INDUSTRY. CLOUD ROUND TABLE
PAUL SCURRELL Senior VP of product Atomos
W hat cloud services do you offer and how are they changing the game? PAUL SCURRELL: Earlier this year, Atomos introduced a range of network-connected, in-the-field products – Zato Connect, Atomos Connect and Shogun Connect. These new direct-to- cloud devices attach to any camera and simultaneously capture two versions of the footage: a high-quality DNxHR/ DNxHD/ProRes variant and a lightweight 1080p H.264/H.265 proxy file that gets instantly uploaded to Frame.io. The two versions share the same file name and timecode reference. Since the proxy file sizes are much smaller than the original, they load faster, require less processing power and – most importantly – are much quicker to upload to the cloud using the public internet. For many social media platforms, and perhaps for breaking news on conventional broadcasting services, proxy video quality is actually usable. For higher production values, an entire project can be edited, reviewed and approved using proxy media, then ‘picture locked’ for grading or audio sweetening, simply by commanding the editing application to switch to the high- resolution media. NICK WARBURTON: A little over a year ago, we launched SymplyNebula: a high- performance, but affordable, globally distributed data storage mesh designed to produce cost-effective and – crucially – cost-predictable cloud storage for cloud- based production, archiving and backup. Traditionally, users need to decide if they want fast, configurable cloud storage, or a lower price with less performance and fewer features. SymplyNebula cloud storage is designed to meet the needs of content creators and owners by offering outstanding performance, regardless of how much storage you use.
NICK WARBURTON Director Symply
There is an interest in moving multiple aspects of ingest, post-production and archive pipeline to the public cloud. The obvious benefit is the ability to spin infrastructure up and down at will. The obvious hurdles are unknown costs and workflow simplicity. SymplyNebula not only provides a predictable cost in the cloud, but our mesh network integrates with hyperscale service providers to deliver low-latency, cloud-adjacent performance. In this way, data in our cloud can be accessed by applications for applications, such as transcoders, AI and facial recognitions running in AWS, Azure and GCP, for example. The advantage being, there is a single, consistent data set across multiple clouds – it’s what we call multicloud. How does this impact the creative process itself? PS: Camera to cloud (C2C) is more about speeding up the content creation process, by reducing the time it takes to get from acquisition to post-production. There’s no waiting for hard drives to be shipped, or files to be copied; proxy files are uploaded directly to the cloud from the camera, so editors and remote stakeholders, such as producers, directors and even customers, can start working on material immediately.
“Customers realise cloud is the way to go, but in the short to medium term, a hybrid approach is by far the best path for firms”
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