Until now, on-set acquisition has been an expensive business, with proprietary systems often costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, or rental options proving a costly drain on production finances. However, massive strides have been made in integrating powerful IT-based technologies, and these advances are combined in SetMeUp to offer maximum workflow flexibility and unprecedented value.

SetMeUp is housed in a portable (with wheels) rackmount enclosure that includes everything needed to capture, playback, store and manage HD and 4K/UHDTV video content on-set. With these capabilities, SetMeUp delivers an ultra-fast and easily affordable gateway from production-to-editorial, and frees production teams from the traditional expense and limitations of proprietary systems.

The SetMeUp package includes:

- Cinedeck ZX – a robust, modular, on-set 4K/UHDTV-1/HD/SD record/playback platform with four simultaneous record channels and native encoding to ProRes, DNx, XDCAM, AVC-I, or virtually any other codec and wrapper. Cinedeck’s ingest channels also automatically create H.264 proxy files that are used for instant browsing in axle Gear Pro.

- axle Gear Pro media management system – offers browser-based cataloging, search, review and approval via a radically simple user interface. Axle’s easy and intuitive user-interface and storage-first approach mean the on-set team, even freelancers, will be instantly familiar with how media is stored and managed, and no training is required.

- Ingest storage – SetMeUp comes configured with 18TB of storage optimized for capturing incoming media. The Cinedeck ZX is configured with 2TB SSD storage (with an 8TB option) for immediate capture, regardless of any network connectivity, while the axle Gear Pro is configured with 16TB of usable RAID10 NAS storage for longer-term capture and management of media.

These SetMeUp components are mounted in an easily transportable rack case, along with a wide variety of support gear. This includes a Gigabit Ethernet network switch with 12 open ports, for the attachment of workstations, additional storage, routers, audio and wireless equipment, as well as an uninterruptible power supply to handle intermittent power loss.

The system makes media instantly available, while keeping native assets secure and easily searchable. It delivers seamlessly to non-linear editing systems from Apple (FCP7, FCPX), Adobe (Premiere Pro CC, Prelude CC, and Anywhere distributed editing solutions) and Avid (Media Composer).

The SetMeUp system also includes open rack space, Gigabit network interfaces and power connections to accommodate two types of optional integrated storage: editing and archival. Supported editing storage options include Facilis Terrablock, Avid ISIS 5500, SmallTree GraniteStor and DDP Dynamic Drive Pool disk arrays. Archival options include QNAP and SpectraLogic Verde NAS appliances, XenData SX-10 LTFS appliances and IBM LTFS tape libraries.

SetMeUp is available for purchase from a variety of resellers starting at $59,950, and for rental at rates from $8,000 per month. There is also a range of lease-to-buy options and additional configurations include 10GB Ethernet connectivity. Axle Video and Cinedeck will demonstrate SetMeUp at a customer event to be held in February 2015.