Post Magazine

July/Aug2021

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WORKFLOW www.postmagazine.com 39 POST JULY/AUG 2021 he deadline for next week's ep- isode of your show is imminent, but there are issues: A couple of scenes aren't flowing, and an important effects shot is late to arrive. Your editor is work- ing from home, the effects company is on the other side of the country and the net- work is breathing down your neck. Time to panic? Not if you've adopted a hybrid remote/on-premises editing workflow. Very little good came out of the COVID-19 pandemic — the film and television community being hit especially hard. The shutdown led to job loss for many production professionals and reve- nue loss for content creators, broadcast- ers and networks alike. Working through the pandemic taught us a few things, however; one of them being that editing scripted or live television shows remotely can be done without compromising on performance or creativity. There are even a number of benefits when compared to traditional on-prem workflows. Of course, the kind of face-to-face collaboration you can only get when your team is together in the office can't be duplicated. One of the great things about remote editing is that you don't have to give up that dynamic. In fact, a hybrid workflow, combining both remote and on-prem infrastructure, delivers the best of all worlds. This isn't a claim we would have made a few years ago — or even a few months ago — but remote editing has come a long way in a relatively short amount of time. A show can now have multiple remotely-located editors, assistants and producers collaborat- ing simultaneously. With symmetrical gigabit-speed internet connections, bandwidth is no longer an issue, even for transporting 4K/UHD and HDR video to each workstation. Add HEVC compression to the mix and you can move that same video with low latency and no loss of image quality. Significant cost savings can also be realized, since you'll save money on real estate, as well as equipment power and cooling. In addition, editors can use the exact same tools they've always used, includ- ing Avid Media Composer and Adobe Creative Cloud. Their home workstation can be set up exactly as it would be in an edit bay, replete with multiple HD video monitors and high-performance stereo speakers. Through the use of technologies such as Teradici Cloud Access Software and PCoIP protocol, data sent to each workstation can be compressed, en- crypted and transmitted to stateless zero clients. Because no media is ever actually downloaded to the workstation — only pixels — transport speed and security are consistently high. Teradici's PCoIP proto- col is secured by AES-256 encryption and adapts dynamically to network condi- tions in realtime, providing the greatest possible level of content protection. The bottom line is that, when done right, the performance of virtualized editing workstations is actually indiscernible from those located in traditional edit facilities. There are certainly times when the comfort of having your editorial team next to you is indispensable — especially when having to clean up those prob- lematic scenes under tight deadlines — and this is where a hybrid remote/on- prem workflow can make a big impact. A hybrid solution allows your team to work from any location with an internet connection, which expands your talent pool considerably. Editors can cut at home, while producers can login for viewings or fixes from either the home or office. When face-to-face meetings are required, these can be either in-person or over video conference — a level of flexibility that delivers significant time and cost savings, and can improve editor productivity as well. What about dailies, or receiving effects shots from your vendor, who's located on the other side of the country? The process of delivering this content to your assistants can also be virtualized. By ingesting media from the set directly to post, you can cut days and weeks off the post production schedule, saving even more time and money. Many producers now use Evercast for remote viewing and realtime spotting sessions, a system that also provides video-chat capabilities. While it's logical to expect that a remote editing architecture might impact creativity, a hybrid solution removes that concern. Most editorial teams can work just as collaboratively as ever, an out- come that surprises some producers, but is quickly proving to be the norm. The day is coming soon for all of us to get back to work. A hybrid editing workflow lets your editorial team get up and running immediately, while meeting all of your requirements for performance and creative collaboration. Suddenly, those impossible deadlines might not seem so bad after all. THE PROMISE OF HYBRID REMOTE/ON-PREM EDITING WORKFLOWS BY JEFF BASS CO-FOUNDER REMOTE PICTURE LABS REMOTEPICTURELABS. COM BURBANK, CA REMOTE- EDITING WORKFLOWS ARE MAKING GAINS T John Petaja, editor of AppleTV+'s Invasion, at his home-based Avid workstation.

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