Broadcast Beat Magazine 2018 BroadcastAsia Special Edition | Page 24

tent creation tasks against the
seven criteria defined above to
rate their suitability for cloud
deployment, determining which
disciplines derive the most
value from the cloud as it stands
today.
The following functions are best
suited to the cloud at the pres-
ent time:
Review
and Approval
-
Applications like digital dailies
and review and approval are
perfectly suited for the cloud.
Stakeholders can securely
stream, view and annotate proxy
clips using standard internet
connections and generic hard-
ware like smart phones and
tablets, easily taking part in an
asynchronous creative process.
Datasets are light and easily
managed in cloud data centers,
participants can be anywhere,
and low-latency interactivity
isn’t critical.
Asset and Workflow Management
- Managing libraries of media
assets and orchestrating content
workflows are generally well
suited to the cloud. Participants
are typically distributed across
facilities and departments. Asset
management tasks focus pri-
marily on light metadata and
are accomplished with light-
weight proxy media. Standard
streaming technology provides
adequate interactivity. Cloud
services like Avid’s MediaCentral
| Cloud UX provide access to
projects, media and workflow
tasks through a simple user-
friendly graphical interface
available from any device.
Content
Sharing
and
Collaboration - The cloud can
be highly effective for services
that focus on content sharing
and collaboration. Leveraging
cloud infrastructure, data can
be automatically synchronized
between collaborators over
standard IP networks. For exam-
ple, Avid Cloud Collaboration
for Pro Tools enables musicians
and engineers to work on dif-
ferent tracks of the same song
at the same time. Collaboration
features are embedded directly
within Pro Tools’ UI, making it
easy and intuitive to upload
tracks to share with collabora-
tors, or download tracks. The
service is highly scalable, with
typical peak usage of more than
400,000 unique users per day.
These content creation areas
fall somewhere in the middle
of the suitability spectrum, with
both benefits and challenges:
Animation - Some aspects of
animation workflows are well
suited to the cloud. Animation
artists require real-time interac-
tivity as they fine-tune the visu-
al design and movement of ele-
ments within a scene. As such,
24 • Broadcast Beat Magazine • www.broadcastbeat.com
animation creation software is
still best suited to deployment
on individual workstations and
laptops. But the cloud can com-
plement traditional installed
clients by enabling file shar-
ing, collaboration, and render-
ing at scale. 3D rendering is
highly computation-intensive.
Rather than capitalizing large,
on-premises render farms that
may not be fully utilized, most
animation houses leverage the
cloud for peak workloads, taking
advantage of the highly scal-
able computing available in the
cloud.
Creative Editorial - Using the
cloud for editing functions is
one of the most rapidly evolv-
ing areas of the content creation
value chain today. Depending
on the editorial workflow, cloud
deployment patterns can take
different shapes. Here are three
examples:
• Light editing, like basic shot
selection and rough cutting, can
take place using proxy media
and software that runs on gener-
ic servers in cloud data centers.