Host Paul Langston sits down with Richard Cullen, Technical Director at BLINK, for a look at the compute, storage, and networking challenges behind live production for the world’s most technologically advanced venues.
Richard walks Paul through how BLINK scaled its operations to meet the extraordinary demands of Sphere in Las Vegas, where a single rendered 16K frame can exceed one gigabyte. Together, they discuss the infrastructure required to create, move, and store massive video files behind the scenes – including RAID arrays, cloud networks, and a purpose-built render farm affectionately named The Dairy.
During this episode, you'll gain insights into:
- The workflow solutions required to produce and capture large-scale performances in the world’s most technically demanding venues.
- How BLINK's file sizes have grown and why that growth curve shows no signs of reversing
- Data retention as a hidden cost center and why post-production companies increasingly function as long-term storage operators
- The case for storage-first infrastructure as the non-negotiable foundation in any serious production environment
Chapters: [
01:55] Inside the Sphere
[
03:33] BLINK’s End-to-end Production
[
05:19] Scaling Up Production Pipelines
[
06:45] Data Movement & File Syncing
[
09:43] Growing Resolutions & Exploding File Sizes
[
13:14] Data Retention & Content Archiving
[
14:37] AI in Production Workflows
[
18:07] Will Resolutions Plateau?
[
20:22] BLINK’s render farm
About the Guest:
Richard Cullen is Technical Director at
BLINK, an award winning multi-disciplinary production studio focused on live music and events. Richard oversees BLINK’s visual and post projects from concept to delivery, and is responsible for BLINK’s robust workflow solutions.
About Seagate:
Seagate is a leader in mass-capacity data storage. We’ve delivered more than four-and-a-half billion terabytes of capacity over the past four decades. We make storage that scales, bringing trust and integrity to innovations that depend on data. In an era of unprecedented creation, Seagate stores infinite potential. Unlock the full value of your data today. Learn more at
seagate.com
Links & Connections:
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The Data Movement explores the people, ideas, and technologies shaping how data is created, processed and used. Through conversations with technologists, creators, and business leaders, we dive into the applications, engineering, insights, and challenges behind the breakthroughs that power our data-driven world.