Remote production workflows with Avid storage

We’re all hearing about the growth of remote production workflows, a paradigm shift that accelerated during the pandemic. Prior to March 2020, editing remotely was an anomaly, a process loaded with concerns about latency, reliability, and content security.

Today, the ability to collaboratively and safely edit video content from multiple locations is much more commonplace. Advances in network throughput, virtualization, and transport protocols have all played key roles in turning distributed production workflows from fantasy to reality, but it’s not a stretch to say that high-performance media storage is the true anchor of remote editing workflows.

Capacity and performance are primary considerations when evaluating media storage for real-time video workflows. But I suggest they’re now table stakes, essential qualities that every shared video storage system must possess to be competitive. The question nowadays is not whether your storage system can effortlessly scale capacity and bandwidth to accommodate 4K, 8K, HDR, Dolby Atmos®, and other bit-intensive picture and sound formats, but will it allow your team to access your assets from anywhere while providing the same performance you expect in a traditional edit bay?

Your storage system should let your team browse, find, and share media and projects whether they’re in the facility, on location, or at home—no matter what video, audio, or graphics production tools are being used. Collaborators need access to the same content simultaneously while dispersed across time zones and continents, even if you’ve got hundreds of team members to consider.

Storage for remote video workflows should also be inherently flexible, allowing you to deploy a workflow that fits the needs of your organization. You shouldn't have to find workarounds to accommodate your storage system's limitations; it should adapt to accommodate your ever-changing business requirements. Want to offer clients the option to work on-prem, remotely, or a hybrid of both? What about providing on-set video capture linked to your storage so that your editor can begin cutting within minutes of recording? Your storage should deliver on all fronts.

Avid NEXIS storage does just that. It scales easily to meet growing production demands. It doesn’t lock you into one way of working; you can change your workflow as your business needs dictate. Say you want to start on-prem and add cloud access at any time. No problem. What about adding temporary remote access to meet production spikes—or to avoid the need to manage in-house infrastructure? With a storage solution from Avid, you can have it all.

I’m not talking about a one-size-fits-all system. We offer three ways to enable distributed collaborative workflows: Avid | NEXIS F-series storage with the addition of Avid NEXIS | EDGE remote access, Avid | Edit On Demand SaaS storage, and Avid NEXIS | VFS in the Cloud.

Avid | NEXIS F-series with Avid NEXIS | EDGE

Our flagship Avid NEXIS F-series storage engine family allows teams of all sizes to work from any location by delivering secure, remote access to media and metadata across flash, online, and nearline storage. The F-series engines are powered by the Avid NEXIS | VFS virtual file system, which provides the performance, security, and flexibility you need to boost productivity. Whether your team uses Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro, Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve, Autodesk Flame, or other production tools, Avid NEXIS fosters the highest level of collaboration—a key reason why it sets the bar for shared storage among leading media and entertainment organizations.

Avid NEXIS | EDGE extends the power of Avid NEXIS storage beyond your facility walls. Employing a secure proxy workflow for Avid Media Composer editors, as well as a web-based toolset for assistant editors, producers, and other team members, Avid NEXIS | EDGE greatly simplifies the ability to go from working in your facility to working remotely. It even lets team members get work done when disconnected from the Internet. Assistant editors can organize projects, create bins and sequences, and group media quickly to support the editing team. And showrunners, producers, and marketing execs can collaborate with editors and review content from the home, the office, the airport—you name it. With Avid NEXIS | EDGE, maximizing the ROI of an on-prem Avid NEXIS storage investment becomes much easier.

Avid | Edit On Demand

Avid | Edit On Demand provides a fully configured and secure SaaS post-production environment in the cloud, complete with cloud-optimized Avid Media Composer software and Avid NEXIS storage. Its deployment is totally automated, so you can bring a new editing suite online in hours—not days. Avid | Edit On Demand is ideal for fast burst capacity to handle production surges, and quickly spins down when no longer needed to help you avoid unnecessary charges. In-house team members can all connect and collaborate without having to learn new software or workflows, enabling faster project turnaround, remote training opportunities, real-time sequence review, and the ability to use the best available creative talent, no matter where they live. It’s the ultimate in SaaS-based editing workflows.

Avid NEXIS | VFS in the Cloud

For content creators who want to use the public cloud, Avid NEXIS is a great solution. It brings the power of the virtualized Avid NEXIS | VFS file system to Microsoft Azure cloud storage. This BYOL approach is accessed via an Avid NEXIS | FLEX subscription, which lets you determine the best deployment strategy for today while planning for growth in the future. With an Avid NEXIS | FLEX subscription, you can easily and cost-effectively transition to the cloud at your pace, providing the business agility many companies need in our always evolving industry.

Questions about shared storage for remote production workflows? We’ve got the answers.

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