VFX LEADS INTO CLOUD-FIRST WORKFLOWS


T he pandemic has clearly


accelerated the latent cross- industry trend toward cloud-first solutions and nowhere is this more apparent than in VFX. The operational benefits of hosting processes such as rendering in the cloud are widely acknowledged. Now, the migration to hosting all aspects of a VFX pipe in data centres, including deploying cloud- based solutions to support virtual workstations for tools such as Avid, Adobe, Maya and Nuke, has sped up. With no need for expensive


on-site hardware, this cloud-based option initially looks like a nirvana for our creative industry. However, as many of our industry colleagues have discovered, these cloud solutions have some challenges in achieving the high quality video streams needed for real-time critical review. The solutions available to facilitate live review sessions are not yet able to provide scalable and consistent real-time, frame accurate output with high colour fidelity, though we believe these problems will be solved in the near future. There are still meaningful problems to be solved for


widespread adoption. For instance, while VFX tools have been largely democratised for cloud usage, editing and colour grading tools still have constraints on which Cloud Service Provider can be used. Here are our recommendations


to support these cloud workflows: Get the licensing right. Some


of the most popular creative tools have limited licensing options and creatives are forced to buy an annual license. Design the creative workflow


to stay within your cloud service provider (CSP) as long as possible – to reduce the egress costs triggered by bringing large amounts of data bandwidth out of the CSP. Try a hybrid approach. Long


before the pandemic, many VFX artists using cloud workflows had figured out a workaround for review sessions. By keeping a few remotely-controlled physical machines in the office, which are connected to ClearView Flex or Pivot, VFX artists can move the content for review to a location where they can easily conduct critical review sessions – such as live-streaming to review suites, screening rooms, and executives WFH all over the world.


SOLUTION: OVER THE SHOULDER REMOTE VFX SHOT REVIEW Visual effects shot reviews require


“THIS CLOUD- BASED OPTION INITIALLY LOOKS LIKE A NIRVANA FOR OUR CREATIVE INDUSTRY”


the best possible quality output when streaming in real-time, to ensure that you don’t lose a pixel of your artist’s work in translation. Ideally, you’d use a product like ClearView Pivot to get projection quality on a 35-foot screen at 4:4:4 colour chroma and 12-bit colour depth for all VFX reviews. However, there are many instances where time, equipment/ room availability and bandwidth limit the options. In particular, those working at home are unlikely to have enough bandwidth for this kind of quality review. ClearView Pivot Lite can help


minimise some of the bandwidth needed for your highest quality review sessions. Alternatively, many of our customers find that for first and second pass reviews, ClearView Flex provides sufficient quality, particularly at the higher bit-rate settings, to get the job done. For VFX review you also have


the added complication of having a greater number of stream viewers – as VFX artists are often working on one small piece of a larger puzzle in large distributed teams. Flex can handle 20+ viewers concurrently within a session.


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