One of the fascinating areas of technology over the past few years has been Cloud technology’s advancement into Post Production. When production teams- editors, colorists, producers- had to start working from home, creative facilities had to rethink the fundamentals of operating a post production operation. All sorts of solutions solved parts of the puzzle for remote work in 2020– but now that the dust has settled- our industry is starting to evaluate its entire post production ecosystem and determine what makes sense to lift and shift into the cloud- or what incremental steps can be taken to transitioning everything to the cloud.
In this episode, Cloud Storage M&E Team from Wasabi. Mark Stolnitz discusses transitioning post production to the cloud. Watch Here:
Tips For Preparing Post Production For A Cloud Transition
While On-Prem solutions continue to be rock solid, the growing need for hybrid workflow flexibility, working remotely, and hiring top talent from anywhere is pushing post production teams to collaborate in the cloud. Here are a few tips to help your production team prepare to move into the cloud:
Proof of Concept
Starting with a Proof of Concept is good when you’re looking into transitioning into the cloud. The cost and performance of cloud storage can only be evaluated when using it. For example, maybe just upload a scene instead of an entire season of media and projects. Instead of having an entire team use the new workflow, test it with a single department working on a small part of the puzzle. This will help you get direct feedback on what is working and not working for editors, colorists, and producers. It will also help you get a sense of the cost. Key Code Media specializes in setting up a proof of concept trials. Don’t hesitate to reach out.
Calculate Cloud Total Cost of Ownership
At some point, you’ll need to meet with the CFO or management at your production company about the cloud budget. Hopefully, you will have that “initial meeting” to forecast what cloud costs might look like rather than having an “angry meeting” about exploding monthly cloud costs without budget approval.
The initial cloud storage cost is easy to calculate- the total amount of gigabytes (GB) in the cloud bucket. The hidden costs come from cloud-egress charges when the media is moved from storage to storage. There are also API call charges when API connectors are used between the cloud storage provider and a connected partner tool. Luckily, there are solutions to help minimize and even eliminate these hidden cloud costs.
Security / Ransomware Protection
When you introduce cloud storage solutions into your media production, a hacker is only a password and 2FA verification away from your media. That is a scary thought for media production companies.
Best practices must be implemented within your company to prevent attacks, from setting up strong passwords and 2FA, to educating staff on detecting phishing. Larger Studios and Streaming Platforms often require their standards- like MPA and TPN, so it is best to evaluate your customer requirements before committing to a particular workflow.
File Naming Conventions / Data Organization
Certain characters (ie. ?></!*) that a window-based device does not like when used in a file name. While having a character in your media, project, or file name might not cause immediate issues within the cloud, it can be particularly painful when moving the data somewhere else, like ‘active’ to ‘archive’ or from cloud to cloud.’
Educating staff on best practices for file naming and standardizing folder structure would be a great start to having a better long-term cloud experience.
Network Considerations
As system performance becomes more interlinked with a reliable internet connection, creatives must look at the bandwidth available within the facility and employees’ homes. Most cloud compute solutions for M&E tools require a minimum of 5 Mbps up and down. Bandwidth requirements may increase if you add additional cloud tools to an individual system. You also need to factor in how many systems within a facility need to use the cloud. Each system will require additional bandwidth.
Why Key Code Media and Wasabi?
Key Code Media is an authorized Wasabi Technology reseller, helping solve modern challenges with on-prem, hybrid, and cloud workflows. Book a Consultation to access a free Wasabi trial through Key Code Media. Also, get preferred pricing on products from our 400+ manufacturers, and learn more about how you can improve your production workflow.
About Wasabi
Wasabi provides simple, predictable and affordable hot cloud storage for businesses all over the world. It enables organizations to store and instantly access an unlimited amount of data at 1/5th the price of the competition with no complex tiers or unpredictable egress fees. Trusted by tens of thousands of customers worldwide, Wasabi has been recognized as one of technology’s fastest-growing and most visionary companies. Created by Carbonite co-founders and cloud storage pioneers David Friend and Jeff Flowers, Wasabi has secured $275 million in funding to date and is a privately held company based in Boston.
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