Magical Elves layout:Blank grid.qxd - HP

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Magical Elves Inc. HP xw8600 Workstation supplants non-HP system

“With our old, non-HP platform, we were working in a state of panic. The system would crash sometimes three or four times a day. Editors were frustrated redoing work over and over. The HP xw8600 Workstation has changed everything with its robust processing power and reliability.” —Webb Weiman, Head of Post Production, Magical Elves Inc., Los Angeles, Ca. HP customer case study: HP xw8600 Workstation cures crashes at Magical Elves Inc. Industry: TV production

Objective: Solve problem of multiple daily editing-bay crashes

Approach: Deploy HP xw8600 Workstation

IT improvements: • Eliminate three or four times daily system failures • Eliminate 20-40 unbillable hours wasted weekly redoing work

HP recommends Windows Vista® Business

• Hardware performs well with Avid Media Composer •Technology supports vs. inhibits creative process

Business benefits: • Produce high-quality programming on deadline • Maintain award-winning stature in competitive industry • Increase productivity, efficiency • Improve job satisfaction, work/life/family balance

Courtesy of Bravo Photo

The wife of a Magical Elves editor is tired of him getting home after midnight with that old “the computer crashed” excuse; she thinks he's having an affair. But what can he do? He's in a high-pressure job and has to meet deadline. So begins the self-produced video short dramatizing the pre-HP days at Magical Elves Inc., the award-winning production company behind such reality TV hits as Project Runway, Project Greenlight, Last Comic Standing and Top Chef. In the next scene, an assistant tells the editor about the fast, powerful, reliable HP xw8600 Workstation. The harried editor howls, “Whaddya still doing here? Go get me a computer that works!” It's funny, but how accurate is this little parody? That part's not funny. Poor performance of the non-HP platform was wasting time, demoralizing editors and threatening deadlines. In the deliver-or-die TV

Courtesy of Bravo Photo

HP recommends Windows Vista® Business

industry—Magical Elves has developed or is currently producing shows for Bravo, NBC, CBS, ABC and HBO—poor equipment performance ultimately could have dulled the company's competitive edge. “I can't describe how bad it was—where we were before compared to where we are now,” says Webb Weiman, Head of Post Production. “The HP xw8600 Workstation makes the difference between waking up each day with uncertainty as opposed to flying free with the creative energy that makes our shows succeed.” The HP xw8600 Workstation delivers high performance for computationally-intense applications in engineering, digital content creation, video and multimedia production. With the latest Intel® DualCore™ and Quad-Core™ processors1, and integrating the Intel® 5400 chipset, the machine delivers four times the graphics processing throughput capability of previous generation systems, along with support for high-end graphics cards and multiple displays. Magical Elves stays leading edge with the latest technology tools, including processing power-hungry production software that handles huge image files. “We might have 20 terabytes of data for three

different shows going at the same time,” Weiman says. “The HP xw8600 Workstation aces everything. It imports, exports and renders fast, without crashing.” The bad old days: crash and crawl Picture the Magical Elves at their edit bays for the Emmy Award-winning Top Chef. Footage is coming in from nine different cameras showing judges and contestants in action. From that, editors must construct a story, cutting back and forth to show people reacting to one another. They have to make the show visually pop with special effects and multiple layers of video. On top of all this, since post production is the last step in the production chain, they have to fix all the flaws from previous stages—bad sound, imperfect images— and do it all under intense deadline pressure. Now, imagine your computer crashes three or four times a day. That was the situation with the non-HP platform. The company calculated that editors lost up to 40 hours a week redoing work, resulting in many late nights at the office. Constant interruption blocked their creative flow and made it extra hard to meet their own high quality standards.

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HP recommends Windows Vista® Business

At first Magical Elves tried to fix the problem by working with its software vendor, Avid Technology Inc., maker of Avid Media Composer. Since the problem was hardware-based, improvements were inadequate. Then they consulted vendor Key Code Media—a Burbank solutions provider specializing in professional editing, special effects, audio production, video encoding and video servers. Key Code Media put Magical Elves in touch with HP, which lent them an HP xw8600 Workstation for a week. “It was like the sun came out,” says Steve Lichtenstein, Lead Editor and Producer. “They almost had to pry it out of my hands when the week was up.”

HP xw8600 Workstation restores the magic Magical Elves has 14 HP Workstations on-site; they do not rent edit bays from outside facilities. The newest 12 are HP xw8600 Workstations configured with the genuine Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional 32-bit custom installed operating system, Intel® Xeon®2 X54503 processor and NVIDIA Quadro FX3700 graphics card. With an 80 PLUS efficient power supply standard, the devices are ENERGY STAR® qualified and EPEAT™ Gold registered, supporting Magical Elves goals for energy conservation and environmental responsibility. “The HP xw8600 Workstation has changed everything,” Post Production Head Weiman

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Customer solution at a glance Primary applications Post-production editing of TV programming Primary hardware • HP xw8600 Workstation

says. “It runs the Avid application better, renders faster, it does a better job of talking to the server and seeking out the videos we need. It doesn't crash and it's even quieter than the old system.” The company also is highly satisfied with the performance of several HP Printers and HP Notebook PCs it owns. The end result, he adds, is “happy editors”—which leads to a better work environment, unleashed creativity, a better product, higher ratings, greater profitability and a strong competitive edge. In fact the company anticipates needing more HP Workstations as it grows. “Every minute of work is productive now,” Weiman says. “Our technology is working for us, not against us. You can't put a price on working in a peaceful and productive environment.” What about the unhappy spouse from the video parody? The Magical Elves team is working more normal hours now; greater efficiency has ended the late-night editing marathons. This translates into both freer artistic creativity and better work/life/family balance. In fact, Lead Editor/Producer Lichtenstein and

HP recommends Windows Vista® Business Contact the HP Reference2Win Program, 866-REF-3734 for more information.

To learn more, visit www.hp.com To view video short go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1v86DO2ELw © 2009 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. Intel, Intel Quad-Core™, and Intel Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Microsoft and Windows are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. ENERGY STAR is a registered mark owned by the U.S. Government Certain Windows Vista product features require advanced or additional hardware. See http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/hardwarereqs.mspx and http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/capable.mspx for details. Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor can help you determine which features of Windows Vista will run on your computer. To download the tool, visit www.windowsvista.com/upgradeadvisor. 1Dual/Quad/Triple Core is a new technology designed to improve performance of multithreaded software products and hardware-aware multitasking operating systems and may require appropriate operating system software for full benefit. Not all customers or software applications will necessarily benefit from use of this technology. 264-bit computing on Intel architecture requires a computer system with a processor, chipset, BIOS, operating system, device drivers and applications enabled for Intel® 64 architecture. Processors will not operate (including 32-bit operation) without an Intel 64 architecture-enabled BIOS. Performance will vary depending on your hardware and software configurations. See www.intel.com/info/em64t for more information. 3Intel’s numbering is not a measurement of higher performance.

This customer’s results depended upon its unique business and IT environment, the way it used HP products and services and other factors. These results may not be typical; your results may vary. 4AA2-4593ENW, March 2009

his wife just celebrated the birth of their first child, a beautiful boy named Keith. Weiman laughs, “We got the HP Workstations and suddenly Steve has a family! I think it worked out well for everyone.”