COVID has most of the world following ‘shelter-at-home’ and ‘work-from-home’ protocols. And, it certainly looks like we will be observing some form of social distancing for some time as we cautiously step back into what’s to be the new normal. Of course, for many of us, that means endless Zoom meetings (thank goodness for the stability of Zoom) while we attempt to go on with our daily lives. In between those work and school moments, we are seeking some moments of entertainment. All of this has creators of video content working overtime to do what they love – tell us stories – just in a different way.

Our newscasters are collaborating to deliver the news from their homes. Late night and daytime talk shows are getting creative on entertaining us – inclusive of guest celebrity appearances – from their homes. Somewhere out there, someone is creating a reality TV series about life during COVID. Hopefully they will run the gamut of heartbreaking, funny, emotional and informing stories to share with future generations.  

All of this still requires filming, and editing, and producing. Very little of this was done remotely before. We are all learning as we go. While we all step out of our comfort zone a bit, we have the opportunity to take advantage of amazing technologies that are right at hand and turn lemons to lemonade. There is one thing for sure… we are getting good at Zoom.  

Several days ago, I was at the end of a long week and sat back to do my weekly status report. I realized that I spent a good percentage of my day on video calls. Internal meetings, webinars – those we produced and those I attended, happy hour with friends, and catching up with the parents. It made me realize that we aren’t really social distancing as much as we are physical distancing. We are using video more than ever before and have an amazing opportunity to capture these moments and share them with the world.

This got me thinking – could we bring together the world of video conferencing and video production so that anyone can craft stories from all this new material we are capturing. Quickly editing together Zoom recordings of a webinar into bite-sized highlights, creating an education package from a Zoom classroom (removing the five minute chaos half way through when one student spilt drink over their laptop) and helping news agencies quickly pull together different recordings to formulate a heartwarming interview (without the “you are on mute” prompts).  

With this in mind, I started playing around with the combination of Zoom and EditShare’s Flow media management tool. I thought – what if we could give any creator/producer an easy way to ingest all their recordings, index the associated metadata, and easily combine them into a timeline to produce a story – all in the cloud. After all, we know how to do this. We do it all the time. Just usually with different inputs.

The video I’m sharing with you here is the culmination of those efforts. If you want to simplify the process of telling stories with EditShare’s Flow and Zoom recordings, we have an integration ready for you to try. 

So, get in touch. Let us work with you. Let’s create amazing, together.

Spring has finally come to Beijing. I can’t tell you how much I looked forward to the feeling of warm sunlight on my face, the happy sound of children playing, and – at last – being able to live my life normally.

I love to go for a run outside. It’s a great start to the day. But for what seems like a long time now, these completely normal things have not been normal at all. 

The Chinese Lunar New Year is a huge event, especially for families, who often travel thousands of miles to be with each other. It’s a country-wide celebration, and probably the biggest movement of the Chinese population each year. So a contagious outbreak like COVID-19 at this particular time, is the worst possible thing that could have happened.

Three days after the outbreak was identified, Wuhan was locked down. Wuhan is more than 1,000 KM from Beijing, but we felt the impact instantly. Within days we were advised not to go out and meet friends, family or colleagues. 

That was January 26th. 

Thanks to modern technology, I did not have to change too much to connect with my friends and family and work from my home. Life could continue by using the internet and the cloud. 

I work for EditShare, a technology company in the Media and Entertainment business. EditShare is headquartered in the USA, with offices in the UK and all over the world including one in Beijing. So, we have a practice of staying close through video and audio conference calls as well as other forms of digital collaboration. Utilizing those tools also helps me be productive in China where our customers are spread over vast distances and we can’t always meet in person. 

Over the last decade there’s been what can only be described as a revolution in production. It used to be that because of the huge files, the low bandwidth and the massive computing power needed, the only way to work was onsite at the production or broadcast facility. 

But now, that’s changed completely. In fact, the whole production and post-production process – logging, editing, transcoding, delivering – is moving into the cloud, with total automation to simplify the workflow. The cloud isn’t “anywhere,” but at the same time it’s everywhere. 

So working at home or remotely is as rich and creative an experience as being in a dedicated facility. And thankfully, my company has set up its own internal business processes to enable the same experiences.

During the shutdown, I was able to work closely with our local channel partner ThinkTone (XinTong) Technology on ways to stay connected to our customers and continue our business activities. We shared best practice information and offered online presentations on how to use the EditShare remote production technology. Our ability to continue collaborating helped our customers. 

As an example, we successfully continued to work on a major customer project. The customer is a Chinese conglomerate and one of the world’s top five technology companies. It has multiple divisions with quite separate functions. The two divisions we worked with are – video and cloud.

The  video division had a major new reality series planned for release in the first half of 2020. The team wanted to be able to distribute the video from the production to all of the many stakeholders for review – without having to be in the same room, building or even city. It was agreed that we would run EditShare software directly on cloud division infrastructure to accomplish this.

The team began the testing of EditShare Flow and EFS running on the cloud at the beginning of 2020 – while we were on lockdown. We held weekly meetings to update the information between each of the interested parties. At times these meetings had up to twenty people across three continents. 

We were able to do this during the lockdown because everyone was able to work remotely – that’s the beauty of the cloud, and I guess it’s the way forward for all of us. 

I was shut inside for nearly two months. I learned to adapt to the current situation, as my business like many others, must move forward during the crisis. And while there have been inconveniences, I am more efficient than ever and better prepared for the unexpected. And the next time a crisis happens, there will be no reason for everything to stop. Because of cloud technology, working at home is now just “working.” 

In China, we have a saying that inspired us during this challenging time: “winter will be over and the spring will come.”  Thank you for reading this. I wish everyone, wherever they are in the world, to stay safe, and I hope spring comes soon to you, too. 

As COVID-19 (Coronavirus) spreads across the globe, it is clear that its spread will not be limited to isolated outbreaks and is developing into something much more widespread. So it makes sense that governments, corporations, and individuals take reasonable precautionary measures appropriate to stop its propagation.

At EditShare, we have watched with concern as the human and economic toll has continued to rise. We have been asking what can and should we do to help. As technologists, scientists and engineers, our response should be directed not just to limiting the effects of the current outbreak, but to considering how we can protect ourselves, our livelihoods and our industries today, and in the future should this happen again. It’s now very clear that a novel virus can appear unexpectedly from anywhere, putting the world on alert, and, in the process, cause significant disruption.

Of course, a degree of inconvenience is not only tolerable but completely acceptable if it saves lives and avoids mass discomfort. But a safe, stable and liveable society depends on a functioning economy. There is no way around this. Managing the situation so that lives can return to normal only happens if essential parts of the economy keep going. 

Luckily, the last few years have seen a very significant shift in our ability to work remotely, and that could be the key to minimizing future outbreaks. Digital communication is at the heart of this and video conferencing via Skype, Zoom, and FaceTime are part of many people’s lives – especially when they are spread across a city, country or the entire planet. We’ve not only learned to embrace and leverage these technologies through work but also to keep connected with friends and families around the world.

At EditShare, we have an entire collaborative video production workflow in the cloud, and in the future, all of our products will scale geographically across the globe and move from bare metal servers in the office to the most abstracted and virtual systems in the cloud. 

But it’s not just the physical ability to transcend distance and work remotely that matters. It’s also that telling stories – whether through traditional or digital media – has more influence on the way a society changes than almost everything else. In times of crisis, there is an additional responsibility on storytelling enablers: the technologists that build the real and virtual means to create stories and get them delivered to their audience. To keep workers, friends and families connected and functioning in society at a time when they most need to be.  

We don’t want to make this an opportunistic shout-out for our technology. Far from it. We want to be open and to work alongside all our friends, colleagues and competitors in the industry and beyond, to make sure that during this episode and whatever comes next, we help to keep things going, keep our businesses moving, keep our lives connected, share our stories and learn from this experience in ways that will make us a stronger and more connected society in the future.

To support remote collaboration across the creative community during this challenging moment in time, EditShare is making its FLOW media management solution available for free now through July 1, 2020. FLOW enables individuals as well as large creative workgroups to collaborate on story development with capabilities to perform extensive review approval from anywhere in the world. Complete this form and one of our FLOW experts will follow up.