Acorn Cloud by CHESA

Your dose of workflow therapy from Acorn

Does a Collaborative, Real-Time Video Workflow Software Exist?

By Lance Hukill
collaborative video

Amy Lounsbury, Director of Marketing for Acorn Cloud, by CHESA, sat down with Scott Miller, Director of Global Alliances & Channels at LucidLink. Amy and Scott discussed collaborative real-time video workflow software. We appreciate Scott taking the time to share his knowledge with us!

 

Professional Video Workflow Software for Remote Teams

Question: Creative teams are constantly challenged with workflows that require collaboration in real-time, or as close to it as possible. Now that heads of video project teams need to solve remote collaborating on video and audio, what should someone tasked with picking a solution look for to support global creative teams? 

Answer: Remote collaboration for video projects is the new normal. I don’t think anybody that we’ve talked to has said that they’re going entirely back to on-prem.

scott miller

I would recommend that heads of video projects look for Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions that bundle the various components that creative teams need to do their jobs remotely. Remote and hybrid creative teams don’t have the same kind of bandwidth that they had when everybody was in the office. You need a collaboration solution that pulls various components together and offers them as a service. Cloud-based file storage and media asset management (MAM) enables multiple people to collaborate from their individual locations, the same way they did when they were on-prem.

 

Question: Video projects can represent a massive amount of data. Storytellers on the video and audio editing side don’t need to be concerned with that. They simply need to stay in their creative zen zone, and they need to access media and project files and edit video files while reviewing and approving video content fast. A collaboration platform. What is the solution to this dilemma when the editors are not on-prem?

Answer: You need to understand what your remote storytellers are looking for. They want to focus on editing. They want to use the same laptops or workstations that they were using on-prem, but they want to use them at home. They don’t want delays.

Making sure your video production team can stay in the zen zone requires a paradigm shift. I mean, you could set up a workflow where creators download content to a local workstation, work on it, and then upload it when they’re finished, but this would create a lot of built-in delays and challenges. When multiple team members are collaborating, one team member will need to wait until the other edits are complete before accessing the files for, say, video reviews. LucidLink, one of the components in Acorn Clouds’ bundled SaaS system, helps keep video production teams working in the zen zone. With LucidLink, multiple Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve editors can access the same files at the same time from wherever they happen to be. This dramatically accelerates the time to complete a project and keeps creatives focused on what they do best.

 

 

Question: Scaling teams up and down, ramping a project up, and then easily wrapping up a project has meant that equipment and software can sit idle, or never be used again. What is your best advice for those out there who want workflow collaboration tools that allow the ability to add users easily and quickly, while keeping costs down over the long haul?

Answer: Great question. It’s important to consider collaboration and workflow from a producer’s standpoint as well. Video production processes are cradle to grave. You ingest content. Then it’s got to be edited and go through review and approval. It will have to be sent to various distribution points and then ultimately archived. Your usage changes throughout every phase of the media supply chain. When you invest in and manage the infrastructure and tools separately, you must buy storage and media asset management systems that meet the needs of the creative team and producers at peak capacity. Your investment in hardware, software, and remote networking capabilities that go above and beyond. When you buy for peak capacity, you have it when you are idle. That’s certainly not green and it’s not cost-effective.

My advice is to find a solution with a completely bundled usage model that allows you to scale up and scale down as the user changes. A video workflow software solution like Acorn Cloud grows and contracts as your usage patterns change. You save money over the long haul and it’s better for the environment.

But there are other advantages are well. The new normal includes both hybrid workflows and strictly cloud workflows. Video editors want to work remotely. They are not going to be on-prem. Studios often have to go outside of the large metropolitan areas to find editors and creatives. So, post-production deploying remote collaborative workflows is essential.

The most effective way to manage remote collaborative workflows is to use a SaaS system that encompasses all of the different components. Acorn Cloud encompasses Quantum CatDV, LucidLink, and the various components that creative teams need to do their job in a bundled SaaS. But it’s more than the sum of its part. Acorn Cloud comes with all the expertise and support of CHESA. Acorn Cloud supports all the diverse needs that creatives have and helps them with workflows that take advantage of this new normal.

At Lucid Link, our customers tell us that by being able to access storage on demand, creative teams can implement collaborative workflows that weren’t even possible before.

Partnering with Acorn Cloud lets us be a part of a solution that is better than the individual parts.

 

Find Out How Your Creative Teams Can Benefit from Acorn Cloud

Acorn Cloud is more than a workflow; it is a solution with full support and services behind it. Contact us today to see how Acorn Cloud can transform your video production process.

 

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