Using The Cloud in post production workflows

With NAB fast approaching there is lots of discussion that 2012 will be the year when more and more cloud based services rise up in the world of post-production, and that it will become increasingly common for NLE’s to start to integrate cloud based functionality inside their software.

Screenlight have a good introductory article to the world of cloud based services for post production, which range from editing online to client review services and online rendering or transcoding.

Lots of the ideas for products and services that are emerging all sound useful, but currently the main hurdle is the ‘bandwidth bottleneck’  – that no one’s internet is fast enough to be efficiently uploading and downloading hundreds of gigabytes of data.

That usually leaves returning to an offline/online workflow, using proxies to cut and then reconnecting to the full size media. I’ve done this across Dropbox and it worked perfectly, but that was for a pretty short form project with relatively little media.

Cloud workflows

Wevideo.com is one of the companies offering an online editing service, streamingmedia.com have a pretty detailed review.

Aframe.com, originally a UK based firm (started by David Peto, who founded the very friendly Unit in Soho) are seeking to provide ingest, transcoding and collaboration services, getting around the bandwidth bottleneck problem with ‘upload centres’ and special software to ‘max out’ your broadband.

Avid Interplay Sphere is Avid’s approach to cloud based editing, aimed initially at journalists operating from the field.

Zencoder (a cloud based transcoding firm) have this useful slideshare document which goes into a bit more depth on the future of cloud based services as they see it…