M+E Daily

HITS Fall: Technologist Turner’s Reasons Why Post in the Cloud Works

The media and entertainment industry has already embraced the cloud when it comes to content creation, management and distribution. But for several reasons, the use of cloud technologies for post-production and VFX work seems to be lagging behind, according to entertainment technologist Mark Turner.

The capital expenditure vs. operational expenditure benefits are among the obvious reasons why moving post production to the cloud is the right call, he said Oct. 4 during a presentation at the Hollywood Innovation & Technology Summit (HITS) Fall event. “Nobody will debate that stuff. But it hasn’t caused everyone to move to the cloud,” Turner said.

There are plenty of reasons why post and VFX work is being held off the cloud, and Turner confronted each of them.

While the cloud allows for virtualized workstations, they aren’t exactly cost effective, nor fast enough to output the required quality for all post applications, Turner said. But the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. “I don’t need to have my staff where all my media is,” he said. “And we can’t get enough staff in the right places.” Virtualized workstations allow for an almost infinitely scalable number of artists to work on a project, are securely provisioned, can be adapted to the user and task, and can be in disparate locations.

“We still have an issue with bandwidth and what we need for streaming quality,” Turner said.

Security with the cloud continues to pop up among those making the decisions around VFX and post work, Turner said. “There’s a lot of people telling you the cloud is the enemy, that that’s where all the piracy happens,” he added. But the way VFX and post work is shuttled around now is actually less secure than the cloud, he said, and is prone to human error. Cloud security ties content to a specific user, is instantly revocable, can be made bound to a time and location, and allows for users to work on multiple studio projects securely.

Turner noted other cloud benefits for post and VFX work: for publishing, provisioned access is the key, tied to a specific provider, instantly revocable and with optional file processing during the ‘publish’ stage. On the archiving front, there’s no difference in access speed, just less accesses, and cloud allows for archiving to be immediately monetizable.

HITS Fall was sponsored by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Box, Ooyala, TiVo, Cognizant, DXC Technology, Gracenote, LiveTiles, ThinkAnalytics, Wasabi, Aspera, EIDR, MicroStrategy, the Trusted Partner Network, human-I-T, Zaszou IT Consulting, OnPrem Solution Partners, and Bob Gold & Associates, and was produced by the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA), in association with the Content Delivery & Security Association (CDSA), the Hollywood IT Society (HITS), the Smart Content Council and Women in Technology Hollywood (WiTH).

Click here to access the audio of the presentation. Click here for the Turner slide deck.