THE FUTURE IS HYBRID POST PRODUCTION
offline proxies, or to shifting one to one mastering transcode workflows when UHD mastering is commonplace. We have started to deliver 8K
too. The amount of data involved in a project can approach 1PB, and it doesn’t make sense to start pushing an amount of data like this to third party cloud providers in order to provide short term services. So we envisage finishing post
jai cave
technical ops director, envy
to the post-by-cloud workflow. “The key is the engine that manages all the constituent parts,” Klafkowski insists. “At the moment there are lots of vendors all doing their bit, but you need post management that sits over the top of it all. Long term, there will be a platform that can cater for the volume of jobs at a facility like ours, that can bring all the tools together under one roof.” He says The Farm is working on it.
Other steps in this direction include Technicolor PULSE and De Lane Lea’s Alfred. The former features a growing set of integrated apps with the ambition to support production workflows from camera to conform. Of Albert, a platform that’s
providing clients the ability to store, distribute and manage assets, Kim Waugh, EVP Worldwide Post Production Services, Warner Bros. says, “Being able to manage content and track progress in this way is so essential as we evolve into a distributed workforce.”
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televisual.com Summer 2020
To our clients we are the Cloud. We store and manage their media, offer remote solutions and can scale when they need it. We don’t have a desire to outsource any of our core processes or infrastructure. There is little benefit to uploading 500TB of rushes to create
remaining an on-prem service, with offline being remote where it offers an advantage to clients. We also see demand increasing for a shared approach to remote offlines, where clients spend part of the week in the facility, then part at home, giving them personal flexibility whilst still prioritising creative in-person communication.
Off-the-shelf solutions are being
developed by vendors too. Examples here include
Frame.IO, which also aims to be the ‘glue’ from camera to post and Escape Technology’s Sherpa, which brands itself a cloud-resource management tool and targets small to medium sized creative studios looking to scale with cloud and compete on a wider stage.
HYBRID NOW Documentary specialist Roundtable is contemplating a move to larger premises. Its systems architecture, already in play pre-Covid, will be hybrid with servers and workstation hardware in situ but accessible remotely. “It gives us the best of both worlds in having a facility for clients as needed and the flexibility to work remotely,” says Jack Jones, Technical Director and Colourist. “We’ll start to integrate additional cloud services like storage overflow into Amazon.” Roundtable has invested in Teradici and Intel NUCs, a barebones PC
attached to the network via which an editor working remotely or in the facility can log into data held at the facility.
“it gives us the best of both worlds in having a facility for clients and the flexibility to work remotely”
“It’s not quite running machines
in the cloud but means media on our machines can be accessed by clients in full res, multiscreen with true keyboard
interaction. We might have 10 offlines running on physical hardware and run more on an ad hoc basis in the cloud without the client being aware of any difference in user experience.” Jones says that Roundtable’s assist
team can work flawlessly remotely and that they could have done this years ago. “The assists are transcoding, ingesting rushes or trouble shooting crashed machines. They can do all their jobs remotely without issue. In turn, that opens up the ability to have fewer staff members on site. Where capacity is restricted post-COVID it makes sense to use the capacity you have for clients.” Like The Farm, it is the cost of
cloud and client desire for one on one creative collaboration which is preventing a wholesale transition at this time. “Egress charges for moving data are
still expensive,” Jones says. “You have to be ‘on it’ in terms of managing all that throughput. We’ve found a sweet spot where we are moving from a traditional
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