Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1151096
www.postmagazine.com 39 POST JULY/AUG 2019 CASE STUDY down transfers. In these situations, the system has an SaaS architecture, which allows customers to deploy portals with their choice of cloud storage, which cir- cumvents the problem. "I can easily spin up a Shuttle portal with storage in an AWS region near my client, anywhere in the world," says Ross. "For example, I just deployed an AWS Media Shuttle instance in Germany. My customer in Lebanon was only getting ~10Mbps from us locally here in Georgia, but the cloud deployment in Germany is giving them 50Mbps+. It only took me 10 minutes to set up the new bucket and portal. Happy customer!" Media Shuttle's SaaS architecture pro- vides global access to content, reporting and operations control from a secure Web interface, along with complete con- trol over storage type and location. For Blackwater, Shuttle's architecture allows them to circumvent shaky Internet connections across the Atlantic, as well as avoid any client service interruptions. "I basically have all of my portals local and then mirrored in the cloud," explains Ross. "One of the great things about Shuttle is that I can easily toggle the storage from the cloud to my local stor- age without any client-facing changes." MOVING TONS OF DATA Post production is a long process, with room for a variety of different specialist studios. Blackwater works on the later end of the process, picking up the baton after the rest of the creatives are done, after color, sound and editorial. The studio's focus is quality control, master- ing and creation of the final deliverables, including any digital cinema, home video or VOD masters that need to be done. The studio also creates ancillary deliverables, such as closed captioning. All of that requires getting data from the original assets: the audio assets, video assets, the reference files — all of it. The entire process requires moving a ton of data. "We also receive and deliver a lot of very large feature-length 4K ProRes files, which are about 800GBs each. Media Shuttle not only allows us to deliver over the Internet, it is incredibly fast, especially for an asset that large." Blackwater also has a client-facing portal where it hosts different ancillary and collateral assets for feature films. It's basically a self-service stop, where anyone that has licensed a film from one of Blackwater's clients can pop by and download whatever they need, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Media Shuttle also allows them to preview as- sets right in the browser before they're downloaded. Then, after the data management is done, and the studio's finished all the mastering and created any deliverables, it uses it to deliver to various destina- tions, be it directly to a VOD platform, to a broadcaster, to deliver copies back to the client themselves or to send them off to a film festival. ASSET MANAGEMENT AND DELIVERY There are times when Blackwater is just servicing its sales agent clients, who have a finished film that only need asset management and delivery to various licensees all over the world. "That's another thing our clients like about us," says Ross. "Because we have Media Shuttle, we don't have to ship hard drives and we don't have to wait for bandwidth to open up. We just shoot it off. It's available within 24- to 48-hours after the content is ordered. "The list of things we use Media Shuttle for," Ross continues, "goes on and on." Blackwater Digital Services' Ross says his company needed to overcome spotty Internet when working with clients across the Atlantic.