Curating Innovative Story-Telling
AMP Creative is an independent agency, based in Dallas, that aims to bring a fresh approach to corporate learning and communications. Recognizing that simply putting a lecture on video is not going to engage anyone, they develop unique, tailored solutions that use the latest techniques to create packages that are immersive, attractive and compelling – while also getting across important messages.
The company’s roots lie in video production, with that experience and excellence drives much of their work. Their role is to find the compelling narratives and convey them in the most appropriate way.
As a successful business, AMP Creative has generated a lot of content over the years, and managing and maintaining work in progress and archives has been important. From early in the business’s lifetime it has relied on EditShare hardware to provide secure storage and archiving, along with content management using FLOW software.
Into The Cloud
Then along came COVID. AMP Creative moved its own operations into the cloud, allowing its large team to work remotely. With its clients also being forced into new working practices, the need for communications was greater than ever so AMP had to find a way to keep providing their signature services.
While it was simple to move AMP Creative business functions to the cloud, it became clear that they need to move their production capabilities, too. They turned to EditShare to see how their proven editorial workflows could be modified for the new environment.
The response, they were happy to find, was that EditShare was already there, and had a fully developed and ready to run cloud environment. FLEX provides the same comfortable, familiar environment of EFS storage and FLOW media management, with the same ability to manage content and projects so the creative teams can concentrate on delivering great material.
FLEX provides all this functionality as a cloud-native package. It goes further than that, by supporting editing in the cloud – where the familiar software tools run in the same remote environment as the content storage – and by automating all the necessary transfers.
AMP uses Adobe® Premiere® Pro as its preferred edit platform. FLOW fully integrates with Premiere Pro, putting project cloud storage into pre-prepared bin structures so editors are working just as they always have, with no need to learn complex communications and interconnectivity.
Remote Working
To optimize for cost, AMP Creative opted for a hybrid option of Proxy Editing using local workstations and conforming to the high resolution with using virtual GPU-powered workstations deployed in AWS. This allows remote editors to utilize their existing workstations for editing against lightweight proxy video and then use power rendering capabilities in the cloud. Proxies are automatically generated by intelligence within FLEX, which ensures each editor’s workstation is ready to go with high quality, frame accurate proxies. Projects and additional material can be easily uploaded to the cloud using CloudDat file acceleration from EditShare partners Data Expedition.
This has proved to be highly effective: editors are working in exactly the way they always have; producers have excellent oversight of projects; and clients receive excellent materials in a timely manner.
Transformation
For AMP Creative, the transformation is that it has closed down its traditional server room. This is a big saving in equipment, maintenance and real estate which is a major boost to the business. The company was already an experienced AWS cloud user, so the need for training for IT staff was minimal, as was the training requirement for creative staff who were seeing the same environment as before. EditShare was pleased to provide the necessary support to get AMP up and running.
The effects of the pandemic were transformational for many individuals and businesses. AMP Creative recognized it as an opportunity to take a major step forward in the way their creative storytelling was facilitated. EditShare FLEX made it simple and practical to move completely to a hybrid and remote operation.
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