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Content’s High-Water Mark: Making Content Production and Collaboration Easier

CMMA Blog

Most people are aware that global video consumption grew over 60% last year1 – not only for ‘binge-worthy’ and immersive film, TV, and animation on our favorite streaming services, but in every aspect of our lives—video has truly become our new normal as the most effective way to entertain, teach, and connect with customers. 

Producers of that content are scrambling to produce and deliver in this new content gold rush – in North America alone OTT revenue is expected to double to $94B by 2026. And beyond the endless demand for television and film production, growth is hitting rates never seen before: the gaming market is expected to nearly double from $192 to $398 Billion by 2027 – and, as AR and VR hits its stride, it is expected to quadruple from $37 to $127 Billion by 2034. 

Clearly, with so much demand for new content, and so much competition – thinking about how to build a flexible and reliable production workflow, how to keep your raw and finished content and archives available everywhere you need it, and how to let your creative team work together to speed production time is critical. 

StorNext 7 – Containerized and Virtualized 

Quantum’s StorNext  shared storage file system and management platform has long been trusted to help customers build these workflows in the largest environments and meet the extreme needs of hundreds of creatives all editing and finishing content on storage at the same time – and all with content archives easily reaching Petabytes. 

With the release of StorNext 7, the StorNext platform has taken a dramatic architectural step forward. We took the functionality of StorNext—that previously was provided by multiple hardware components, software, and network connection integration points— into virtualized software containers that are incredibly fast to deploy, configure, and update. 

 
StorNext 7 on the New Quantum H4000 

Today, we’re making all of this technology available on the new Quantum H4000 converged storage appliance – a complete StorNext shared-storage environment that fits in only 2 rack units – and is ready to deploy anywhere you’d like your team to work. 

Collaborative Content Production and Management Just Got Easier 

Together – StorNext 7 and H4000 will help content creators everywhere with the ability to quickly stand up a new shared storage environment designed for large video files, so that your entire team can work at full speed with their favorite solutions without copying files back and forth or waiting for one team to checkpoint before another team can get started. With StorNext 7 and H4000:  

  • You have the full capability of StorNext technology at your disposal to move content to tape or cloud and quickly retrieve content whenever your team needs it. 
  • Existing StorNext customers can now precisely deploy more StorNext capability wherever needed – for new projects that they couldn’t ramp up to tackle before, or easily expand to new locations. 
  • And speaking of locations – StorNext 7 and the H4000 are fast to deploy for live event production, for remote production teams that want to bring collaboration with them, or even serve camera ingest or VFX workflows. 
  • With options to customize your H4000 for up to 307 Terabytes of storage, and your choice of a mix of up to 100 GigE or 32 Gb Fibre Channel connections you can get up and running quickly in every environment.  
  • As your production needs grow, expanding your system is incredibly simple too – you can add more H4000 systems for greater performance, or storage expansion systems to add more capacity, or even connect to Quantum’s H2000 or F1000 and F2000 NVMe storage as well. 

Together, the new StorNext 7 and the H4000 are ready to help you build a truly collaborative foundation to meet even your most ambitious content delivery plans and schedules. In summary, content production and collaboration just got easier.  

See how to make your content production and collaboration easier here .  

SOURCES: 

  1. Nielsen – “Nielsen studies show that home-bound consumers have led to a 60% increase in the amount of video content watched globally.” https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2020/covid-19-tracking-the-impact-on-media-consumption/ 
     
  2. Digital TV Research, as reported in Digital EV Europe – “The US, which is the world’s most mature OTT market and home to the world’s leading SVOD services, will see revenues more than double despite its maturity.” https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2021/03/01/north-american-ott-market-to-double-in-revenue-by-2026/ 
     
  3. 360 Research Reports: Global Gaming Market Size, Status and Forecast 2021-2027 – “The global Gaming market size is projected to reach US$ 398950 million by 2027, from US$ 192150 million in 2020, at a CAGR of 11.0% during 2021-2027.” https://www.360researchreports.com/global-gaming-market-17720853  (reported in MarketWatch here: https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/2021-2027-global-gaming-market-development-plans-emerging-demand-healthy-cagr-industry-share-leading-players-strategy-drivers-and-opportunity-outlook-360-research-report-2021-04-23 ) 
     
  4. Prescient and Strategic Intelligence – AR and VR Market – Global Industry Analysis and Growth Forecast to 2030 – “The augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) market size was $37.0 billion in 2019, and it is expected to reach $1,274.4 billion in 2030, while progressing at a CAGR of 42.9% during 2020–2030.” https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/augmented-reality-and-virtual-reality-market  

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What Does Your “Remote World” Look Like?

CMMA Blog

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? 

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This Week at the Q

CMMA Blog

Welcome to our new weekly blog, ‘This Week at the Q’!

Every Friday, I close out my week by sending a ‘Top 5’ company email. It’s really a great way to wrap up the week, and share the latest in what’s new at the Q. For a while, I wasn’t sure how many people actually read it, until one week when I was offline and didn’t send it, people from all over the company emailed asking where it was! After confessing I was a slacker that week, it got me thinking; maybe our customer community would enjoy our news tidbits just as much. So let’s give this a shot. Leave a comment if you’re reading, I’d love to hear from you!

  1. We were excited when Jessica Iler recently joined our Product Marketing team, bringing a wealth of storage experience from her work both vendor and analyst side. As we’ve had to become more physically distanced, Jessica has been a passionate supporter of technology that enables us to be more connected than ever. Read more in her new TV Technology byline, Making Remote Production the New Norm , where Jessica discusses today’s remote production environment and the effects on workflows and creative teams. The article includes some tips on how to keep these remote workflows in motion and optimize collaboration and productivity.
  2. Following on from that, and getting a little more technical, Everett Ward from our Tech Marketing team posted this new blog Tips for Remote Workflow Operations .
  3. Rounding out the remote trifecta, Diana Salazar from our Product Marketing team posted her new blog, Crisis Management Strategies for Your Remote Workforce . Diana has spent quite a bit of time speaking with not only our customers, but also our own Quantum IT team to understand the biggest pain points as we moved to a remote workforce. We all have an enormous amount of respect for our IT heroes working day and night to ensure we can work securely and keep moving forwards during this challenging time. You’ve pulled us together, and kept us connected.
  4. If you’re a StorNext® customer, we have a new white paper covering TISAX certification . In many industries, our customers must securely share sensitive information across corporate boundaries and be assured that it is always protected. Requiring all parties to demonstrate compliance with a specific set of information, security standards are one way to achieve this goal. TISAX is one such standard, developed specifically by the auto industry, but addressing concerns commonly found in other infosec standards. If you’re a StorNext customer subject to information security standards compliance, you may find this Quantum StorNext Security white paper interesting.
  5. All of the sessions from our recent VirtualQ | Protect & Archive digital event, are now available on-demand here . Tune in to hear Quantum and our partners discuss strategies for processing, storing and protecting massive volumes of critical enterprise data. 80% of the world’s data will be unstructured by 2025, and we’re addressing those challenges head-on to support this massive data growth and archive your most valuable data. Interested in a topic we didn’t cover at the event? Drop me a note and we’ll add it to the line-up!

I look forward to sharing our top 5 news bytes again next week,

Natasha

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

remote workflows blog

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.
image

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.

image 1

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.

image 2

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

Tips and Best Practices for Remote Media Production and Post-Production

CMMA Blog

To our valued customers, we know this pandemic is affecting everyone on both a personal and professional level.  We have been working closely with partners to enable editors and producers to do their work remotely, and we’d like to share some of the practices we are seeing, below.

If you would like to learn more or if you need assistance, please contact us so we can help.  We will continue to stay in touch during this difficult time.

Options and Best Practices for Enabling Remote Post-Production

There are several options for enabling remote production, but the most common practice we are seeing is to leverage virtual and/or remote desktop technology to give content creators access to their shared storage environment remotely. 

In this architecture, our customers leverage their workstations and shared storage environment that is in place at the studio or post-house.  These workstations are connected to the high-performance shared storage environment via a StorNext file system client, or a standard CIFS or NFS client.  For our existing customers, this entire infrastructure is in place today. 

Virtual desktop and/or remote desktop technology is then used to enable remote access to these high-performance workstations.  From the user’s perspective, the experience of work on an ‘endpoint’ computer at their home is the same as if they were working at their workstation at the studio.  There are different technology options, and Quantum and our partners will consult with customers to determine the right architecture, and work with customers to deploy the remote desktop infrastructure using the best options and architecture for their needs. 

Benefits

This approach has the benefits of leveraging the existing storage infrastructure in place today and doesn’t require that the data be moved.  It can be implemented very quickly, with some of our customers enabling hundreds of editors in the span of just a couple of weeks.

Remote Production Session at Virtual Q | NAB

If you are interested in learning more, please register for our session on enabling remote production as part of our Virtual Q | NAB Event, taking place May 12th through 14th.

To view our Partner blog, click here