FUTURE WORKFLOWS
POST
The upsides of centralisation
BULL: We’ve felt for some time the next step is not sending the files for someone to download but to send them the link to the application they want to use with the files staying within the data centre. Once they have that link, they’re firing up the application, their content and project is all within the cloud, they’re not moving heavy data around.
I ultimately see it as analogous to plugging into the wall for electricity as plugging into the wall for computing and storage which you would pay for pretty much like a utility.
KLAFKOWSKI: Going back in time, I used to have all the all the editorial kit in the room
and our CTO, Adam Peat, observed that if we centralise the kit, it’s easier to look after, while I thought I’m now taking up a room with a load of kit that could have been another suite.
It started with IBM having central processors that led to personal computers and now it’s gone back to central processing again. Coming back to Adrian’s point you will just buy it when you need it.
You can scale into the public cloud seamlessly. The thought of filling up a data centre with a load of single processors begs the question, ‘why would I do that?’ You make sure it’s connected as close to the Internet as we can - those microseconds make a big difference to responsiveness for the editors - rather than coming back into a machine room wherever you are.
We’ve got a corner of a floor in this vast data centre. It’s really cost effective. We’ve got dark fibre into it, which isn’t cheap, but it means that you work in the same way locally and our assistants can work wherever they are. All of our physical facilities are using the Internet to access our stack.
WOOLFSON: If you think back 15, 20 years ago, when we were buying machines like Quantel, the kit was reasonably unreliable and very bespoke. The really interesting thing now is that although Nutanix might be relatively new to M&E, it’s been hyper-virtualising in finance for 15 years. The disc that you’re buying might have a nice name across it, but you’re buying Net App, Dell or HP. These are reliable suppliers.
MCGUINESS: It’s understanding where the benefit lies, what the total cost operation (TCO) is. The subtleties are extraordinary. For example, when you want to patch in 50 edit suites it takes you five minutes and you’re not running around the place. This benefit is typically lost on a spreadsheet.
WILKES: A big headache for facilities is to have 50 or 60 machines that someone has to walk around and plug a USB drive into to update the latest version of software. You can manage them remotely. But the central promise of virtualisation is going to give you more ability to automate and templatise machines. The downside is that it doesn’t always work out from a cost perspective.
Decades That Defined Us, Grade and online, West Digital | Like A Shot Entertainment for UKTV
MITCHELL: It’s important to see virtualisation in the context of your company. We’ve always acted as a kind of the fabric between the technical stakeholders, rather than the creative stakeholders. We’re gathering all the assets that are produced throughout production and delivering them in whatever flavour format is required to all the different stakeholders. Our job is to act like a network - a router between two separate entities. So how we deliver that will evolve over time. Today, we do it with people in front of computers pushing files, and who wants to be doing that? That is not how we are going to be doing it tomorrow.
NELSON: The only thing is that then expands into finishing. You can have 100 offline but you’ve still got to finish the projects.
A Place in the Sun, Full post production, West Digital | Freeform Production for Channel 4
Thinking about bursting, by the time you work out the cost, you may as well have just bought
Summer 2022
televisual.com 107
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122
