The MediaSilo by EditShare team spoke with games marketing expert Stephen Hey on the role of video assets in launching game titles.
With nearly three decades in video games marketing to his name, Stephen Hey is one of the most experienced freelancers in the business. His career includes Marketing Director for EA studio Chillingo, leading lifestyle PR for Ocean Software and Infogrames, founding a games creative agency, and now freelancing for the likes of Wargaming, Bossa Studios and Merge Games. Stephen started his own consultancy HeyStephenHey in 2017. Stephen helps developers, publishers, educational and government bodies, and other companies working in the games industry with their marketing strategy.
We gave Stephen some questions we’ve heard from our customers, and he provided his take on game trailers. He also set off to get the opinion of industry experts to find out exactly how far the role of game video assets have evolved, who’s involved, how to do it right, and what comes next.
HOW IMPORTANT IS A TRAILER THESE DAYS?
After nearly thirty years of video games, I can tell you the fact that the quality of the trailer can ‘make or break a game’ is still valid. We only really started making trailers in the mid-nineties for trade shows or sizzle reels, but now they are critical to any game campaign. Trailers changed and redefined games marketing.
What I think about these days is where we are now with trailer creation, especially given today’s insanely powerful graphics cards and game engines. With the ability for more developers to create at that ‘top-of-the-pyramid level’, there are still ways to generate a marketing breakout with the release of a couple of minutes of well-edited gameplay.
WHAT’S AN EXAMPLE OF A TRAILER WITH HIGH IMPACT?
When first-person footage of the PS5 Ride 4 breakneck speed, motion sickness-inducing motorcycle race went viral at the end of September 2021, it wasn’t because it was remarkably different from other actual action-cam footage. The difference was that it wasn’t real; it was from a game.
The gameplay from ‘Ride 4’, shot from a motorcycle riders’ point of view, was incredibly realistic and enthralling. As the viewer bolted around a rain varnished circuit lit by a gloomily overcast sky, you could feel every lean, the terror of near-misses and feel the wind rushing past. This was ‘next gen’ gaming doing what it was meant to do – deliver the photorealistic gaming that gamers have dreamt of for decades. This game was already delivering the astonished “Looks like GoPro footage” Tweets in the thousands.
HOW CAN A GAMES COMPANY USE A TRAILER TO REACH BEYOND ITS FAN BASE?
Releasing long-form gameplay like what happened with Ride 4 could be something to think about if you have an addressable market outside of the conventional games segments, in this case, motorsports fans. By releasing a trailer that focused on the accuracy of the simulation, developers may engage with that secondary audience of real-world fans and convince them to give the thing they love so much, IRL, a chance in the virtual world.
HOW NECESSARY IS IT TO PUSH THE VISUAL LIMITS OF PHOTOREALISM IN A TRAILER AND BROADER MARKETING CAMPAIGN?
Today’s tech can deliver photorealism, ‘like being in a movie’ — but is that what everyone wants? I’ve talked to many colleagues in the industry about this, including the founder of Atomhawk and co-founder of the new agency Big Thursday, Ron Ashtiani. Ron told me, “The world has shifted away from realism now. Ten years ago, it was enough to have ‘realistic’ looking graphics to wow the player, but today you need more. When the PlayStation 3 and 4 and the Xbox 360 came along, there was a substantial jump in ‘realistic’ looking graphics. However, these worlds were usually created using brown and grey colour palettes. But today, there is a shift towards realism combined with wild colour or stylistic choices. Cyberpunk 2077 is a great example of this with its highly contrasting colours and lighting in a realistically rendered world.”
While an array of technical issues hampered Cyberpunk 2077’s launch, the vivid yellow and neon blues of its marketing campaign, key art (the ‘pack front’ images used on digital stores) and out of home advertising did an outstanding job of conveying its look across all media. Using your aesthetic consistently across all your assets and metadata is especially important. When it looks as strong as this, it can aid discoverability on stores that are as densely populated as the PlayStation Store or Steam.
WHAT CAN MAKE A TRAILER BREAK THROUGH THE NOISE?
It takes a lot to surprise the games industry and its fans, but at 2021’s Gamescom (Europe’s largest games show, held annually in Cologne, Germany), an open-world adventure called DokeV from developer Pearl Abyss was on everyone’s lips. The game takes the established Pokemon genre but radically appears to shake it all up with a look and feel that feels genuinely unique, all communicated by an eye-popping three-minute trailer. Ed Thorn from games site RockPaperShotgun said, “Unlike everything else, which made some sort of sense, this game took a bold choice and made none. It made no sense at all. All we got was a barrage on the senses, and I respect that rogue attitude. Instead of opting for a PowerPoint presentation like its peers, it just blared K-pop at everyone for three minutes and then moseyed off like it was nothing.”
The intoxicating trailer for DokeV felt familiar yet stunningly different; the city looked like other cities in games, the characters weren’t radically different, the actual gameplay wasn’t anything especially new. But it was just like taking a visual cold shower and immediately went viral, with many journalists calling it the game of the show even though no one got to play it. It showed the power of a unique aesthetic and how a successful style and theme can become a crucial asset for a game, a valuable part of the IP.
THAT’S GREAT FOR HIGH-PROFILE STUDIOS, BUT WHAT ABOUT MORE MODEST-SIZED BUSINESSES?
More often than not, when a game surprises, intrigues, or delights me with a new look, it comes from an Indie studio rather than one of the vast developers or publishers. With up to 300 games a week now being published on PC games platform Steam, games need to work hard to have a point of difference, and style and theme is often key to this. AAA teams may be hundreds of people, many specialising in ‘micro’ niches like vehicle physics. Indie teams are made from much smaller groups of people who are used to being more flexible and turning things around to short deadlines.
I asked Bossa Studios’ Studio Art Director, Ben Jane, for his take on this; “You can take more risks in the Indie world because the production times can be shorter. You pay a premium with AAA because of the attention to detail and the quality of execution, and this takes so much more time, it’s harder to take risks. As an Indie, you can be more forgiving and reactive because your budgets are hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of millions.
However, AAA studios are pushing the boundaries, ‘Ratchett & Clank: A Rift Apart’ on PlayStation 5 is just jaw-dropping gorgeous and delivers a unique style,” said Ben.
IF THE GAME’S AESTHETICS ARE BECOMING AS SOPHISTICATED AND COMPELLING AS BIG-BUDGET FILMS, WHAT’S THE PURPOSE OF A TRAILER?
For marketing, trailers are still essential. A great new ‘breakthrough’ trailer sits at the top of the marketing funnel in creating awareness for your game.
I asked Sam Roberts, creative producer at game trailer house DoubleJump, for his opinion; “The cinematic game trailer is not dead; it is still absolutely the best way to sell a game. Two minutes of punchy editing, with clear, precise use of music and sound effects, will not be going away anytime soon,” he said.
But while a powerful ‘impact’ trailer is one of the most vital assets for a campaign, it is not the only video asset. Modern game campaigns will be made up of tens or even hundreds of pieces of video. Look at the official video channel for the incredible Forza Horizon 5, which lists about 30 video assets just on YouTube alone, ranging from deep dives into the recording of SFX to episodes of a Forza 5 Horizon magazine show.
And this isn’t just the big AAA titles; a roster of assets can be powerful for any game. Curating a community and building a tidal wave of support, even for the most ‘indie’ of titles, is vital in a market where 200+ games launch on Steam every week. So for campaigns to succeed, they need to have multiple videos, each with different objectives. An impact trailer will be about getting eyeballs, but then the engaged parts of that broad audience will want to know more about how a game plays. Interviews with developers and ‘making of’ mini-documentaries will bring your community closer to the developers and breed loyalty to the game. Unique gameplay mechanics can be demonstrated in shorter, focused ‘mechanics’ trailers, and you may want to spotlight the ‘craft’ behind your game with profiles of some of the team who created it. Again, these needn’t be the preserve of AAA — take this example for Creature in the Well.
HOW WILL EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES CHANGE THE WAY GAME TRAILERS ARE CREATED?
The new generation of consoles is now with us in the form of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, and they are powerful machines. Their graphics capabilities are unique, including the much-heralded ray tracing, by which scenes are rendered by simulating the actual rays of light in a game. This technique makes for much more realistic looking games and has been used in the tv and movie production industry for years, and the new consoles can render scenes using ray tracing on the fly.
Lighting Directors have long been a part of tv and film making specialised in creating light and mood for each scene. Now we have similar capabilities in games, and we will see similar roles evolve here. It would not surprise me that game trailer creators move from being ‘editors’ to fully-fledged cinematographers. In this video promo for Call of Duty: Vanguard, actual war photographers were sent ‘into the game’ to capture stills, and the results were stunning. Send a movie director in instead, and you are going to get some earth-shattering footage.
To go with the new hardware, there are new tools.
Unreal 5 is the latest version of Epic’s mighty game engine and comes fully loaded with graphics capabilities that promise to take things to another level. We’ll start seeing Unreal 5 crafted games soon with ‘Redfall’, ‘Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2’ and ‘STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl’ as well as many more on the way.
Epic has made Unreal 5 with cross-industry appeal, and Unreal has already been used in close to 200 movies and tv shows to date including ‘The Mandalorian’ and ‘Westworld’. I think this will breed more cross-fertilisation of both game and movie industries, with each learning from the other. We’ll see this reflected in games and the video assets we use to promote them and maybe a blurring of the lines resulting in productions that create both games and TV shows from AAA IP. If you invest in building a virtual world in an engine that can be used for games and tv, why not make both?
WHAT CAN STUDIOS AND PUBLISHERS DO TO MAXIMIZE THE IMPACT OF THEIR VIDEO ASSETS IN A GAME TRAILER?
Marketing starts at day one, it should be embedded in the game’s design, and this applies as much to a one-person Indie studio production as a 200 person AAA franchise. This should include the development of a style guide, including a colour palette branding, even the beginnings of the key art and UI design elements. The games that do this well are recognisable just from a screenshot, for example, ‘Cyberpunk 2077’, ‘Untitled Goose Game’ and ‘Hades’. The graphic language must be consistent across all assets, and this can only succeed where there is full collaboration between development and marketing.
If videographers are an entwined part of this, you give your game the best chance to have maximum impact. So work closely with them and bring them in earlier than you might think necessary to start thinking about how they could create that first ‘impact’ trailer or teaser piece.
Developers can go further still and add modes in games that allow professional game videographers to go into games like a cameraman would go into a warzone, as in the COD film mentioned earlier. Dedicated game video houses like DoubleJump and Big Thursday can explore a game from the raw build. They know how Unreal and Unity works and, if given the option, can go into the game to choose camera positions, light scenes, create tracking shots and capture incredible footage that is still ‘in engine’. This footage can then be used for video and static assets and allow the very best rendering of the game to be captured without taking valuable time from the developer team.
Finally, think about how the trailers will be consumed. When briefing in trailers and consumer videos or choosing footage, think of the devices
people will be watching them on. Very few people will be watching on the top-level equipment that edit houses and studios have. Often, these videos are being consumed on a phone screen (usually while the viewer is also doing other things on other screens). So don’t assume that the stunning visual detail and ear chewing audio will be experienced by everyone. Aim for the best scenario, of course, but imagine the worst!
ANY LAST WORDS OF ADVICE FROM YOUR 30 YEARS OF MARKETING GAMES?
Sure! Marketers and producers of game trailers should experiment, have fun, play with the tropes and challenge the preconceptions. Take inspiration from movie trailers, watch as many game trailers as you can and take note of the ones with lots of views even though the game may be relatively small or indie. Think about trailers and other assets from day one – even when concepting games because moving images sell games today more than ever and the trailer, those narrow slices of games, need to cut through more than ever before.
Remote collaboration during game development and publishing is chaotic. MediaSilo by EditShare was designed to help production professionals collaborate on video assets, and get work reviewed and approved faster. Get in touch with us today for a demo.
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Wednesday, February 17 Session 1: 9:00 AM ET (duration 1 hour)
Join us as we explore using logging and automation to maximize the value and efficiency of your media production workflows. We’ll set the stage, view the architecture in a workflow diagram, and see first hand what it’s like to use day to day. As always, we’ll finish with a Q&A where our Solutions Architects will answer your questions and discuss matching these capabilities to your unique needs.
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Dan Schaffer, Director, Partner Strategy and Enablement
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Wednesday, February 17 Session 2: 3:00 PM ET (duration 1 hour)
Join us as we explore using logging and automation to maximize the value and efficiency of your media production workflows. We’ll set the stage, view the architecture in a workflow diagram, and see first hand what it’s like to use day to day. As always, we’ll finish with a Q&A where our Solutions Architects will answer your questions and discuss matching these capabilities to your unique needs.
Access The Recording
Webinar Speakers
Dan Schaffer, Director, Partner Strategy and Enablement
David Bourke, Pre Sales Engineer
You don’t need me to tell you that 2020 was a year we’d rather have skipped. We didn’t have that option, so we’ve had to deal with it – just like our colleagues and friends across the industry. By staying true to our values and with the phenomenal talents of our team, we’ve been able to keep innovating and help our customers continue to create engaging and compelling stories.
#WinTogether
In addition to the pandemic, 2020 was a year characterized by tumultuous events and widespread unrest. But when I looked more closely, I found humility. It wasn’t always there, but when we all put others in our community first, it was amazing to see.
One of the things that I’ve seen is our team, our clients, and our partners really unite with a common goal: to emerge from these experiences with determination and an eye to the future. When I look back at 2020, I see collaboration with our partners and customers, showing and feeling empathy, and asking the question ”what can we do to win together” was the strongest and best thing we could have done. We listened, and, where we needed to, we evolved.
We made a strategic decision to accelerate and intensify our shift to the cloud
Fast Followers Cross the Chasm
Cloud innovation was not new to EditShare. In 2015, we introduced our first cloud solutions and in 2019 we embarked on a more aggressive investment in cloud. At that time, not everyone was ready. One customer even told me “you’ll take my content out of my house and into the cloud when hell freezes over”. But, 2020 validated our decision as the cloud quickly became a necessity for everyone. The market needed us to complete the journey and reinforce our cloud efforts as a strategic focus of the company. The pandemic was the catalyst for doubters to “cross the chasm” and become mass adopters. As existing cloud users were able to continue with their business of remote working and collaboration, the fast followers saw that it was time to make the jump.
Our overall feeling was to go back to our core values and tenets – flexibility, scalability and openness – and build a much broader solution. We designed seamless proxy editing and all the services around it. The cloud has enormous potential and we are just at the beginning. What we can do now is phenomenally useful, but the best is still to come.
No One Has a Monopoly on Innovation
As organizations are being forced by the circumstances to cooperate in the cloud, most are doing it because they want to, and that’s because it’s the best way.
The cloud is a fundamental shift in the computing paradigm. It has empowered buyers. It’s as far as you can get from the jaded approach of “Here’s my solution. Pay me some money and I’ll install it. Pay me some more money and I’ll upgrade it. Pay me still more money and I’ll make sure it keeps working”. The cloud changes this to a far more cooperative model, where multiple vendors open their products to integration, making it easier, not harder, to work with third parties. In this environment, it makes sense for there to be open standards; open APIs where integrations can happen as need and innovation dictate.
Nobody has a monopoly on innovation. Other vendors have products and services that can enhance our workflows. It means that customers can use the “best of breed” products in their workflows and still be confident that they’ll be supported and supportable into the future.
The cloud gets better because it’s always getting broader and wider. It encourages collaboration. It means that we can add our or another vendor’s services easily and without breaking anything. It means that we can issue upgrades every quarter and know that it’s not going to cause problems. Clients are always up to date. It’s a virtuous circle, where it’s in everybody’s interest to work together.
All Bets on Cloud
I’m seeing an upswing in the industry, even at this early stage. Spring is just around the corner. We don’t have the pandemic put to bed yet but – at last – there are some promising signs. By the middle of the year, we’ll be able to put what we’re learning right now into practice. For our customers this means savings and efficiency.
As the value of our clients’ content grows, so does the need for flexibility to cope with doing business in an era of dramatic and unexpected change. We’re on the side of anyone who is facing up to these challenges.
It would have been wrong to bet against Moore’s law. It was wrong to bet against the web. And now you should absolutely not bet against the cloud.
Ultimately, we give our clients flexibility, continuity and confidence. If you want to engage with our software, you can run it on any suitable hardware or you can take it with you into the cloud.
We’re going to take with us what we learned in 2020. Empathy with our customers – not a new thing, but number one going forward. And guiding customers towards the cloud. We’re there, ready for them: it is no longer a question of “if”, but “when”.
Just eleven years ago, when DaVinci Resolve was hardware-based and usually found in the plush and rarified grading suites of only the top level post production houses, there were around a hundred installations. It was expensive. But if you could afford it, or sometimes even if you couldn’t, it brought an extraordinary level of capability to its users.
Today, in a world that would have seemed unimaginable back then, DaVinci Resolve has more than 2M users, and has grown into one of the most fully featured applications in post production.
The last decade has changed technology and entertainment far beyond what anyone would have predicted, and on top of that, everyone is currently dealing with the consequences of a global pandemic. We’ve all had to innovate, so much so that new ways of working that might have taken years before have now been planned and implemented in just a few weeks.
In the new COVID world, remote working and collaboration are no longer “nice to have” but completely essential. At the same time, the amount of video content across the planet is showing explosive growth. When you put these factors together, they point inexorably to a need for a solution like FLOW, which is built on scalable distributed technology stack and optimized for media at every level.
DaVinci Resolve is a super-powerful application in itself but it was never designed to sit at the center of a global, interconnected digital media ecosystem. FLOW’s new integration with DaVinci Resolve Studio brings users into a new world of searchable media, remote working, and format flexibility.
Seamless workflow integration with FLOW
The FLOW workflow integration with Resolve 17 enables users to find digital assets fast
Blackmagic Design has cleverly engineered modern versions of DaVinci Resolve Studio to be open to integration with other software, not just through conventional plugins, but through workflows that are completely dynamic and highly functional.
As a result of close collaboration between EditShare and Blackmagic Design, FLOW is now available to DaVinci Resolve Studio users as a workflow integration. It brings all the enterprise power of FLOW’s search and media management right into the heart of the DaVinci Resolve Studio.
For DaVinci Resolve Studio users, it’s business as usual, working inside a familiar environment with nothing to learn except new and good stuff. Resolve creatives will find immediate and dynamic connection to their media on a shared and collaborative storage system. Crucially, DaVinci Resolve Studio users can stay in their comfortable and productive zone within the Resolve user interface. The moment they want to find media – or export it into the FLOW system – they can use the integration to manage that task.
Imagine the difference between having to find media locally based on a complicated and convoluted file structure and, instead, searching within Resolve Studio via the integration with FLOW for media that’s anywhere within the FLOW media management ecosystem.
Demo of FLOW integration with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Remote possibilities, ultra high resolution potential
FLOW doesn’t mind whether you’re working with full resolution media, mezzanine codecs, or proxy-level content. But for remote work, it’s likely that you’ll want to work with media files that are bandwidth-friendly. Also, for ultra high resolution codecs you may find it easier to work in a lightweight proxy to put less strain on your system”.
FLOW doesn’t lock remote workers into any particular format. In fact, if you have already downloaded media, FLOW allows you to toggle between multiple formats – Mezzanine and Proxy for example.
It also allows you to work inside DaVinci Resolve Studio with ultra-efficient formats that were not previously supported, such as H.264/MP4. FLOW’s import manager lets you choose all available formats and resolutions.
And of course, range markers and large amounts of metadata are preserved when material is imported to or exported from DaVinci Resolve Studio via the FLOW integration.
Let FLOW do the heavy lifting
There are many tasks, like rendering, that you can offload from your local DaVinci Resolve Studio workstation to the FLOW ecosystem. It’s like having all the power of the cloud, with the look and feel of your familiar working environment.
Seamless Proxy workflows With FLOW Automation providing the data wrangling service, Resolve users can now choose two different codecs, such as a mezzanine format and the UHD finished version to connect to concurrently. Work on a low powered laptop, cut using the mezzanine format, simply hit toggle to replace with UHD content, all on premise or in the cloud. It eases the burden on DaVinci Resolve Studio users and improves the workflow
The reviews are in: Integrated Review and approval process, directly from the DaVinci Resolve Studio timeline, thanks to AirFLOW
The bidirectional nature of the communication between FLOW and DaVinci Resolve Studio means that it’s a near-perfect tool for having your work reviewed and approved remotely. You’ll be able to grade in Resolve, upload a version for review via AirFLOW, get instant feedback from producers, creatives or directors and then bring it efficiently back into resolve with all remote comments appearing as notes on the resolve timeline, enabling you to fix issues at that exact moment.
As technology gets better, it gets simpler
Underneath the apparent simplicity of the FLOW integration with Resolve Studio, there’s some advanced technology at work. Years of experience, development and feedback from customers have allowed FLOW to evolve into an advanced ecosystem of media management functionality that scales across size and location. Behind the scenes, there’s a plethora of configurable options. On the surface, there’s a sharp, focused, uncluttered, familiar user experience.
Blackmagic Design and EditShare work in different fields, each to a high level of excellence. The openness of Blackmagic Design to this integration project has resulted in a massive increase in functionality for DaVinci Resolve Studio users, and has allowed FLOW to bring the benefits of enterprise-strength media management to right within the DaVinci Resolve Studio user experience.
-Import media from FLOW media management, edit and send for review all within the EditShare workflow integration for DaVinci Resolve -Remote users collaborate online through the AirFLOW web UI with results returned by to the workflow integration -Work with high resolution media or proxies and seamless pull in markers from FLOW asset data
Boston, U.S. and London, UK – November 10, 2020 –EditShare and Blackbird have joined forces to give media professionals more options when it comes to collaborating and editing video in the cloud. The integrated solution combines EditShare’s EFS scalable storage, FLOW media management, and open APIs with Blackbird’s cloud video editing and publishing platform. Optimized for both speed and mobility, Blackbird and EditShare connect users into the wider media ecosystem, making content of all types located across storage pools accessible in the proper formats for rapid editing and delivery to multiple platforms and channels.
EditShare CEO Conrad Clemson comments: “Cloud-based remote collaboration is no longer merely a “nice to have” but a necessity. Video production teams have rapidly pivoted their workflows to take advantage of the cloud’s scalability, flexibility and mobility. The combination of Blackbird and EditShare delivers added value to customers wanting to incorporate quick turnaround editing into a greater production workflow.”
Blackbird CEO Ian McDonough said: “Our exciting new partnership with EditShare is a great example of industry specialists building interoperable end to end solutions. Media assets stored and managed by EditShare solutions can now be accessed directly through Blackbird’s browser interface where they can be professionally edited and passed back or published.”
The companies will demonstrate their joint solution on Wednesday, 18th November at 9AM and 3PM ET. To register for the webinar please visit:
FLOW is EditShare’s media orchestration layer, with enterprise strength media management and automation. Built on a vertically integrated technology stack, it allows editors access to their media, wherever it is, and in any format. Fully proven in high pressure production environments, FLOW’s open APIs and media-engineered core make it ideal for fast and close integration with other great products.
EFS scalable storage enables media organizations to build extensive collaborative workflows on premise, in the cloud, or in hybrid installations, shielding creative personnel from the underlying technical complexity while equipping administrators and technicians with a comprehensive set of storage management tools. For Blackbird editors, EFS is a fast and flexible collaborative shared video storage solution with best-in-class project sharing.
About Blackbird
Blackbird is a professional grade video editor that functions in a browser even with a low bandwidth connection. It delivers unbeatable speed, scalability and richness of editing features. The Cloud-native platform allows users to rapidly go to market with their content, bringing massive efficiencies across all organizations.
About Blackbird plc
Blackbird operates in the fast-growing SaaS and cloud video market and has created the world’s most advanced suite of cloud-native computing applications for video, all underpinned by its lightning-fast codec. Blackbird’s patented technology allows for frame accurate navigation, playback, viewing and editing in the cloud. Blackbird underpins multiple applications, which are used by rights holders, broadcasters, sports and news video specialists, esports, live events and content owners, post-production houses, other mass market digital video channels and corporations.
Since it is cloud-native, Blackbird removes the need for costly, high end workstations and can be used from almost anywhere on almost any device. It also allows full visibility on multi-location digital content, improves time to market for live content such as video clips and highlights for social media distribution, and ultimately results in much more effective monetisation.
Blackbird® is a registered trademark of Blackbird plc. www.blackbird.video
EditShare is a technology leader in networked shared storage and smart workflow solutions for the production, post-production, new media, sports, and education markets. Whether you need on-prem, cloud, or hybrid solutions, our products improve efficiency and workflow collaboration every step of the way. They include media optimized high-performance shared storage, archiving and backup software, a suite of media management tools and a robust set of open APIs that enable integration throughout the workflow. Customer and partner success are at the heart of EditShare’s core values ensuring a world-class experience that is second to none.
Press Contact Cat Soroush Zazil Media Group (e) catherine@zazilmediagroup.com (p) +1 (631) 880-9534
Integrated FLOW Panel provides DaVinci Resolve Studio users access to storage pools and archives with tools to search, browse, and retrieve assets; facilitates exceptional remote proxy editing as well as review and approval workflows
Boston, MA – November 9, 2020 – EditShare®, a technology leader that specializes in collaboration, security, and intelligent storage solutions for media creation and management, today announced its FLOW Panel for DaVinci Resolve Studio, connecting thousands of users into the wider media ecosystem. Designed to simplify storytelling, FLOW manages media assets and workflows across on-premise and cloud-based tiered storage environments. The integrated FLOW panel, which was developed with FLOW’s open API, provides DaVinci Resolve users a media gateway to assets and associated metadata. Easy-to-use production tools facilitate advanced remote workflows including seamless proxy editing and review and approvals.
“Our collective customers need freedom and flexibility when it comes to the tools they work with and the same applies to the workflows they need to run their production and business. EditShare and Blackmagic Design have a common goal of aligning customer needs at the forefront of our development and delivering innovative technology to enable the very best storytelling experience,” comments Sunil Mudholkar, vice president of Product Management, EditShare. “Many of our customers rely on DaVinci Resolve’s incredible creative toolset day in day out. With the new FLOW panel, our collective customers now have a seamless and secure interface to all the production assets from ingest to delivery, with smart tools that enable them to find content easily and work collaboratively with other team members, regardless of location.”
New FLOW Panel located within the DaVinci Resolve 17 UI
The FLOW Panel for DaVinci Resolve Studio lets editors, colorists, VFX artists and sound mixers move beyond their locally connected storage and search, browse, and access proxy and high resolutions versions of video and audio assets across multiple storage pools and archives. FLOW’s fast production tools can be used to quickly organize assets into folders and cuts-only sequences. With one click, users can import assets into DaVinci Resolve Studio, including clips, sub clips, and sequence markers. FLOW delivers the rich metadata and content directly into the DaVinci Resolve Studio bin and onto the timeline. Users can also upload assets from DaVinci Resolve Studio back into FLOW with one click, facilitating review and approval across the operation.
“EditShare’s focus on developing open platforms and remote collaboration workflows is helping production and post-production businesses adapt to new remote business models in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond,” said Jacob Groshek, PhD, research manager, Digital Experience Management for IDC. “They are continuing to evaluate the content supply chain and seek out innovative ways to enhance the user experience that help optimize the return on investment for customers.”
Support for Remote Proxy Editing Ideal for working in any remote scenario, the FLOW Panel for DaVinci Resolve Studio lets users edit with proxies – whether downloaded, streamed over a VPN, or played from central shared storage. This nimble proxy workflow benefits from the lightweight characteristics of highly efficient codecs like H.264/MP4. FLOW generates the proxies and tracks the relationship between high and low-resolution files. A menu toggle in DaVinci Resolve Studio lets users switch seamlessly between original and proxy versions, allowing them to check the original shots any time during editing. With both sets of files always available and accessible to DaVinci Resolve Studio, color grading, effect creation and conforming are greatly streamlined.
The FLOW Panel for DaVinci Resolve Studio will be generally available with FLOW 2021.
About EditShare
EditShare is a technology leader in networked shared storage and smart workflow solutions for the production, post-production, new media, sports, and education markets. Whether you need on-prem, cloud, or hybrid solutions, our products improve efficiency and workflow collaboration every step of the way. They include media optimized high-performance shared storage, archiving and backup software, a suite of media management tools and a robust set of open APIs that enable integration throughout the workflow. Customer and partner success are at the heart of EditShare’s core values ensuring a world-class experience that is second to none.
Press Contact Cat Soroush Zazil Media Group (e) catherine@zazilmediagroup.com (p) +1 (631) 880-9534
** This webinar has passed. Please fill out the form to access the recording.
Join EditShare and Blackbird to explore best practices to enable rapid editing of your media from anywhere on any device. EFS and FLOW give media creators unprecedented performance and control over their media. When media creators need additional workflow flexibility for editors on a variety of devices, and remote locations, Blackbird and EditShare make the all difference. Blackbird is a fast and powerful cloud video editing and publishing platform that supports remote, collaborative video production with minimal system requirements. Together with FLOW and EFS, media creators can store, index, manage, edit, and export their stories.
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Webinar Speakers
Stephen Tallamy, Chief Technology Officer, EditShare
Oliver Parker, VP Commercial, International, Blackbird
