fully operational in a new 55,000 sq ft facility within weeks.

Fox selected DDN storage and Dalet for a high‑performance, scalable workflow (about 100 TB deployed) that supports nearly 200 clients and enables ingest, clipping, editing, transcoding and play‑out to run in parallel. The consolidated file system eliminated unnecessary transcoding and tape handling, gave editors real‑time access to content across a single namespace, lowered operating costs and power use, and accelerated ROI while enabling multi‑platform distribution such as VOD and mobile.

Fox Sports Intrnational