Let the media flow: it’s time to revolutionize post-production workflows

The world of editing is changing. Creative teams at broadcasters, post-production houses, and production companies no longer want to be bound to an office or limited to a single editing location. They want the freedom and flexibility to be able to edit where they want, when they want.

This is all being made possible through cloud-based workflows. From giving organizations the ability to scale resources quickly and easily to enabling collaboration with a wider pool of creative talent, the cloud is playing a rapidly growing role in post production. And it’s no passing trend. It’s here to stay, representing the future of video editing as organizations look for ways to enable their distributed workforces to do more from home – or wherever they choose to work.

This is where Avid | Edit On Demand comes into play. Edit On Demand is a fully virtual post-production environment in the cloud, built on the industry-leading Avid Media Composer editing software and Avid NEXIS storage solution. It empowers creative teams to work efficiently at all times, get media into the cloud quickly and securely, and scale-up resources when needed. Essentially, it meets all your cloud needs.

In a recent webinar, our senior director of partner and industry marketing, Ray Thompson sat down with Corey Tedrow, senior solutions specialist (Avid), and Danny Hollingsworth, business development manager for cloud and SaaS (Avid), to discuss how post-production organizations can revolutionize and transform their workflows using Avid | Edit On Demand in the cloud.

Flexibility at your fingertips

Arguably the biggest benefit of cloud workflows is the flexibility they provide. They enable completely new ways of working, transforming operations and giving organizations the agility they need to capitalize on every opportunity that comes their way – even when it comes at the last minute.

With Avid | Edit On Demand, organizations can quickly spin-up a fully provisioned, secure, cloud-based video editing and storage environment at any time. This means they can jump on new opportunities without having to spend time and capital configuring, purchasing, or renting workstations, software, and storage drives. The full system can be up and running within hours, all fitting seamlessly into existing workflows.

And resources can be quickly scaled-up to meet demand for new projects. “Edit On Demand provides an easy way to quickly expand capacity,” says Ray. “So, if you’re running a facility and you want to spin up an environment, Edit On Demand gives you a way to auto-provision all the resources needed to have a system up and running within a matter of hours – all cloud-based and all available.” As a result, smaller organizations will be able to win bigger projects and compete with larger competitors.

However, this flexibility doesn’t just apply to scaling up, as Danny explains: “The great thing about it is that you can add more capacity to productions in a completely agile way as they scale. But you can also downsize productions as they get smaller and you don’t need as much capacity, so you’re always deploying what you need when you need it.”

That’s the power of the subscription nature of the service, which lets organizations build teams exactly as they need them without having to worry about spiralling costs or expensive hardware investments.

And if that wasn’t enough, Edit On Demand provides a stronger connection to existing on-premises setups using hot folder workflows for simple media movement. Users can see exactly where content resides and copy it into hot folders once they’ve worked on the content, where it will be automatically uploaded for the next person to work on. As a result, content will always be right where it needs to be and accessible to whoever needs it.

New collaboration possibilities

The other key aspect of Edit On Demand involves the creative teams themselves, and the ability to do their best work from anywhere without having to take expensive workstations wherever they go.

Content is made accessible remotely through the FileCatalyst tool, which provides high-speed encrypted media upload and download to and from Avid NEXIS cloud storage. Once an organization’s content is in the platform, users can either edit content online or download the content they want to work on. They can then quickly and easily upload the content from their local system back into Edit On Demand, where it's ready to be reviewed or edited by someone else. Whether from the comfort of their own home or a local coffee shop, they can increase production efficiency and keep projects moving forward.

And the best part is that multiple editors and producers can collaborate on projects at the same time on Avid Media Composer without any diminished experience. Thanks to Edit On Demand’s ability to replicate workflows in a shared cloud environment, users can seamlessly edit media and share updates from wherever they are based, without any disruption to the workflows they’re familiar with.

Corey says: “There’s really no difference to the user. The same things they would be doing inside a facility they can do on the cloud. In an on-premises world, editors might be down the hall from each other, but now they can be on opposite sides of the world and get the exact same workflow and experience. That’s true for everyone that’s working on a particular cloud system, regardless of where they are.”

This all demonstrates how cloud editing and storage solutions are revolutionizing post production. With the ability to have multiple teams working on different projects at the same time, integrate with on-premises environments, and add capacity when it’s needed, the cloud is empowering distributed workforces like never before. The possibilities are virtually limitless.