A Nativ Whitepaper/ www.nativ.tv

Workflow and Collaboration: Working smarter, cheaper and faster

The Muddle in the Middle Series

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In the new world of multi-platform TV and film, harnessing content and cost-effectively managing its production and delivery offers huge opportunities for content owners and brands. Whether it is branded content or feature length films, it has never been more important to reach new and existing consumers any place, any time.

Despite this, many media companies have a difficult time exploiting that opportunity. As demand for

high quality content increases so too do the file sizes and the complexity of managing and delivering

it to a myriad of platforms.

Fortunately, new technological advances like file-based workflow and the cloud are revolutionising

the way production, post-production and distribution companies manage, repurpose and deliver

content. Although these advances by no means solve every problem, new platforms are maturing

and stepping up to meet the challenge.

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1. The switch from tape to file – Improvements in video compression, cheaper storage and greater

bandwidth have enabled the transition to multi-platform viewing. Although this transition has been

gradual, these technology advances have revolutionised the TV viewing experience and in recent years

we’ve seen an explosion of cross platform VOD and OTT services. As these same technical advances

mature, they are also offering huge advantages further up the supply chain and disrupting the old ways

of working in production, post-production and distribution.

Despite the hype though, not every element of production and distribution can be switched from tape

to digital file overnight. As file sizes continue to grow, tapes and drives are often the only option for

delivery and long term archiving, so physical media will be around for some time to come. However,

many aspects of the content supply chain are now managed entirely through file-based workflows

and there are options for seamlessly integrating tape-based and file-based workflows until the move

towards tapeless is complete.

A couple of long term technical trends have enabled the emergence of file based workflow in TV and film.

2. The switch from hardware to software – Many tools for manipulating video and audio content that

previously ran on expensive specialist hardware have now been transitioned to more cost-effective

software, which runs on commodity hardware. This has been an important transition as video server

software, which used to be cabled into a company’s specialist infrastructure, can now be run on site

or in offsite datacentres, with support for “service orientated” software integration.

The combination of the switch from tape to file and the emergence of commodity IT over specialist

infrastructure has meant that the world of video management is now open to thousands of software

developers globally. Specialist video functions can now be integrated into wider business systems and

can reside within commodity IT enterprises either offsite or onsite.

Laying the Groundwork for File Based Workflow

What is Workflow Anyway?

In the convergent world of digital production and Internet technologies, workflow is increasingly hyped

but often poorly defined. Workflow is not a new concept and in its most abstract sense simply refers to

a sequence of tasks carried out in a specific order. In terms of video it means the flow of content

through well-known stages - ingest, editing, approval, transcoding, and so on.

Effective workflow orchestration should ensure a sequence of steps is accurately followed to avoid

confusion, remove errors and ensure that critical business processes can be tracked and optimised over

time. In the world of TV and film, a meaningful workflow must seamlessly orchestrate the interactions

between enterprise resources (storage, transcoding, network etc.) and groups of people. One without

the other offers advantages in terms of operational efficiency but tracking people and resources

together is critical to enjoying operational efficiencies, cost-control and ultimately savings.

During the time of tape and specialist physical infrastructure,

workflow could be mapped by tracking a tape number or by

the sight of people walking between different departments

transferring content on tape and “metadata” on print-outs. In a

digital world these workflow steps can be carried out automatically

using software which removes the greater cost of manual labour,

increases throughput and improves time to market.

A number of factors make file-based workflows more

important than ever:

Economics – There is less money around, so companies

need to avoid overspend on media management and

workflow. This can only be brought about by replacing

expensive hardware and manual labour with automation

software running on commodity infrastructure.

Change – The video ecosystem is going through rapid

change. Not only are viewing habits changing but standards

and formats are changing. From file formats and metadata

to delivery mechanisms and video platforms - being able

to adapt workflows quickly and easily is the key to survival.

The holy grail of filed based workflow is a process that is

automated as much as possible and orchestrates seamlessly

between software and people. Tasks that were previously

carried out manually, such as file transfer and encoding, should

be fully automated and reference content and metadata in

tandem to ensure that each workflow step has context and

meaning. Once a workflow has been designed it can be run

and refined completely automatically, thus offering lower

operating cost, reducing the number of people required and

increasing throughput. In the ideal world highly skilled people

work on specialist, creative tasks and everything else is carried

out by automated software.

When implemented correctly, automated filed-based workflows

lower the cost and complexity of handling greater volumes of

content. They increase visibility, lower cost and improve time

to market. They remove spikes in human resource and replace

them with scalable software running on commodity hardware.

This leaves more money for the creation of great content

rather than the management and delivery of it. Such cost

savings in the area of post production and distribution mean

content owners can be more agile and benefit from smaller

deal opportunities where previously high post production and

distribution costs prevented them.

Implementing file-based workflow automation should be

a no brainer, but the “cost-barrier” for entry and the risk of

implementation is often extremely high. Integrating workflow and

asset management software into an organization often requires

purchasing various specialist software components and then

paying an integrator to do the work. Such a task can cost 100s

of 1000s of dollars and roll on for months, if not, years. Also

the risk of failure is extremely high as the market moves quickly

and standards are not always adhered to. So although many

companies want to benefit from file based workflow automation

in order to cut costs and handle more scale, the upfront

investment required is often unviable.

In many ways cloud represents both hype and a brave new world.

Although the name seems new the concept relies on a number

of technologies that have been quietly evolving and maturing

over a long period:

IaaS and SaaS – Technology shifts in the video domain

have come at a time where data centre technologies have

also advanced rapidly from hardware to virtual infrastructure.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service

(SaaS) paradigms are springing up everywhere and bring with

them interesting opportunities around managing video content

workflows in the cloud.

Virtualisation technologies – These enable users to deploy

software to data centres without worrying about physical

location, hardware costs or network technologies. Investment

in an expensive specialist solution is no longer the only option.

Elastic computing – These models offer interesting options

to the world of video management. Some workflow elements

can be processor intensive and long running but may only occur

sporadically. So why have lots of expensive hardware hanging

around for that once-a-year spike? Being able to ramp up on

demand and then immediately ramp down is the way to go. This

is the real Holy Grail: pay for the automated workflow processing

on commodity infrastructure and only when you need it.

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Why is File Based Workflow So Important?

It’s a No-brainer, So Why Does it Seem so Hard?

The Dawn of Cloud: Marketing Hype or a Brave New World?

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Cloud and Collaboration: The Future of Media Management and Workflow Operations

What’s clear is that at the same time cloud technologies are

taking off, the world is becoming an increasingly flat place. In a

global marketplace, work often goes to the territory where skills

are readily available and it can be done most cheaply. Many

workflows span several organisations – production companies,

post production houses, freelancers – and because of this,

distance working is now a must. It’s necessary to have a solution

that can in some sense be owned by a single company but

accessible by many different people from other organisations

and geographical locations.

A connected world means that people can use the internet to

collaborate in near real time and different people in different

offices can work together using web-based platforms. With

this in mind media management solutions require more than

just asset management and workflow, they need to offer

collaboration – the ability to communicate, share and connect

through a single “hub”.

Using cloud based media management and workflow services

that are accessed through a web browser and reside in the

cloud is clearly the way to go and in many circumstances offer

a multiplying effect. Where people are involved they can interact

from anywhere in the world, whether that be Hollywood or

Hyderabad. This offers huge cost savings by removing manual

labour, automating workflow and scaling to meet demand.

Leveraging a workforce that spans different time zones also

offers huge advantages in terms of time to market.

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Making Cloud Work in the World of TV and Film

With all the benefits offered by software based workflow

and cloud computing, why isn’t the entire TV and film supply

chain running in the cloud? Many industries already benefit

from cloud based computing but not so much TV and film.

These industries are perhaps furthest behind in capitalising

on cloud and there is good reason for this. The reality is that

today this opportunity is hindered by a number of significant

factors that need to be overcome:

File Size – As one moves up the supply chain from consumer

video playback to film and TV production, the files get bigger –

in fact enormous. Often the cost and time constraints for moving

media files from local storage into the cloud are so huge that

it makes no business sense at all. Until network connectivity

and costs improve, elements of the supply chain will be out of

bounds to cloud services. Also, many media operations that work

on large files require vast amounts of I/O and local connectivity.

Many commodity cloud services simply can’t offer this amount

of throughput within their own infrastructure.

Software – There are many discrete software components

(from transcoding and storage to simple editing and shot

logging) in the cloud that offer benefits to video content owners.

These components, although extremely valuable, are hard to

harness as they represent mere ‘islands’ of functionality that

are hard to reach when considering intergrated workflow and

advanced media management. In addition, to benefit from true

economies of scale when it comes to SaaS licensing models,

video software needs to be inherently multi-tenanted and

support on-boarding of many customers. Many legacy video

software solutions are not cloud-ready and simply installing

them in the cloud results in non-scalable, incoherent solutions.

Billing – Many assume that the cloud means low cost

computing. In fact cloud means you pay for what you use.

If you use a lot of network processing and storage, you’ll

pay a lot of money. Many organisations don’t like nasty

shocks when it comes to billing so favour owning their own

infrastructure rather than the unpredictable cost of cloud.

Collaboration – Few existing video software solutions

support the notion of collaboration through a single hub.

There are plenty of cloud collaboration solutions around

but not many are truly video-centric.

One-size fits all solutions – Some existing cloud media

platforms have limitations as they are somewhat hardwired

applications. They offer “one size fits all” solutions that

lack the configuration options to make them truly beneficial

for every content owner, large or small. Platform as a

Service (PaaS) is really in its infancy within the worlds

of production and distribution.

Fortunately, new technologies are removing some of these

barriers and opening up opportunities for SaaS-based

models in TV and film.

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Taking Control: The Need for a Single Software Platform

Building workflow and MAM systems in house is expensive

and risky. At the same time islands of functionality in the

cloud are often difficult to embrace. Media management and

workflow platforms, designed from the ground up to live in

the cloud, have been developed to overcome these challenges.

The answer is a platform that is completely configurable,

where new applications and processes can be tailored within

a generic platform and offer:

• Integrated remote ingest and delivery

• Enterprise asset management

• Social and collaboration features

• Workflow design and orchestration

• Content repurposing and distribution

• Frame-accurate, web-based logging

• Advanced VoD and OTT packaging and delivery

These aren’t mere “islands of functionality” but sophisticated

end to end platforms that can be accessed from anywhere,

any time. They enable media companies to capitalise on file

based workflow automation and enjoy the costs savings of

a more scalable operation.

The customer can effectively start with a blank canvas and

configure the platform to control access and roles; workflow

design and task allocation; resource access (from transcode

and QC to storage and network protocols); metadata structure

and hierarchies; and events and reporting.

Conclusion

It is clear that advances in technology are offering huge

opportunities for content owners, post production companies

and distributors to lower costs and respond more rapidly.

However attaining these goals is being held back by limited

network connectivity and the lack of mature cloud based

media management. Luckily, in both cases, things are

improving and opportunities to work smarter, quicker and

more cost effectively in the cloud are now emerging.

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Contact us to take back control of your content

t: +44 207 580 9488e: info@nativ.tv : @NativLtd