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.
System designed and installed by EditShare’s Partner Jigsaw24 Media
Overview
Intermission Film is an award-winning marketing agency for film and television, handling trailers, titles, social content and print work for hits like Baby Reindeer, Black Doves, Skeleton Crew and recent Oscar nominees A Real Pain and Maria. With offices on three continents all working together to deliver Clio and Golder Trailer Award-winning content for clients who don’t like to be kept waiting, a joined-up storage workflow is key to their success.
“When I joined Intermission, each of the global offices was busy, but they were very siloed,” explains Ben Cryer, Intermission’s Group Operations Director. “But as we started getting more work from bigger studios, we had to become much more 24/7 in our approach. When you’re working with a studio in LA and they’re on deadline, they don’t care about time zones, so we needed a system that would allow the team in Australia to jump on to a project when the team in London finished for the day. That meant we needed much better collaboration and connectivity. At the same time, our existing Avid NEXIS storage needed replacing with something newer and bigger.”
The team considered a straightforward Avid expansion, but having added Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve seats to their editorial workflow they wanted something which, as Group Post-Production Engineer Kat Earles puts it, “would work with the way our company was growing, and make sure that no matter the software people were using, they could access secure storage at a larger scale.”
A switched-on storage partner
Enter Jigsaw24 Media. Having worked with Kat on previous projects at other facilities, they were brought on board to advise on a storage setup that could handle Intermission’s fast pace of growth and demand for a globally joined-up workforce. Their recommendation? EditShare’s EFS storage with built in FLOWworkflow management tools.
“Talking to Jigsaw24 Media and EditShare, it was very clear that EFS storage was a constantly evolving piece of kit from a company who were very switched on the more global, multi-site sort of solution that companies like us need, and who were bringing new ideas and new ways of working to the table,” Ben explains.
“The additional features of FLOW were really interesting to us because they meant we could work more closely with our wider post-production team,” Kat adds. Things like the review and approval features built into EditShare ONE mean that the storage isn’t a standalone thing, it integrates with other processes and allows us to cut costs by reducing the number of additional platforms we have to use.”
Ben Cryer – Operations Director, Intermission’s Group
Connecting global offices
Working with the Jigsaw24 Media team, Intermission began their transition to EditShare by setting up two EFS servers in their London office: one to act as a hub for video workflows, the other to handle print work and project documentation that needed to be accessed by all team members globally.
This streamlined approach to media management was particularly important to Intermission, who are operating a rapidly-expanding global business with a very small ops team who have to handle everything from innovation to support for multiple territories.
To help keep their IT estate to a manageable size and complexity, Jigsaw24 adited Intermission’s systems and recommended a series of simplifications, including consolidating all their remote access workflows into the user-friendly platform Parsec, automating archiving processes through Archiware and bringing their Mac estate under centralised control with Jamf device management. In order to keep things low-touch for Intermission’s busy team, their team handle licence management for these services, plus the company’s Avid estate.
Once the new workflow was established in London, an engineer was sent to Amsterdam to install and test EditShare at their offices there. “Having a partner like Jigsaw24 Media takes a big weight off my shoulders for projects like the Amsterdam deployment, because they’re able to give us that support on an international basis,” says Kat. “I’d actually just had surgery right before the install, so it was great knowing there was someone on the ground to handle things and I didn’t have to worry about it.”
“Knowing we’ve got someone at the end of the phone who can help us if the wheels come off is important,” agrees Ben. “Particularly the fact that it’s someone who has been involved since the beginning, knows our setup and knows what we’re trying to achieve. If I call Jigsaw24 Media, there’s no-one asking ‘okay, how is that configured?’ they already know. And that makes the whole problem-solving piece that much easier.”
”The whole relationship feels very collaborative; we’re able to meet regularly and let the team know what we’re working on and what we want to achieve, and they can come up with solutions that are suited to our way of working rather than trying to fit us into the mould of a big post house.”
Ben Cryer, Group Operations Director, Intermission
“We can look to the future”
“Our ultimate goal is to have EditShare in every office globally and an independent FLOW server in London that everyone will access via a DMZ [de-militarised zone],” says Kat. “Obviously that’s a big outlay so we’re not moving every office at once, but there’s been a lot of positive momentum and people want to change,” says Kat.
“We’re growing quickly, and because of how responsive EditShare and Jigsaw24 Media are, we’re able to set things up and change things as we go, which we wouldn’t have been able to do with our previous infrastructure, and they’re constantly releasing new types of storage and software features that give us more options,” says Kat. “We can look to the future and trust that we have storage that will work with us.”
EditShare is an Emmy Award-winning technology leader, supporting storytellers through collaborative media workflows across on-premise, cloud and hybrid architectures. It offers scalable storage and collaboration for media businesses and at every stage of the video production process from storyboarding to screening.
The software is inherently open, encouraging workflow collaboration, third-party integrations and content sharing across the entire production chain. Where required, the software is backed by high performance, high availability designed specifically for the demands of media storage, management and delivery. The comprehensive offering covers multi-level content storage for production and post, along with innovative asset and workflow management software, plus specialized and highly valued tools for content review and distribution, the creation of customized and branded pitch reels, and secure preview of high-value pre-release content.
About Jigsaw24 Media
Jigsaw24 Media is a specialist division of Jigsaw24 and provides services and technology solutions to the media and entertainment, education and corporate sectors. It’s the only UK-based company of its kind that has in-house system integration capabilities. Jigsaw24 Media’s team of industry-recognised experts design, deliver, integrate and support end-to-end solutions for some of the nation’s biggest broadcasters and facilities, underpinned by partnerships with over 30 leading technology vendors including Avid, Adobe, AWS, Nutanix and EditShare. With headquarters in Nottingham, an office and demo space at the heart of London’s post-production community, and a nationwide support team, Jigsaw24 Media provides local services on a national scale. For more information visit https://media.jigsaw24.com/
Press Contact Katharine Guy katharine.guy@editshare.com
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
The variety of editing that goes on at a broadcaster would amaze you. There are promos, documentaries, news stories, specials and more. Some projects take weeks, and some projects take hours. The technical infrastructure is imposing, but it’s also mobile. Add to that a changing landscape of viewers’ tastes, outside consultants and inside pressures.
To get an inside look at the world of broadcast video editing, we interviewed Gregg Ginnell, former senior editor and post-production supervisor at the CBS affiliate Kiro 7 in Seattle, WA. He’s had a career spanning more than two decades and was keen to share his insights.
Meet a broadcast editor
“I worked in broadcast for a large number of years. I did a lot of documentaries. I did a lot of promotion. I didn’t do a lot of news,” relates Grinnell. “I did do news for a couple of years after leaving Kiro when I worked for Al Jazeera America. That was a completely different news experience.” When an interview opens with that breath of experience, you know that you are going to get some interesting insights into the world of video editing for broadcast.
Video editing for film, corporate and broadcast is all storytelling. But Gregg pointed out that there’s a vast difference between a “three-and-a-half minute story” and a “six-shot” news segment. While working at Kiro, the work got split up between team members who were good with quickly putting together a series of shots and moving on and those who spent days crafting a story.
He related a story of a colleague comparing the cutting of short segments to “making sandwiches.” That kind of edit had to be put together quickly to meet deadlines. Gregg focused on pieces that involved interviews and promotional spots for the station.
Film vs broadcast editing
I asked Gregg what the biggest difference was in the mindset of an editor working on a film vs. one working in broadcasting. His reply was, “Consultants.”
I didn’t expect that answer. He explained that every 12-18 months, a consultant would be brought into the station to give their perspective on trends in broadcast and how to gain market share. Each time, there was a different person, but they were all from the same firm. Sometimes their guidance would directly contradict each other or go back and forth between recommending a trend, advising against it, and then recommending it again.
Gregg shared that the advice of one consultant was to focus on the local news talent for their promo spots. So they went out and shot footage and tied that in with graphics to create a personal connection between the talent and the audience. Eighteen months later, another consultant from the same firm came in. This person advised that they need to drop the focus on talent and emphasize the news itself. Gregg’s team went to work on the new direction and crafted a whole new set of promos.
A year or so went by, and, you guessed it, the next consultant from the firm said to highlight the talent. At this point, Gregg’s team showed them the promo package from the prior campaign and simply asked, “Like this?”
Running decisions through the lens of outside consultants also led to feedback around everything from how many shots should be in a story to the content of the promotional packages. This dynamic leads to a balancing act for broadcast editors between their instincts on telling a story and outside feedback based on market research.
For instance, a story might go off for review, and the feedback would come back as “We love this story, but your shot count is too low.” Gregg recalled thinking, “Well, actually, it has just the right number of shots.” But at the end of the day, you do your best work and try to balance those competing interests.
This is in contrast to the work that Gregg did for the broadcaster Al-Jazeera America. In his experience, they deferred to the editor to determine the dynamics of the edit, even if it meant a piece was a few seconds longer than initially planned.
Editing three-and-a-half-minute packages that took the editor’s lead feels more like a documentary filmmaker’s approach than working in a typical newsroom.
Grinnell made an interesting comparison between documentary and news editors, saying, “I love news editors. I can’t do their job. I’m a little too frenetic. But I know news editors who became documentary editors. I don’t know any documentary editors who became news editors.”
It appears that once you’ve had a chance to tell long form stories, you just keep coming back for more.
Promo Editing
Gregg spent much of his time crafting “promos.” These spots air during commercial breaks and promote the news programming of the local station.
A lot more effort goes into editing promos than your evening news stories. This demonstrates the broad spectrum of talent that needs to be brought to the table at your local broadcaster. Some editors need to be fast. Gregg mentioned an editor who cut 62 packages in eight hours!
On the flip side, Gregg would spend half a day dialing in the color grade for a single promo spot. The message, visuals, motion graphics and sound would all be coordinated to reinforce the brand message for that season.
That difference in editing jobs perfectly illustrates Gregg’s comparison of editing a documentary vs a last-minute promo. He went on to describe it, “If I’m working on a documentary, I’m working directly with the producer, and we’re working every day together, and we are creating it from whole cloth. And that is a completely different experience than how [if] somebody comes in and drops a script down and going, [and says] ‘we got to promote this thing and we got to do it in the next two hours.’ And those are all really different, almost different jobs.”
Learning to shoot helps you edit better
As an editor, you are always looking to grow your storytelling skills. Gregg related, “I’ve always told everybody that I didn’t become a good editor until I became a better shooter. Go out and have to shoot your own stuff, and [when] you get back into the bay, there’s no one else you can blame.”
Many shooters who started off as editors develop strong skills as interviewers. “Where you’re sitting there listening and you go,” Gregg recounted, “Oh, my story’s changing now! There’s nothing I love more than editing in my head.”
You can see from Gregg’s career how the disciplines of editing, shooting and interviewing all work together in the head of the filmmaker to produce a better story. It’s a good reminder that in this age of specialization, there’s still value in combining the skills of a generalist with an area of specialization.
Working remotely
Working remotely was a shock to many industries, but post-production had already laid in place much of the infrastructure to go remote. This preparation allowed editors to remote into their AVID workstations from home and crank out edits. Google docs, Slack and Zoom provided other means for collaboration. Broadcasters all over the world also began to use advanced tools like MediaSilo.com for review/approval, tracking versions and managing assets. These tools combined to really remake the landscape of post-production.
Gregg shared about a campaign he edited for an app that focused on the footwear market. The shooters were in NYC, the graphic designer was in Utah, motion graphics were in California, and he was editing from Seattle. With the proliferation of mobile video capture and distributed teams, we’re going to see more and more of this kind of collaboration.
But along with the ability to work from anywhere comes the importance of security. MediaSilo helps broadcasters secure their assets with SafeStream technology. SafeStream enables visible watermarks and invisible forensic watermarking so that you can track any leaks back to their source.
Conclusion
Getting to know this legendary Seattle broadcast editor, Gregg Grinnell, was an honor. He has a passion for editing that is still burning strong after decades in the business.
Grinnell’s experiences remind us that being an editor is an act of service. Sometimes, you serve a client, a consultant, or a director, but you always serve the story.
It’s inspiring to see how even though consultants come and go and technology changes, the need for crafting compelling stories only increases. It causes us to ask ourselves, “How will I adapt to a shifting landscape? What core skills can I continue to develop that will remain relevant no matter what the future holds?” Those questions will help editors remain sharp and stay in demand in this ever-changing landscape.
Building For The Future
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.”
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.
The Royal National Theatre – more usually referred to as the National Theatre, the National or just the NT – is one of the UK’s best known theatre venues. Founded in 1963, the reach and influence of the National has extended over the last 15 years beyond its concrete building on London’s South Bank. This is in part due to NT Live, the cinema programme of multi-camera captures of productions, distributed by satellite or DCP, to over 700 UK sites and more globally. Making the arts more accessible to a wider audience.
During the covid pandemic the National Theatre’s live performances were suspended but they adapted by creating the NT at Home streaming service. Initially it started as a program of free streams on YouTube with the full NT at Home SVOD service launching in December 2020. During this time the National Theatre discovered inefficiencies in the infrastructure when faced with a large increase in captured content, so they needed to look at the addition of post production storage. Central to this was the installation of an EditShare EFS 300 storage system, which was designed and implemented by Tyrell.
“When the pandemic hit, we were no longer able to capture new material and the cinemas were closed as well,” comments Jim Cross, Senior Post Production Manager, National Theatre. “But part of our Arts Council remit as a publicly funded organization is to bring theatre to our audiences. Because of this we started putting out productions free on YouTube, which became the NT At Home platform. To support that we went from a team of 15 to now nearly 60 people, who now work on the dual delivery of NT Live for cinema and purpose capture for NT at Home.”
Cross explains that these services along with the requirement to promote shows in the theatre, as well as the rise in the volume of work for the internal learning department meant their workload increased significantly. As a result, both the production/post-production and archiving departments realised the three legacy servers that had been used since the mid-2010s were no longer suitable for the increased demands being put on them. “It was very hard drive-based, with IT ‘non-video’ servers that weren’t specifically for media,” he says. “And these days we do less live satellite, we do more full post-production workflows in house, including editing, mixing and grading, so we needed a more dynamic, powerful and robust solution.”
This has meant there is a lot more media moving around and being worked on by the edit team, which has doubled in size in the last three years. Cross explains that by the end of 2021 the increased workload meant the NT was beginning to run out of storage. “During the covid pandemic everyone was working from home and shuttling hard drives back and forth,” he says. “We knew we were going to come back into the building, but it became very obvious we needed near-line, hot storage. A NT Live show takes on average 4 terabytes of storage and it would take three, four or five hours to ingest that. Now with EditShare EFS we can do it in just 45 minutes.”
The NT’s digital content is archived using the Preservica cloud-based platform and although that is a self-contained operation, it needed to connect to any new near-line storage set-up in a more efficient way than previously. “Historically there wasn’t such a smooth workflow process around getting material from the digital media team into the archive involved a lot of local knowledge on the part of the editors, producers and me,” comments Post-Production Archive Manager Zoe Bowers, who describes herself as sitting between the digital media team and the archive. “The move towards the new EditShare system came in tandem with thinking we all needed to know where content is so we can find it, particularly as so much more is being created.” Tyrell’s sales and marketing director, Dan Muchmore adds, “it’s a common issue that every facility hits as they grow and it’s our speciality as a technical partner to help migrate workflows away from a single source or knowledge to a way of working that benefits the business, regardless of team size and structure”.
The NT previously did not have a digital asset management system but worked on a SMB file share arrangement, with folders for short-term and long-term storage. With both Tier 1 and Tier 2 server systems nearing the end of their operational lives, Jim Cross and Zoe Bowers instigated a request for proposal (RFP) process, with EditShare being their primary choice for a new system.
“I worked with Tyrell on the installation of the system into our server room, which involved the networking and commissioning of the 256TB EditShare hardware,” Tom Rhodes, Head of IT Infrastructure explains. “But really it was all quite self-contained within the EditShare technology. It’s now utilized on our 10Gb infrastructure, which allows us to ingest material a lot quicker than before. EditShare also has its FLOW media asset management software and although we haven’t fully implemented this yet, it is something we looked at when selecting the system.”
The National Theatre has been using EditShare for 18 months and in that time, Jim Cross concludes, the new storage installation has changed the way the post-production process for the NT. “Previously the team would take material from the SANs and save content locally and on drives,” he says. “Now, the machines themselves are clear of data and we don’t use hard drives in that way anymore because of how fast it is. This means anyone can pick up a project at any point because everything is in EditShare. It has revolutionized the way we work.”
The NT has always led the way in representing the arts in the UK. Constantly evolving to find ways to make productions more accessible to wider audiences, both geographically and financially. NT Live began as a fantastic initiative and become a leader in the event cinema industry. What we love most about their hunger to evolve is that the NT team worked hard to not only maintain the value of the arts to its patrons but also the actors and production teams, who would have been impacted by the loss of work.
This evolution continues to this day, with Jim, Zoe and Tom not only identifying their post production inefficiency but also the importance of their roles as stewards of the NT archive. Inefficiencies often result in additional expenditure, which could instead be used by the arts and as we know the NT archive is important for future generations. EditShare solves both these problems whilst giving the team another opportunity to evolve again.
Chello is an agency that believes the role of brand has never been more important. They also bridge the gap between brand and content and promote the ethos that when you know who you are as a brand and what you represent, what you say and what you create all becomes a lot more meaningful. Chello also adopt a similar forward-thinking approach to their technology and post-production storage solutions, which recently they upgraded with Digistor and EditShare.
Chello co-founder and creative director, Tristan Velasco
Chello co-founder and creative director, Tristan Velasco, explained, “We had just moved to new offices and figured it was the right time to upgrade our storage solutions. Previously, we were using Synology NAS’ but we knew we needed something that was more reliable at much higher speeds – particularly to be able to edit 4K+ footage. We had been speaking to a number of agencies that we knew in video production and EditShare had been mentioned a few times. When we got in touch with Digistor, it was the one they recommended as well, so we felt confident enough that it would be the right system for us.”
They also required automated backup and archive solutions, via archiware, in order to be able to easily back up and archive projects. Then the storage solution had to be easily scalable and everyone in the agency needed to have remote access to the server through the company’s network.
Velasco added, “Put simply, the EditShare solution easily met all of our requirements and we are yet to even maximise how we use EditShare FLOW.”
In total Chello purchased EditShare’s EFS software defined ecosystem and EditShare FLOW media management for their data storage solution and daily workflow.
Typically, they use EFS to store all recent and live projects across video, animation and design and manage all project files via a templated folder structure. This contains all raw footage and source files including photography, 3D assets, illustrations, all project files and their various versions, delivery files across video, animation and design and production related files.
Velasco continued, “When we were researching the benefits of EditShare I remember other solutions being in the mix but, based on the recommendations from Digistor and our own subsequent research, we felt EditShare was by far the best solution that met our needs at the time and into the future. The main thing for us was how smart EditShare products are and how the entire EditShare solution was put together for us by Digistor. We had a really clear idea on what it needed to do based on our requirements above and it met all of those requirements.”
According to Velasco their EditShare solution and relationship with Digistor give Chello a clear edge as he concluded, “From a technology and workflow perspective, the edge EditShare gives us is primarily around the speed at which we are able to work on projects requiring really large file sizes, the security of our backup systems and archive systems. It’s second to none. We’ve been working with Digistor for many years now and without having an IT department, the team that we work with there really feel like they’re an extension of our team. They are incredibly responsive to any request – especially emergencies, are patient with managing our requests and are just really nice people. Especially for me, who had managed all IT issues prior to the engagement, it has saved me a lot of time being able to rely on Digistor to support myself and the team. In other words, Digistor are an absolute 10 out of 10 for me.”
EditShare is a technology leader that enables collaborative media workflows on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid configuration. With customer and partner success at the heart of EditShare’s core values, our open software solutions and robust APIs improve workflow collaboration and third-party integrations across the entire production chain, ensuring a world-class experience that is second to none. The high-performance software lineup includes media optimized shared storage management, archiving and backup, and media management, all supported with open APIs for extensible integration.
EditShare’s cloud-enabled remote editing and project management technology was recently recognized by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) with a prestigious 2021 Emmy® Award for Technology and Engineering.
About Digistor
Managing Director Andrew Mooney founded Digistor in 1990. His experience designing, installing, and maintaining services for broadcasters and post-production houses had made it clear to him that the industry needed a group of experts who could look at things objectively. The result is a company that for over 30 years has been providing elegant solutions to leading organisations in the most technically demanding application areas. Digistor provides solutions for the creation, management, storage, and distribution of digital assets. From post-facilities to broadcast operations, from single studios to collaborative, networked environments operating across a room or across the world, Digistor empowers its customers through smarter technology and service solutions.
For more information on Digistor, please visit the website at www.digistor.com.au
Shared storage environments are critical to the successful operation of all modern-day education institutions. At the top of that tree are some of Australia’s oldest and most prestigious universities, including the University of Sydney and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), both of whom use EditShare storage solutions supplied by Digistor.
EditShare shared storage solutions in use at the University of Sydney
The University of Sydney’s Manager, Media Production, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Indigenous Strategy and Services, Tom Cavdarovski, explained, “Our media team has grown over the last few years and our postproduction workflow has changed to meet the growing demands. We use EditShare systems and find them particularly suitable for a growing production slate.”
The University of Sydney’s Manager, Media Production, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Indigenous Strategy and Services, Tom Cavdarovski
UTS’ Client Computing Manager Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Simon Prowse, agreed saying, “The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) runs courses in communications including journalism and production. These courses include sound production, film and animation. In the past FASS used a different shared storage solution but decided to move to a more open environment for production workflows. UTS has now been using an EditShare solution for around 9 years has recently acquired new EFS storage and FLOW licences for student off site usage for editing.”
EditShare shared storage solutions in use at the University of Technology Sydney
For the University of Sydney, the requirements were centred around a secured, robust, 4K editing storage solution with Cavdarovski adding, “We have huge amounts of 4K data that needs to be accessed across multiple editors. Our content is captured on country with drones, C300 and DSLR cameras. We also produce multicamera live stream events, so having a post-production system workflow that integrates with creating pre-packaged content, is an important part of our workflow.”
In UTS’ case the university required a sizeable amount of storage capacity and bandwidth to handle up to 60 concurrent connections for editing from personal and group project spaces on the server.
Prowse said, “This time around we chose 10GB Ethernet with 20GB link aggregation to a 10GB switch. Since COVID there is more need for flexibility and a need for more students to work remotely. We also have students studying remotely overseas so the need for working from the server remotely was important. As most of the editing is done with Adobe, the Premier plugin was desirable.”
UTS’ Client Computing Manager Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Simon Prowse
It’s clear for both universities that the EditShare solutions for education shared storage environments are a vital part of their courses and day-to-day operations as Cavdarovski explained, “The EditShare system Digistor installed has RAID redundancy, integrates with existing university infrastructure and allows our editors to work in various 4K resolutions seamlessly.”
Prowse echoed this sentiment saying, “It’s a flexible arrangement for constantly changing circumstances. Openness and flexibility of the solution is important and EditShare meets this perfectly. Courses and requirements change and we can easily add capacity, bandwidth or capabilities with plugins.”
The University of Sydney uses a 98TB EFS 300 system with 8 clients PC connections. These are both Mac and Windows computers, all connected via 10Gb network ethernet connections and all editors are able to open Adobe Creative Cloud projects at any time.
EditShare’s cloud platform EditShare FLEX has evolved to a suite of turnkey, ready-to-go solutions for remote collaborative workflows and video editing in the cloud. Users of EditShare FLEX choose the modules they need – including edit in the cloud and multi-premises synchronisation – and implement them in their own cloud account. This gives users an easy opportunity to implement cloud solutions which education institutions often consider the best way to utilise a combination of on-premise and cloud storage and editing.
There are many on premises and cloud solutions at UTS. They run an animation render farm for the faculty that is on server blades in the data centre and processing of jobs is distributed to around 300 lab computers. UTS also has an HPC environment as well an Isilon which is widely used across the university. The faculty EditShare EFS can backup to Isilon which represents a cost saving to leverage other products in the EditShare solution.
Workflows are obviously at the core of these solutions as Cavdarovski explained, “We have a mix of projects throughout the year, some are quick turnaround with a single producer and editor, while others are 12 months in post and up 50 individual videos with shared resources across multiple editors.”
Prowse added, “We keep our workflows reasonably basic. EditShare is the file server for students’ media work. The workflows involve group spaces for group projects and these have a set folder structure. Students also have personal scratch space with quotas. Class materials are in spaces accessible to students from either the lab and suite facilities or on their BYO devices accessible from home via the client and VPN or on campus.”
A UTS shared storage workflow may also involve students borrowing faculty sound, lighting and video equipment and doing a shoot. They will then upload content to EditShare via a lab or studio computer.
It’s clear that both Cavdarovski and Prowse are big fans of the EditShare solutions for education shared storage environments they purchase from Digistor as Cavdarovski highlighted, “We have used smaller storage solutions in the past, but found they are very limited and lacked performance beyond one or two concurrent users compared to the EditShare solution we now have. We really like the FLOW application that we purchased as part of the EditShare package. It allows the team of editors to log content easily, accurately and create proxies for working offline and working flexibly. FLOW helps to ensure that we can always store, retrieve and broadcast the appropriate content.”
Whilst Prowse said, “We feel that EditShare has a flexible and futureproofed product that is not proprietary or rigid. It’s modular so we are not paying for capabilities that we do not need now but have the option to add capability, licences or services going forward. Lots of storage capacity in the EditShare solution is important and being on premise, we can leverage the fast network for connections, transfers and backup.”
When asked to explain what edge using the EditShare solutions Digistor provided gives their university Tom Cavdarovski concluded, “The EditShare system enables our team to work more efficiently, reducing menial tasks and streamlining complex workflows. This frees the team up to work in more creative and innovative space, which in this industry, is a what customers and partners want from content producers. Our experience with Digistor has always been very professional, I have been purchasing postproduction systems for over 20 years and they understand how to work with clients who work in large complex organisations, like a university.”
Whilst Simon Prowse concluded, “We have had excellent experiences with both EditShare and Digistor. This is our third renewal of hardware over 9 years and the sales and project process has been smooth each time. Any support issues are dealt with promptly and professionally too. My IT team has to be across a huge amount of knowledge to effectively manage all of the moving parts in this complex university environment. Hence, we need to rely on good support for specialised solutions, applications and facilities. Thus, the great confidence we have in Digistor and EditShare is a very important factor for us.”
EditShare is a technology leader that enables collaborative media workflows on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid configuration. With customer and partner success at the heart of EditShare’s core values, our open software solutions and robust APIs improve workflow collaboration and third-party integrations across the entire production chain, ensuring a world-class experience that is second to none. The high-performance software lineup includes media optimized shared storage management, archiving and backup, and media management, all supported with open APIs for extensible integration.
EditShare’s cloud-enabled remote editing and project management technology was recently recognized by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) with a prestigious 2021 Emmy® Award for Technology and Engineering.
About Digistor
Managing Director Andrew Mooney founded Digistor in 1990. His experience designing, installing, and maintaining services for broadcasters and post-production houses had made it clear to him that the industry needed a group of experts who could look at things objectively. The result is a company that for over 30 years has been providing elegant solutions to leading organisations in the most technically demanding application areas. Digistor provides solutions for the creation, management, storage, and distribution of digital assets. From post-facilities to broadcast operations, from single studios to collaborative, networked environments operating across a room or across the world, Digistor empowers its customers through smarter technology and service solutions.
For more information on Digistor, please visit the website at www.digistor.com.au
