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In my last blog, I talked about our new “Remote World ” and how remote editing and production in media workflows have adjusted accordingly. I also shared a brief recap on some of Quantum’s M&E Technology Partners and their solutions that are providing advancements to facilitate these workflows.

Indeed, remote work has now become part of our everyday lives affecting many industries and types of work. Moreover, the home office is quickly becoming the de facto for many workers, especially those in technically oriented industries who have access to applications and systems that enable remote work in order to sustain business operations, and frequently attribute to higher productivity as well.

In fact, it’s estimated by Global Workplace Analytics that “25-30% of the workplace will be working-from-home multiple days a week by the end of 2021.” What are some of the drivers and upsides to remote work in addition to higher productivity? Some that top the list are cost savings in terms of office space, reduced travel expenses, and better use of available technologies.

Available Technologies for a Decentralized Workforce

The first two upsides have obvious implications of benefits to organizations. But what are some examples for better use of available technologies by a decentralized workforce?

For starters, and for any remote worker, the ability to easily meet with coworkers or customers at a moment’s notice is an invaluable benefit. For example, WebEx hosted more than 20 billion meeting minutes in April, compared with 14 billion in March and 7 billion in February. We are now using all varieties of digitally based communication and platforms that bring us closer to one another and more frequently – and of course at a much lower cost. By removing the historic inhibitors to have more face time with customers and teammates, organizations can see improved collaboration and work output. Additionally, the creation of new and improved remote work environments can also lend to attracting geo-dispersed talent and improve employee retention.
For the M&E industry , production professionals can leverage their home workstations in concert with a shared storage environment at the studio or post house. With higher video resolutions and bandwidth requirements, coupled with soaring capacity requirements for large video content, companies are using centrally located storage to help simplify collaboration by editors, colorists, visual effects artists and others. Quantum works closely with our partners in the Media & Entertainment industry to continue to improve this collaboration using our StorNext file system .
Creatives teams are free to redefine their remote workflows, leveraging existing infrastructures, like centralized content archives and storage libraries , while using fast networking to remotely access and share content, along with specialized features and tools offered by MAM, Editing, VFX and transcoding platforms. And many of these tasks can now be automated and streamlined, minimizing manual oversight, and allowing the creatives to focus on their artistic work and contribution to completing projects. This of course enables final content to be completed more efficiently and quickly to meet deadlines and monetary objectives.

I think we can all agree on the obvious benefits of our new “Remote World” that include cutting costs for travel and office space along with an increase in customer and colleague meetings. For the more nuanced benefits, those effectively pertain to the workers, the people themselves. For many, working from home can increase morale by reducing commute time and stress, while creating “flex time” for family and hobbies. What’s new in your “Remote World”? Let us know , we’d love to hear what you’re doing. I understand baking is ‘de rigueur’ now. I think I’ll skip that and focus on learning a new language. Polish anyone?

To view our Partner blog, click here

Tips for Remote Workflow Operations

CMMA Blog

Following VirtualQ | NAB 2020 with Quantum, we were confronted with a number of questions about working remotely in these times of home isolation. We’ve been gathering information from around the globe on this topic since the start of “stay at home” recommendations began. In the Media & Entertainment industry , this caused a flurry of activity to accelerate the remote users’ desktops for high performance applications to provide editing, color correction, VFX, and Animation to a vast number of users, now all located in their homes or some other remote site.

This idea of remote work is not a new idea. Companies have been searching for the holy grail of distributed workloads for years, with the idea of reducing footprints in the machine rooms, as well as in the editorial/colorist bays. The COVID-19 pandemic just accelerated it to the front of the line and to the forefront of everyone’s minds. During VirtualQ | NAB, we provided sessions on remote desktop workflows and high-level reference architecture (as shown in the diagram below). Our intent was to keep it generic, but at the same time, provide our insights and use case-based information as a leader in the Media & Entertainment industry for over 20 years.

Reviewing Remote Workflow Scenarios

In consideration of the interest in our sessions and the Q&A that followed, we thought it would be good to provide some additional information, which is consolidated here. There are several things to consider when reviewing remote workflows like cost, security, and performance just to name a few. Scenarios can range from one-to-one desktop connections, to cloud or hybrid cloud where some material sits in the cloud, or applications that are spun up in the cloud, to work on, with the rendered or completed media then passed back to on-prem facilities. Any cloud solution involves additional costs and can range greatly, depending on how you intend to work. There are several leading software companies that are making provisions for remote work styles. The best course-of-action is to contact these providers to examine what they are doing.

For Quantum StorNext customers, we find that these remote workflows do not have to impact the on-premise storage infrastructure. Little to no changes at all need to occur when working remotely with your shared file system. Many of you know the key players in the remote technologies industry, but we felt like it would be beneficial to share some of our knowledge and experiences in this area that we have acquired over many years.

For instance, with Teradici , PCoIP windows and Linux, for Macs, you have additional options from Amulet, for GPU support you need Cloud Access software, bundled as Cloud for access with subscription. Also has privacy features with security options. They also have 4K support and dual monitor abilities.
Another HP Remote Graphics Software (RGS), free license with HP workstation or licenses can be purchased for other workstations. Client software for only Windows and Linux OS. You can also try a 90-day trial for ZCentral including management software.
Some others, ThinLinc , installed either on a single machine or in a cluster configuration, provides access to desktops, data, and software using a client/server configuration, via TigerVNC.
TGX , sender only available on Windows and Linux, client available on Windows, Linux and OSX, with 4K support.
Bebop allows access to industry tools for editing, 3D modeling and animation, VFX, etc. High level of security, all major cloud provider support.
Let’s not forget about some of others that we’ve all used for years: Windows remote desktop, VNC on OSX, tightVNC, TigerVNC, etc.

Options for Color Accuracy Viewing

If you are looking to get support for SDI output with color grading or editorial workflows, you should check out Sohonets’ Clearview Flex or Pivot. Pivot supports up to 4K HDR in 12bit 4:4:4. Another solution we’ve heard about is Techstream that you may also want to evaluate.

High-Performance File Transfers

Many of you have been using fast file transfer solutions like Aspera , and Signiant for years, another that comes to mind is Bebop Rocket that may be advantageous if you’re looking for remote workflows.

VPN Considerations

I think by now most of us use some sort of VPN to secure traffic to and from our facilities. Most of the time this is provided by our IT teams. We’ve talked to several of our customers that had to make a huge investment in expanding their VPN service to support their media-centric locations. Just to name a few: OpenVPN, Cisco AnyConnect , Wireguard , Pulse Secure .

It’s clear to most that each facility has its own workflows and ways of conducting business. If you would like to explore more options for remote workflow operations, please reach out to your local Quantum Representative and we’ll be happy to help provide some answers. You can also work with one our partners to help assist you with your current and future needs with remote workflows.

To view our Partner blog, click here

Our New “Remote” World

CMMA Blog

As always, I want to begin by expressing my sincerest wishes that this blog finds you all well. Very likely you are working remotely, like me. Like most. It’s our new world. In fact, recently we held our first very large virtual event, VirtualQ | NAB . It was focused on the Media and Entertainment industry with special interest for our Broadcast and Post-Production customers. Hopefully, you were able to attend one of the many sessions we offered over this 3-day event, which included discussions with technology Partners like Adobe , Dalet , IPV , and Teradici . If you missed any of these sessions, you can still check them out here . We were thrilled to have them share updates on their offerings, especially as they relate to new workflows that have now become intrinsic with remote collaboration, a change that has become more prevalent and is likely here to stay.

To me, this was the most recurring and central theme to what people were both talking and asking about. We also heard that at the beginning of our “remote-work” world, there was an initial scramble by companies who found their teams scattered and isolated from each other, who still required access to shared media resources to meet business objectives. The initial frenzy has mostly come and gone. Many studio and media production companies have adjusted by using new methods to access and share content, distribute it, and keep the entire workflow moving in order to maintain business continuity and monetize the final product.

I was lucky enough to speak with the following 4 partners during our event, and throughout I heard the constant theme of facilitating workflows and production in this new era of home studios and remote media projects. Here are a few of my takeaways that underscore this, and the new world of remote collaboration.

Adobe presented Productions in Premiere Pro that provides users the tools for organizing collaborative workflows and film projects. Productions was demonstrated with a virtual desktop interface and showed how remote users can access local storage, like StorNext , for shared project workflows.

Dalet shared how distributed resources, teams, and audiences are everywhere now. Cumulatively, this has necessitated the ability for remote creatives to take advantage of their offerings, which include cloud and hybrid cloud content access to maintain uninterrupted productivity.

We also heard how IPV is helping facilitate workflow and productivity in today’s world that’s relying on remote access like never before. IPV’s Curator provides the ability to ‘collaborate without borders’, enabling ongoing creative work from anywhere in the world.

Teradici provided us with a demonstration that showed how remote users, in your own home studio, for instance, can seamlessly maintain business continuity with ongoing access to workstations and applications. This is especially valuable for scenarios when moving everything to the cloud isn’t feasible, yet remote teams need ongoing access to shared assets to complete projects and meet deadlines.

It was truly exciting to hear how these partners are advancing technologies to facilitate and create new remote workflows and keep decentralized operations connected and productive. During our sessions, we heard that for the most part, the M&E industry has rapidly adjusted, with editors, colorists, producers, and collaborative workgroups working remotely and continuing production in “the new normal.” In fact, many already believe that remote workflows will continue, and with new resulting advantages. We’ll look at those in another blog, though.

The next step, of course, is to drill down into these new media workflows , and see the architecture, what capabilities users will have, and the simplicity to integrate these new methods into your own workflow. For these details, I invite you to stay tuned for the upcoming blog by my colleague, Everett Ward, where he’ll cover these workflows from a more technical perspective. Until my next blog, stay safe, happy, and healthy!

To view our Partner blog, click here

Quantum’s VirtualQ | NAB – Take Your Content in Bold New Directions

CMMA Blog

First of all, we at Quantum want to say we miss interacting with you personally, whether providing demos , tours, direct access with our executives at our Executive Briefing Center in our Englewood CO office, visiting onsite to understand your environment and challenges first-hand, or simply having really good conversations during any of the events we both attend, we are all adjusting to new ways. With that said, we are still conducting all these customer-focused activities, but more creatively, virtually.

And to underscore the core aspect, which hasn’t changed over these recent times of adjustment, is our commitment to our customers and finding new means to continue our interaction, and solving the challenges to keep your production rolling along.

We might not have made our annual trip to Vegas this year for NAB to sit across from each other at the same table to talk about what’s new, but we can still have meaningful conversations and learning forums face-to-face, virtually that is!

Beginning next Tuesday, May 12 – 14, we are thrilled to welcome you back to the Quantum booth, specifically to our VirtualQ | N AB !

As always, Quantum executives and business leaders will be participating in break-out customer meetings to have personal roundtable discussions. We’ll also be showcasing many of our advanced technologies with product updates and an impressive lineup of leading technology Partners whose time-relevant solutions work seamlessly with StorNext ® environments. Listed below are the sessions where you can join from the comfort of your own home office to hear directly from these Quantum Technology Alliances Partners on how they are providing innovative methods to keep your workflows in motion in our “new normal” world.

Adobe Premier Productions with StorNext
- Learn more about Adobe Premiere Pro as we highlight its new Productions feature and the ways to configure StorNext to get the most out of this new capability.
Orchestrated Media Solutions with Dalet and StorNext
- Find out how Dalet’s solutions provide access across tiered-storage systems along with transparent Archive content access for quicker restores and faster time-to-air.
Remote Collaborative Production with IPV and StorNext
- Hear how IPV helps efficiently manage today’s fast-moving collaborative media workflows and creative projects for today’s distributed workstation environments.
Options and Considerations for Effective Remote Production with Teradici and StorNext
- Discover how Teradici enables work from home needs with remote technology to create secure virtual workspaces handling even the most graphics-intensive applications.

If you would like to learn more about these solutions and how they can help keep your production environment in motion, please visit our VirtualQ | NAB Event web page to check out our event agenda and register for the sessions that interest you. Also, if you would like to connect directly with Quantum executives, product leadership, and engineering experts, please let us know , and we’ll be happy to arrange a meeting with you. See you virtually next weekat VirtualQ | NAB!

To view our Partner blog, click here

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This Week at the Q

This Week at the Q

What Does Your “Remote World” Look Like?

Tips for Remote Workflow Operations

Our New “Remote” World

Quantum’s VirtualQ | NAB – Take Your Content in Bold New Directions

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