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BITS & PIECES www.postmagazine.com 8 POST MAY/JUNE 2020 EDITSHARE FLOW HELPS THE FINISH LINE STAY BALANCED LONDON — The Finish Line (https://thefinishline. pro), one of the largest finishing houses in the UK, delivers approximately 30 programs per week for a variety of clients. While the COVID-19 crisis has caused many studios to scramble to put in place a remote workflow, The Finish Line already had a solution in place that allows staff to work both collaboratively and remotely. The Finish Line founder Zeb Chadfield points back to 2009, when budgets were shrinking, but delivery expectations remained unchanged. Artists often worked long days and into the night, leaving themselves without any time for a life outside of work. "I had finished the job and refreshed the grading suite overnight because it wasn't running properly, slept for about half an hour and then was at another grade in the morning," recalls Chadfield. "This hap- pened over and over again." The relentless workload took a toll, and Chadfield eventually had a nervous breakdown. "When I came back, I knew I could not keep working this way and thought, 'I'll go and do my own thing,'" he notes. "I decided that as a business, we would spend the money on training, clientele and equipment, and any physical space costs and unnec- essary expenses could be cut. It started out that I would roll in a system and do a job for a client, and it just scaled up from there." A key to scaling up the distributed workflow was migration to a cloud-based system. Chadfield spent six years building his own cloud solution on Amazon workspaces and implementing different versions of software, including Avid Media Composer and DaVinci Resolve. Then he discovered EditShare Flow: mainly used in the Finish Line's workflow for viewing rushes, running on a production-specific AWS server to both maintain throughput and en- sure content security. "We actually set it up on a production-by-pro- duction basis for dealing with the rushes," he ex- plains. "For clients where we're managing full post, we set up Flow automation for ingesting media. It also helps our clients deal with media, because we can easily look at footage that they're working on. If I've got an edit, we can send an AAF from the Avid into Flow, and we're able to look at that remotely and use that as part of our process to conform for final post." While the remote workflow approach was a hard sell in the beginning, Chadfield says he was able to prove the model by delivering top-qual- ity services — all within the hours of a normal workday. "I spend a lot of time figuring out how to make it possible for my staff to work and still have quality time with their families," he notes. "Last year, most of the post facilities were running 10- or 12-hour workdays as standard. So we took a step further and decided to say, 'No, we're only going to quote eight-hour workdays. If you want 24 hours of work done, it will take three days, not two.'" DELUXE'S ONE DUB ENABLES REMOTE AUDIO CLOUD RECORDING LOS ANGELES — Deluxe Entertainment Services (www.bydeluxe.com) has launched One Dub, a new remote audio cloud recording tool that brings professional, frame-accurate audio recording directly to the web browsers of voice actors, technicians and directors. A module of the Deluxe One platform, One Dub leverages Amazon Web Services' (AWS) cloud technology to provide a flexible and seamless expe- rience to creative teams, post facilities and dubbing studios as they acclimate to working remotely in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. "With a majority of the industry currently work- ing remotely, we are leveraging cloud innovation to empower our partners to continue cultivating cre- ativity and delivering high-quality work for clients and audiences," explains Chris Reynolds, Deluxe's SVP and GM, localization. "Developed in partnership with creatives, technicians and content owners, One Dub is something we have been refining over the last several months, and with the impact of COVID-19, we quickly mobilized to finalize it for launch to our partners. In addition to providing im- mediate relief to dubbing studios shifting to remote workflows, One Dub will deliver long-term benefits as a means to extend their operations and physical facilities after they reopen." As streaming consumption rises, dubbing studios can leverage One Dub to continue production on content in the pipeline and meet increased OTT demands. One Dub does not require any additional software. Collaborators receive a secure link that allows them work in a web browser with zero-laten- cy recording. The tool offers secure streaming video playback, on-screen editable scripts and intuitive record/edit functions in 24-bit/48kHz quality. Video files accessible via One Dub are not downloadable through the app and feature user-specific visual and forensic watermarking, along with digital rights management for optimum security. The Finish Line's Phillippa Beasley-Swanson