One of the biggest buzz-words we hear now is “the cloud.” You hear it in commercials, radio ads, and online. You hear about it on the radio, on television commercials and in pop-up ads online. Everyone is talking about the cloud. Common cloud uses are videos on YouTube, off-site computer imaging, music streaming, and the list goes on and on. But for us in the post industry, what does it really mean? This month we are going to spotlight some companies with a local presence right here in New England. These companies are also leading the shift up to the cloud.
Using the Cloud For Media and Metadata Storage
One of the innovators of post productions shift up to the cloud is right here in New England. Aframe, based out of Burlington, MA, provides its users with unique services. They provide cloud based production management. This means that they can store your data, manage the metadata, create an online proxy file, and store your high-rez files and have them available to you anywhere with an internet connection. They even will do transcriptions of your video clips and metadata tagging for you as a separate service. Aframe is currently the only cloud based platform that actually encourages you to upload your high-rez source footage.
I met with Stephen Mui the Senior Director of Product Operations for Aframe. Stephen says that “Aframe’s objectives are to remove the level of complexity from the installation. Aframe can remove all the hardware and software to install. Using Aframe means you don’t have to get IT involved as you aren’t setting up a bunch of computers to network together. Aframe is also the only cloud based platform that encourages you to upload your high-rez source footage.”
Other great things about Aframe are they don’t clamp the file size you can upload. You can upload any file size you like and aren’t limited in any way. When you upload your high-rez source footage to the cloud, Aframe will automatically create a supplemental proxy file that is optimized for use on an Ipad. That means that you can check out your video assets from anywhere you have a connection to the internet. They also allow file attaching to video clips. Need to keep things like release forms organized? Just attach the PDF of the release form directly to the video clip. When you download the video off the cloud, you can also download any release forms that you would need.
Aframe protects your video assets by mirroring (or making 2 copies) all of your media and then saving it in 2 different physical locations. One copy goes to New York, another copy goes to Los Angeles. The transcontinental copy is to protect your media from just about any disaster that could happen.
With Aframe, you can also save money in your production. You don’t have to fly people in to collaborate any more. No more shipping drives with finished edits on them for review and approval. Everyone can see the same video at the same time online now. This is helpful to send your finished product to people to review. Aframe allows you to send your clients an email with a link to their finished edit. That same link will have all the updated versions of the sequence. So if your client requests a change to an edit and your editors complete it and upload the updated edit, your clients just have to refresh that link you previously emailed them to see the updated edit. You don’t need to resend anything to your client.
You can learn more about Aframe and all of their services and also sign up for a trial of their services by going to
www.aframe.com.
Application Distribution in the Cloud
Industry giant Adobe (with a local presence in Waltham, MA) is also one of the game changers in cloud computing. Adobe Creative Cloud enables you to access and use any of the Adobe CS6 Creative Suite. The service also provides its individual users with 20GB of storage up on the Adobe Creative Cloud. The advantages of a model like this are you pay monthly for the applications as a service. You no longer need to pay for costly updates and worry about being behind the technological curve. All of this is done via a simple web-based login.
Once you log into your Creative Cloud account via your web-browser of choice, you will see that there are two main choices, “Apps” and “Files”. By clicking “Apps” in your web browser, you will see all the Applications of the Adobe Creative Suite. You can download any one of them for installation just by clicking it. The other benefit is you know you are getting the latest and greatest version of the applications and all versions are matched and optimized to work with one another. By clicking the “Files”, you will be able to upload any of your assets into the Adobe Creative Cloud. Once your asset is on the Creative Cloud, you can access it from any computer with a valid connection to the web. Uploading is a breeze as you can just drag and drop your assets into a web-browser, or you can download the Adobe Cloud Connection for a more robust user interface. No longer are you tethered to one computer and one location.
Adobe has recently added team membership offerings as well, providing you with more online storage and more licenses for the Creative Cloud. Team membership enables groups of just about any size to access all the same features of Adobe Creative Cloud. The team membership is completely dynamic and you can add seats at any time should your team grow during your production. You can even upgrade an individual license to a team license at any time as well.
You can sign up for a free 30 day trial of the individual version of Adobe Creative Cloud by going to https://creative.adobe.com/
By combining these services from Aframe and Adobe, you can move your entire production up to the cloud. No costly servers, no costly storage, and they provide you more security than ever before. Both products offer free trials to see if they are for you.
Steve McGrath is a Broadcast Sales Engineer for HB Communications.
He has worked with NBC, ABC, CBS, NESN, NECN, Fox, ESPN, Pentagon, USDA, Powderhouse and many others.
You can reach him at Steve.McGrath@HBCommunications.com.