ACB Scores Big with EditShare: Slam Dunk for Automated Ingest, Live Logging and Scalable Broadcast Infrastructure
EditShare has partnered with integration experts Broad Service and Mediacast to deliver a next-generation ingest, asset management, and production system for the Association of Basketball Clubs (ACB), one of Europe’s top professional basketball leagues.
Faced with rising demands for fast-turnaround content and multi-platform publishing, ACB needed to overhaul its production infrastructure. The answer was a powerful, scalable solution built around EditShare technology.
The deployment includes:
EditShare FLOW Ingest, a multi-channel ingest solution supporting both baseband and NDI sources, with full support for edit while capture codecs. This allows immediate access to footage while it is still being recorded, streamlining fast paced sports workflows.
EFS media-engineered nodes, designed for scalability, reliability, robust security, ensuring uninterrupted performance during live events and high volume collaboration.
Multiple FLOW production servers, enabling rapid format conversion via powerful automation engine enabling streamlined distribution across broadcast, digital, and social platforms.
FLOW Live Logging, giving editors and content teams the ability to tag game moments such as three pointers, fouls, and free throws in real-time.
Solving Real Pain Points on the Court and in the Cloud
The challenge: ACB was dealing with scattered storage, slow manual ingest and no way to tag and track content in real time.
The EditShare solution:
Automated ingest into an EFS media gets footage into the system instantly…fast, organised.
Live logging lets teams tag key moments as they happen for instant retrieval.
Centralized media storage supports real-time collaboration without crashes or lost files.
“In live sports, if you miss the moment, you miss the opportunity,” said Tara Montford, Co Founder and EVP of Product at EditShare. “Our live logging and ingest tools give ACB’s content teams the ability to react instantly and turn raw game footage into ready to share content while the action is still happening.”
A Broadcast Slam Dunk for ACB
This upgrade is more than a tech win. It shows ACB’s commitment to delivering top tier content to fans everywhere, from the arena to the app. The system helps content teams move faster, publish smarter and push high quality media to every platform without delay.
With this shift to IP based production, powered by NDI (Network Device Interface), ACB sets a new standard in sports broadcasting. Agile, automated, and ready for whatever comes next.
When producer Khalil Bachooali founded Offroad Films in 2011, he aimed to build an independent, creative-led production company that merged artistic sensibilities with marketing acumen. And with more than a decade of work in commercials and business films, he’s done just that.
Today, Offroad Films is regarded as a leader in the industry, recognized by multiple awards. That includes four Lions from the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, the most prestigious in the advertising world. And throughout their journey, they’ve relied on Wiredrive every step of the way.
The key to Offroad’s success
The philosophy has always been to start with the client’s brand and the story they need to tell. From that the creative spark appears, developing the way that the story should best be told. Only then will a director be selected who can best translate that story into visual reality. The result is that the company’s passion comes out in films which are effective, purposeful and engaging.
For Offroad Films’ clients, gaining insight into the agency’s past successes and creative expertise becomes an invaluable tool, helping to showcase the agency’s ability to bring their unique stories to life with precision and flair. That needs evidence in terms of previous, similar projects and showreels from the right directors who will realize that treatment.
For this reason, since the foundation of Offroad Films, Wiredrive has been used to present showreels to clients. Over the years it has developed the way it uses the software, and now it has become a central collaborative tool as well as a means of sharing content.
Wiredrive simplifies winning showreels
Wiredrive was developed as the best way to create showreels that have impact. The simple software provides a common store for all business assets, with a powerful organization layer to search, tag and filter the archive. The user defines the parameters in the asset management layer so the tags are appropriate and searches rapidly locate the best content.
In turn, that makes it easy to build and share customized, branded presentations. Each pitch and presentation is tailored for the specific target but can be created in moments. Naturally, the agency’s corporate branding is maintained in every showreel.
Secure distribution is managed through Wiredrive to ensure that it arrives at the right people’s desks. Advanced analytics ensure the user can track the audience to get the right impact.
Developing from the showreel tools, Wiredrive has become a valuable collaboration tool. Workspaces are defined for each project, and all of its assets are managed in one space. Comments and approvals are logged and time-stamped to speed finishing and provide a sign-off trail.
The delivery capabilities mean that remote collaborators are part of the same workflow, sharing work instantly and securely among the project team.
Wiredrive’s indispensable functionality
When Offroad Films was formed in 2011, it urgently needed a way to create directors’ showreels. Wiredrive was tried and proved to be the best tool for the job. Since then, it has relied on it to develop pitch reels and manage the showreel content from the freelance directors it uses on its many projects.
“Showreels were the main reason to bring in Wiredrive,” said Rebecca Maria, Administrative Head at Offroad Films. “Nothing else delivers the same functionality.
“But as time has gone on, use cases have accumulated,” she added.
Today, each new production is allocated a workspace in Wiredrive to act as the hub for all content. As the team grows, with freelance and house staff, they are given access to the project workspace, where they can see progress and track assets.
“Typically, our associate producer is responsible for managing the content,” Rebecca Maria explained. “They will build up material from the first location research all the way to finished contents and share them easily.
“Wiredrive also allows us to quickly share specific content,” she said. “It is also useful to brief freelancers: we can create a ‘showreel’ showing the feel of what we are aiming to achieve in a film, so they know how their particular craft needs to fit in.”
The flexibility of the software means that all stages of the project use Wiredrive to be more efficient. It starts in pre-production, through shooting and post, and on to marketing and distribution. Each project that Offroad undertakes is different, and each team will use Wiredrive in its own way to best keep the team up to speed and deliver the project on time.
When a project is successfully completed, the finished films are added to the Wiredrive archive. There, they are ready to be used in future showreels, winning more creative commissions for striking and effective commercials.
“Showreels were the main reason to bring in Wiredrive, nothing else delivers the same functionality”.
Rebecca Maria, Administrative Head at Offroad Films
Dynamic workflows designed by Tyrell will support major commissions
Boston, MA, June 12, 2024 – EditShare, the technology leader that enables storytellers to create and manage collaborative workflows at every stage from storyboard to screen, has implemented another EFS storage network at leading UK entertainment production company Whisper. The system was designed and implemented in conjunction with EditShare’s partner Tyrell.
Whisper is highly regarded for its sports, live and entertainment coverage, including some of the largest events globally. Having recently secured commissions for multiple new documentary series, it has added an extensive new storage network and access facilities.
Gareth Steven, Head of Post Production, Whisper
“We already have two EditShare storage nodes that we rely on, and which have proven extremely reliable over a number of years,” said Gareth Steven, head of post production at Whisper. “This new project calls for content to be created and managed over an extended period of time, with large production teams accessing and editing the content simultaneously. EditShare and Tyrell showed us that the scalability and workflow functionality metour requirements perfectly.”
The new installation sees three EditShare EFS-300 storage systems, each with 256 TB capacity, which are seen by users as a single namespace for simplicity and security in operation. The storage network is freely and continuously expandable to provide capacities exceeding a petabyte if required.
“Content security was also a key requirement for Whisper,” said Simon Wocka, account manager at Tyrell. “Media storage is like a bank vault: the assets it contains are priceless and must be protected above all else. Security is a core part of the EditShare architecture, providing the best protection at every stage without compromising operational ease and flexibility.
“EditShare also allows access directly within the key post tools that will be used on these shows,” he continued. “Artists using Adobe Premiere Pro or Blackmagic DaVinci can use EditShare integrations within their software environment, allowing them to access content directly. They don’t need to change workstations or learn new commands and structures – it removes barriers and makes workflows much simpler.”
Tara Montfort, co-founder and EVP Business Development at EditShare, added, “We are delighted to support Whisper’s new projects. Our scalable storage solutions and intuitive workflow tools are designed to meet the complex needs of production teams, ensuring they can collaborate seamlessly and focus on what they do best – creating compelling content.”
The new storage network was installed in February 2024 and is already supporting the latest documentary productions at Whisper.
EditShare is an Emmy Award-winning technology leader, supporting storytellers through collaborative media workflows across on-premise, cloud and hybrid architectures. The market-leading open software solutions and robust APIs improve workflow collaboration, third-party integrations and content sharing across the entire production chain. Designed specifically for media applications, the high performance line-up provides shared storage, archiving and backup, and intelligent media asset management.
Through a merger with Shift Media, EditShare now also integrates tools for content review and distribution, the creation of customised and branded pitch reels, and secure preview of high-value pre-release content.
About Tyrell
For 24 years Tyrell has been providing video, audio, graphics and storage solutions to the Irish and UK broadcast, post, production, corporate and education markets. In this time, we have become the leading provider of technology and service solutions both on-premise and in the cloud. Tyrell has an excellent understanding of the fast pace and unique pressures facing the media and entertainment industry; developing solutions for complex workflows. Allowing our clients to concentrate on the creative process and business development. From our two locations we offer a comprehensive range of professional services from consultancy to system design and integration, technical support and maintenance.
Azimuth, a full service editing, post-production, finishing and delivery facility, has a new home, purpose built from the ground up, on Eagle Street in Holborn in the heart of Central London. With the changing demands of modern broadcast – particularly the need to deliver in 4K HDR and with Dolby Atmos Home Entertainment audio – Azimuth have designed and built a modern, flexible, and adaptable post house to fulfill these requirements incorporating the latest in post technology and workflow methodologies. Systems integration was carried out by technology experts, Altered Images.
Re-Imagining Azimuth
Operations Director, Yives Reed describes the challenge that led to the new, re-imagined Azimuth being built: “post pandemic, OR Media (parent production company) had lots of projects coming through with multiple specialist factual and documentary series. As they were getting closer to post production, it was obvious that the Azimuth as was, was not set up to accommodate either the volume or the 4K HDR deliverables required so the time was right for a reset.
High-End Television Post Workflows
At the heart of Azimuth’s technology vision was the need to fully support a range of high-end television post workflows. To achieve this, they knew they needed a robust server and media management system that could securely handle multiple streams of high-bandwidth data, including 4K and even 8K RAW files, and effortlessly distribute these with real time playback wherever and whenever required within the facility.
Head of Technical Operations, Steve Oak describes the new picture finishing set up at Azimuth. “The bulk of the work going through the facility is 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos for IMF delivery. If that high bandwidth work sets your benchmark, it helps to make some pioneering decisions with our hardware. Between two Resolve Grades and three Online, three Colour Assist stations and two QC rooms we are reading and writing huge amounts of data at the same time. Alongside native workflows in Resolve, we’ve got Baselight and Flame Open EXR and uncompressed workflows with its own demanding requirements. In Resolve we’re working with multi-layered sequences, including uncompressed RAW, all supported by the 40 Gb/s network input from each of the Editshare SSD arrays.”
Oak continues, “we are bricks and mortar within a Central London location and despite our cloud presence, the bulk of our services are hosted here. When you go back to the shell of a building, you have the chance to shape it in the way that you think it should be going forward. We wanted flexibility with what we put into place now and how it might be different in six or twelve months’ time which is not how most post houses work.”
The Need For Flexibility
“With Editshare, we have a petabyte of spinning disk and 200 terabytes of SSD between which we can move workspaces seamlessly while carrying on working. Importantly, Editshare is NLE agnostic allowing our customers to work the way they want to work with media plug-ins and workspaces for Media Composer, Resolve and Premiere Pro respectively.
“At Azimuth, we bring the native material into a Resolve conform to effectively create a re-link environment. We get a lot of XAVC at 300 and 450 Mb/s, RED, Canon XF, Sony X-OCN and ProRes RAW. In Final Post it means that we can have quite large workspaces and we can be pulling a huge amount of bandwidth per client.
Better Workflows
“An Editshare media asset management system sits on top for media encoding and cloud integration where you can work within an intuitive web GUI, all of which is tied into a server giving us better performance for our dollar than any other we reviewed. Investing in Editshare was a no-brainer.”
Reed concurs, “ Editshare gives us performance storage with a lot of useful tools to support a fully modern workflow and an agnostic approach to applications. It’s flexible and has a strong track record.”
Oak is consistently looking towards what’s next and was additionally impressed by Editshare’s M&E-centric approach, increasing use of automation and roadmap, “Editshare’s acquisition and integration of MediaSilo reflects the vendor’s approach. You can set up watch folders through your FLOW environment so you can export a cut and it will transcode and upload it to MediaSilo, and anyone within that group will get a notification that it’s been uploaded. It can scan our MediaSilo cloud storage through a Storage DNA MAM, that sits on top of our whole environment, and bring those assets back down again and deep archive on LTO on completion of a project. Editshare offers us better workflows with less human time and more automation.”
“Editshare gives us performance storage with a lot of useful tools to support a fully modern workflow and an agnostic approach to applications.”
Amy and Drive to Survive producer updates collaborators simply and securely
Boston, MA, March 18, 2024 – Box to Box Films, an Emmy® award winning producer of high end documentaries and factual entertainment, has extended their agreement with EditShare and will continue to leverage MediaSilo for delivering work-in-progress content to collaborators. The software allows clips and completed content to be distributed simply and securely, for viewing on any platform.
Box to Box is the producer behind the acclaimed documentary Diego Maradona, which chronicles the career of celebrated football player Diego Maradona. Its Formula 1: Drive to Survive inside motorsports documentaries reached series six on Netflix in February 2024. The company prides itself on its ability to create dynamic and dramatic narratives for international audiences.
For these and many more one-offs and series, each project is managed independently, with different managements, clients, post facilities and producers. MediaSilo gives Box to Box a ready way to distribute dailies and cuts, just to the team involved in that particular production. It provides a completely flexible storage space, allowing it to serve the requirements of different projects, and to allow multiple users to access it.
“On a typical project we would send a cut to maybe two bosses, three or four executive producers, showrunner and producer, post supervisors and more,” explained Box to Box technical editor Rafael Bettega. “We send the picture lock cut to the composer, and to the creative marketing people so they can plan and start the campaign as early as possible.”
“With MediaSilo we don’t need to worry about technology,” Bettega continued. “The users simply receive a review link with a video which they can access with a password, to play just by pressing the spacebar. No need to download additional software; no need to take up licences in an asset management system. And because of the two-factor security it is acceptable to the networks we’re partnering with, which prioritize secure methods for content transfer”.
Bettega first used MediaSilo on Amy in 2013, at the suggestion of the post house he was working with. It now uses the system for all its productions.
“This is the perfect application for MediaSilo,” said Eric Wynalek, EVP marketing & strategy at EditShare. “As massive fans of Box to Box’s productions like Drive to Survive and 6 Nations: Full Contact, we’re honoured to be an integral part of their workflow. Box to Box has a set of diverse users who need to collaborate on content securely, including protection with custom permissions and receipt of usage analytics. The interface allows groups to be set up for each project, with permissions set by user, so each clip and cut is sent to just the right people and the all-important feedback is received quickly.”
EditShare is an Emmy Award-winning technology leader, supporting storytellers through collaborative media workflows across on-premise, cloud and hybrid architectures. The market-leading open software solutions and robust APIs improve workflow collaboration, third-party integrations and content sharing across the entire production chain. Designed specifically for media applications, the high performance line-up provides shared storage, archiving and backup, and intelligent media asset management.
Through a merger with Shift Media, EditShare now also integrates tools for content review and distribution, the creation of customised and branded pitch reels, and secure preview of high-value pre-release content.
Major South African production facility uses EFS and FLOW
Boston, MA, March 4, 2024 – Rapid Blue, one of the leading production companies in Africa, is now using the EFS 300 storage system from EditShare for all its in-house shows. Through the use of EditShare FLOW media management and workflow tools, the company has built a very efficient and cost-effective platform which allows multiple users direct access for review and approval, as well as supporting large post production teams. Rapid Blue’s productions encompass a diverse array of content, spanning from drama serials such as Is’thunzi to studio shows like Family Feud South Africa and Last One Laughing South Africa, as well as location-based reality programs including The Bachelor and Come Dine With Me South Africa. Rapid Blue, who is part of BBC Studios’ international family of production companies, is also the South African producer of international hits such as The Great South African Bake Off and Dancing with the Stars. The result is large volumes of content acquisition, often needing very rapid turnaround times.
When its central storage system reached end of life and began to raise serious issues with reliability, Rapid Blue looked for a system that would deliver content security as the top priority. Workflows needed to be fast, intuitive and cost effective. The EFS platform answered all the questions, and the company installed a 280TB storage network, implementing the system in conjunction with Protea Broadcast & Multimedia, EditShare’s South African partner.
“The whole facility runs off it, and it’s been awesome,” said Jacques Wolfaardt, Rapid Blue Head of IT. “It hosts almost all of our productions, and we can connect all our edit suites – as many as 20 – at the same time on the same content, giving us great productivity and fast turnarounds.”
Rapid Blue uses both Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve non-linear editors, and both are tightly integrated into the EditShare FLOW media management functionality. The relevant parts of the shared storage appear as locations within the software, so editors get direct access to the material they need, and can save cuts directly to the storage network.
“We connect many desktops directly to FLOW, and it automatically generates high-quality proxies” Wolfaardt said, “Producers working on their own computers can select the content they need from bulk ingests before it gets to editors – and reality shows generate a massive amount of content. They can also review and approve cuts, all without tying up edit suites just to look at material. That saves us time and resources, and makes us much more efficient.
“We also use the workflow automation in FLOW,” he continued. “It creates all the deliverables in different formats, and delivers them to FTP sites, without tying up staff or facilities.”
James Macpherson of Protea Broadcast & Multimedia said “Reliability was a key deciding factor for Rapid Blue, and we could clearly show that EditShare leads the field. In production, deadlines are often very tight, and a day’s delay can be catastrophic.
“Jacques and his team would certainly let me know if there had been any issues, but EditShare has delivered the performance they need with no downtime.”
EditShare is an Emmy Award-winning technology leader, supporting storytellers through collaborative media workflows across on-premise, cloud and hybrid architectures. The market-leading open software solutions and robust APIs improve workflow collaboration, third-party integrations and content sharing across the entire production chain. Designed specifically for media applications, the high performance line-up provides shared storage, archiving and backup, and intelligent media asset management.
Through a merger with Shift Media, EditShare now also integrates tools for content review and distribution, the creation of customised and branded pitch reels, and secure preview of high-value pre-release content.
On premise and cloud storage supports busy production services
Boston, MA, February 6, 2024 – Florida Panthers, the NHL ice hockey team based in the Greater Miami area, has transformed its production workflows with the adoption of storage systems and management tools from EditShare. The new system provides support for a rapidly growing video department, which creates and delivers sophisticated content for in-house screens and scoreboards, and for extensive fan engagement online and through the team’s custom app.
Previously, the Panthers had been using ad hoc storage for video content, together with consumer tools for file transfers. Recent successes for the Panthers – including a Stanley Cup final place in 2023 – meant demand for content ramped up dramatically, and a more fluid, more secure workflow was required. It needed to support four producers/editors creating content at home and on the road, a motion graphics workshop charged with making engaging content for the scoreboard, and the team’s close relationship with the Bally Sports Network, its broadcast partner.
With consultation from sales engineers at 76 Media Systems (now part of Starin Marketing) the Panthers developed a solution around a 256TB EFS300 storage appliance. This is installed at the team’s home, the Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida, just west of Fort Lauderdale.
The ground storage network is linked and synchronized to an EditShare cloud implementation. As well as adding content redundancy, the hybrid on premise/cloud architecture allows shooting teams on the road with the Panthers to upload content via VPN, making it immediately available for post and delivery, as well as securing it. The ability to edit on the road is a real boost.
Dennis Docil, Senior Director of Content Services for the Florida Panthers, made the point that key tools like FLOW workflow and asset management and FLEX cloud synchronization are core parts of the technology, making the system easy to implement as well as intuitive to use.
“Before coming back to the Panthers I worked for Ion Media Networks, and they were one of the first users of EditShare,” Docil said. “When we were looking for a solution we looked at the market, EditShare seemed to be the most user friendly for what we needed it to do. It gave us the slick workflows we need to keep on top of our exponentially increasing workloads.
“On top of that, the EditShare price was more attractive than the competition, and that included all the extra software components we needed to manage content and synchronize through the cloud.”
The ability to support large numbers of streams is vital for this sports application. At game time, as well as feeding the scoreboard and all the video screens around the arena the EditShare EFS300 is also ingesting live content from eight cameras, plus live coverage and additional shots from Bally Sports Network.
A lot of material is generated for fan engagement and distributed via the website and app. The Panthers also have a large retail shop alongside the new practice facility in Fort Lauderdale, and multiple screens there create interest and excitement around the team and players, as well as driving sales of merchandise.
EditShare is an Emmy Award-winning technology leader, supporting storytellers through collaborative media workflows across on-premise, cloud and hybrid architectures. The market-leading open software solutions and robust APIs improve workflow collaboration, third-party integrations and content sharing across the entire production chain. Designed specifically for media applications, the high performance line-up provides shared storage, archiving and backup, and intelligent media asset management.
Through a merger with Shift Media, EditShare now also integrates tools for content review and distribution, the creation of customised and branded pitch reels, and secure preview of high-value pre-release content.
Large nearline server nodes directly connected to live production system
Boston, MA, January 16, 2024 – MTV Oy, the leading commercial television company and production house in Finland, recently relocated to a new center in the suburbs of Helsinki, seizing the opportunity for a major technical refresh. The facility serves multiple channels and streaming services, and a key part of the project was to migrate its extensive news and sport archive from tape, a task accomplished with EditShare providing the latest storage technology.
Central storage for all live production is provided by four nodes of EditShare EFS 60NL nearline storage, with a total capacity at present of eight petabytes. The EditShare storage is directly accessed by journalists and producers via their workstations, which are connected to production servers and asset management provided by EVS. The open architecture of EditShare EFS storage makes the integration seamless and transparent.
“It was important that journalists don’t have to care where the material is,” said Tommi Tynys, Head of Broadcasting Technology at MTV Oy. “Whereas getting content from the tape archive could take 30 minutes or more, now users search directly for what they need and it is instantly available to them. We need to take the fight to our competitors, to be first with the news, so performance is vital to us.”
The facilities at the new center are managed for MTV by NEP Finland, and the companies collaborated on designing the new architecture. The complete center was built by Broadcast Solutions Nordic, with Pipeline Media providing continuing support for the systems.
“One of the great things about EditShare is that the storage network is completely scalable,” said Jukka Keski-Loppi of Pipeline Media. “Our estimate is that the MTV archive will grow by 350 TB a year, and we can add storage as we need it without taking the system offline.”
MTV’s Tynys added that the system was also extremely reliable and resilient. “It took a while to transfer all our archive into EditShare,” he said. “But now it is running we have had zero downtime, even with a lot of users demanding simultaneous access.”
Stephen Tallamy, CTO at EditShare added “In demanding environments like MTV, nearline means virtually instant. We designed the EFS 60NL as an ultra-high density storage node for media that needs to be accessible, but does not need the performance of an online production workflow.
“That transforms the architecture of the news and sport facility: the complete archive can be online thanks to the very high storage density of our solution, and at the same time it’s available to all users, when they need it.”
The EditShare EFS 60NL is built for high performance media applications. It uses native erasure coding, eliminating the need for hardware-based RAID while providing complete resilience. The standard chassis holds 60 enterprise-grade disk drives, all hot swappable from the front of the rack.
EditShare is an Emmy Award-winning technology leader, supporting storytellers through collaborative media workflows across on-premise, cloud and hybrid architectures. The market-leading open software solutions and robust APIs improve workflow collaboration, third-party integrations and content sharing across the entire production chain. Designed specifically for media applications, the high performance line-up provides shared storage, archiving and backup, and intelligent media asset management.
Through a merger with Shift Media, EditShare now also integrates tools for content review and distribution, the creation of customised and branded pitch reels, and secure preview of high-value pre-release content.
About MTV Oy
MTV Oy is Finland’s leading commercial television company and video content house. MTV’s media family includes the MTV Katsomo streaming service, the TV channels MTV3, MTV Sub and MTV Ava, as well as MTV Uutiset, which broadcasts latest news on multiple channels.
MTV is part of Telia Company, one of the largest television companies in the Nordics, which leads the way for the development of the entire media industry.
An innovative workflow for the production of sports broadcasting for the Hangzhou Asian Games
The 19th Asian Games took place in Hangzhou in September and October 2023. Guangdong Radio and Television was contracted to cover the basketball competition on behalf of the host broadcast organization.
The goal was to provide high quality, exciting coverage in 4k Ultra HD of all the games, together with informative packages and summaries around the games. That called for sophisticated post production which could turn the content around very quickly.
Guangdong Radio and Television worked with EditShare’s partner in China, ThinkTone, to develop a core shared storage production system. This was built on a network of EFS storage nodes, linked by EditShare FLOW production asset management software.
FLOW makes it easy for users to find the material they need, and system administrators can direct individual content to bins in each edit workstation to speed up the process. FLOW panels are available for all the popular edit software packages, including Adobe Premiere Pro and BlackMagic DaVinci Resolve, so editors never have to leave the familiar environment.
Online Editing
Covering a major live sporting event is a big test for any production workflow, but the EditShare system delivered against all the demands. All the camera and other feeds, as SDI or IP, were acquired onto the EFS storage network whilst FLOW created proxies on ingest to make it easy for multiple users to start editing immediately. FLOW also automatically generated all the appropriate metadata to guide users to sort material.
Because ingest is completely automatic, it eliminates tedious linking and labeling in traditional workflows. Having both the full resolution and proxy material available maximizes the bandwidth while allowing large numbers of users to work simultaneously, creating different packages as the event is taking place. Editing while recording transforms the way that content is used in live events like this competition.
The result was lively and engaging coverage and analysis of every game of the tournament, thanks to the operational efficiency of the EditShare system. Operators and editors were able to focus fully on making the best possible content by saving them from dull and repetitive tasks, which were all fully automated.
The success of the project also paid tribute to the intuitive user interface, as well as the absolute reliability, of the EFS storage platform and FLOW production asset management. The EditShare environment ensured that the operators from Guangdong Radio and Television immediately felt sufficiently comfortable to rely on it for a very high profile, technically demanding production, with a large number of live events, all seen by audiences right across the continent.
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.
