Creating a piece of content such as a movie, film, or show in the media and entertainment industry is no small feat. It requires the efforts of a diverse team of professionals working together to create one cohesive piece. The process starts with the recording of raw footage and ends in the post-production and distribution phase.
Once all of these processes are completed, the content can then begin its journey to the consumer. However, working with a plethora of media and formats while adhering to strict deadlines is no mean deed and can quickly become a logistical headache. From different software and devices used by different teams to file ingest and data sharing, it is important to have the right storage vendor and technology in place to ensure the process of taking a project from raw footage to a polished product is efficient and effortless.
Navigating Challenges During Post-Production and Distribution
Post-production and distribution come with their own set of challenges — from editors having to combine raw footage into a file to the effects teams adding sound and visuals in order to enrich the film. The content may then go on to be color graded or subtitled and/or dubbed before it’s ready for distribution to streaming services.
Along the way, teams must work with the same files; usually, they create local copies to perform their task and then upload the file back, which can often cause confusion. Sometimes, teams do not know who has the latest version because of copies being everywhere. To top it all off, projects must be monitored and adjusted to the available resources so that download/upload cycles don’t waste time and resources. With these tasks in hand, post-production and distribution processes can be intimidating for any filmmaker.
Technology should not be an obstacle when it comes to collaboration, a necessary step to achieve excellent results quickly in the creative industry. Without the proper technology, teams may have difficulty sharing data and have to use time-consuming manual workarounds, resulting in extended delays between them and creating confusion when multiple versions of the same file exist.
Furthermore, some areas may be limited in the software they are able to use due to incompatibility with the storage system. To alleviate these challenges, the storage system should focus on enabling the team and facilitating their work.
What Benefits Should You Look for From Your Storage Vendor?
- Effortless data ingest and external sharing
After production teams finish recording content, either in the studio or on-site, editors need the ability to easily ingest the data, which can come from disk drives or SD cards. So, the storage technology should facilitate the process of taking the data in and providing it to the teams that need to work on it. At the same time, if the data needs to be shared with editors or teams outside of the organization, the storage solution should provide the ability data sharing through S3 so that teams outside of the organization only access the file they will be working on. - Access from all interfaces
For teams to be able to focus on their specific task, data sharing must be easy and seamless. For this reason, teams need the ability to access data from any interface, such as Windows, Mac, Linux, etc., so that they all can work on the same data, no matter what operating system they use. And since they need to work with high-resolution content, they need a storage system with high performance. - High performance with cost-effective hardware
Working with high-resolution images requires high performance, which can be obtained with flash; however, storing large amounts of data for long periods of time on flash is often too expensive. That’s why an all-flash solution is not an option, so the storage solution should allow teams to store data on hard drive to get the cost-effective benefits it provides.
Boost Team Productivity and Speed Up Results with Quobyte
Quobyte is a distributed parallel file system that provides high performance and a unified namespace that allows you to access data from all interfaces. Quobyte enables collaboration, providing you with the following benefits:
- Easy data ingest: File and object in the same namespace
Quobyte offers central storage, which allows teams to access files with ease. It allows you to ingest raw files easily, and with its unified namespace offering both file and object, you can share the same file through S3 so that you don’t give file access to those who don’t need it. - Seamless data sharing
With Quobyte, editors can easily share data with other teams. It provides fast storage and supports all interfaces, such as Windows, Mac, Linux, etc., So all team members can work directly with files on Quobyte’s shared storage instead of local files, no matter what machine they use. - Optimized performance and cost
Quobyte allows you to combine NVMe and HDD to optimize performance. You can use flash for active projects which require high performance or very high throughput, and then you can do transparent tiering. On the other hand, you can use hard drives to keep large amounts of data so you don’t have to do external tiering, which is expensive and frustrates users.
With Quobyte’s easy-to-use storage system, media and entertainment teams can effortlessly collaborate, ensure performance for all their applications, and get the job done quickly and with professionalism. Discover more about the power of Quobyte and how it can revolutionize your workflow and accelerate the process of creating incredible content.
To learn more about how Quobyte can help you accelerate your media and entertainment workflow, make sure to check out our storage for media and entertainment page.
Originally posted on Quobyte’s blog on April 27, 2023.
