Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1488780
60 C I N E M O N T A G E T E C H quences to work against, those shots need to get back to the editor, and so on — but it must also be kept safe through security and redundancies. R P L o f fe rs a v i r t u a l i ze d , d a ta ce n- ter-based, private cloud solution. This means all content and redundancies are centralized in a secure data center. Unlike other remote editing approaches where editors connect to computers set up in off ices or in machine rooms at editing facilities, RPL has virtual workstation units and shared storage servers housed in racks at a colocation facility (a type of data center where equipment, space, and bandwidth are available for rental to retail customers), which editors and RPL technicians access virtually. RPL techs don't have to go to the facility in order to help clients with technical issues. They can manage, control, and restart all of the user's services in just a matter of minutes from any location. Beau- champ said, "We have monitoring services that allow us to see when issues arise, and we deal with them most often before editors or production teams are even affected by them. We're able to quickly solve any issues thanks to the tool sets that we continue to put in place." As a virtualized platform, RPL can react to clients' needs almost immediately. They can add editors and other team members in just a few hours, deploy a whole new editorial environment with a few mouse clicks, and make adjustments to the work- stations instantaneously. "Whether the editor is working with higher-res source material or doing a tremendous amount of exports and transcoding or visual effects, if they determine that they need additional processing power, with a simple reboot of their workstation, we can double or triple the CPU power, add more RAM, and double the GPU power — all without having a tech- nician go out and swap out a computer or components," said Beauchamp. "If a production shot twice as many dailies and needs to get that to the editor faster, we just move a virtual fader and sud- denly they have more bandwidth in their environment. A lot of the dailies houses have big data lines so they can dedicate that bandwidth to that production and we can accommodate it on the other end," added Jeff Bass, Partner at J/KAM Digital and Co-Founder of RPL. Physically accessing the equipment is still possible, but that requires going through biometric and RFID security. "The physical security of the colocation facility could not be higher. And we matched that with the same level and care for our digital content security by setting up a private cloud environment over which we have full control," said Beauchamp. Erik Beauchamp. A graphic showing a remote workflow example from Remote Picture Labs.