Dynamic workflows designed by Tyrell support Whisper’s major commissions

Dynamic workflows designed by Tyrell support Whisper’s major commissions

by | Jun 12, 2024 | News, Storage

Whisper extends EditShare to build new capabilities

Dynamic workflows designed by Tyrell will support Whisper’s major commissions

EditShare, the technology leader that enables storytellers to create and manage collaborative workflows at every stage from storyboard to screen, has implemented another EFS storage network at leading UK entertainment production company Whisper. The system was designed and implemented in conjunction with EditShare’s partner Tyrell.

Whisper is highly regarded for its sports, live and entertainment coverage, including some of the largest events globally. Having recently secured commissions for multiple new documentary series, it has added an extensive new storage network and access facilities.

“We already have two EditShare storage nodes that we rely on, and which have proven extremely reliable over a number of years,” said Gareth Steven, head of post production at Whisper. “This new project calls for content with large production teams accessing and editing the content simultaneously. EditShare and Tyrell showed us that the scalability and workflow functionality met our requirements perfectly.”

The new installation sees three EditShare EFS-300 storage systems, each with 256 TB capacity, which are seen by users as a single namespace for simplicity and security in operation. The storage network is freely and continuously expandable to provide capacities exceeding a petabyte if required.

“Content security was also a key requirement for Whisper,” said Simon Wocka, account manager at Tyrell. “Media storage is like a bank vault: the assets it contains are priceless and must be protected above all else. Security is a core part of the EditShare architecture, providing the best protection at every stage without compromising operational ease and flexibility.

“EditShare also allows access directly within the key post tools that will be used on these shows,” he continued. “Artists using Adobe Premiere Pro or Blackmagic DaVinci can use EditShare integrations within their software environment, allowing them to access content directly. They don’t need to change workstations or learn new commands and structures – it removes barriers and makes workflows much simpler.”

Tara Montfort, co-founder and EVP Business Development at EditShare, added, “We are delighted to support Whisper’s new projects. Our scalable storage solutions and intuitive workflow tools are designed to meet the complex needs of production teams, ensuring they can collaborate seamlessly and focus on what they do best – creating compelling content.”

The new storage network was installed in February 2024 and is already supporting the latest documentary productions at Whisper.

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About EditShare

EditShare is an Emmy Award-winning technology leader, supporting storytellers through collaborative media workflows across on-premise, cloud and hybrid architectures. It offers scalable storage and collaboration for media businesses at every stage of the video production process from storyboarding to screening.

The software is inherently open, encouraging workflow collaboration, third-party integrations and content sharing across the entire production chain. EditShare delivers high performance and high availability, meticulously engineered to meet the specialized demands of media storage, management, and delivery across various industries, including corporate communications, sports broadcasting, and more. The comprehensive offering covers multi-level content storage for production and post, along with innovative asset and workflow management software, plus specialized and highly valued tools for content review and distribution, the creation of customized and branded pitch reels, and secure preview of high-value pre-release content.

About Tyrell

For 24 years Tyrell has been providing video, audio, graphics and storage solutions to the Irish and UK broadcast, post, production, corporate and education markets. In this time, we have become the leading provider of technology and service solutions both on-premise and in the cloud. Tyrell has an excellent understanding of the fast pace and unique pressures facing the media and entertainment industry; developing solutions for complex workflows. Allowing our clients to concentrate on the creative process and business development. From our two locations we offer a comprehensive range of professional services from consultancy to system design and integration, technical support and maintenance.

Contact Tyrell’s EditShare experts : Email  sales@tyrellcct.com, or call 0207 148 6201 or +353 (1) 888 1118.

Blog: Cloud – The Future for Production Companies

Blog: Cloud – The Future for Production Companies

by | Sep 28, 2021 | Cloud, News, tyrell's take

Cloud adoption is a very emotive and often a confusing set of topics. For a risk averse community such as production, taking the first step into the cloud is undoubtedly pulse raising. Factors such as cost control immediately spring to mind, as well as risking client relationships and the liability for assets that aren’t necessarily your own. Considering  we are used to very predictable timetables and airtight outcomes for deliverables using on-premises solutions. Why add more stress, and risk budget overspend by going into the cloud? 

Well, not wishing to boil the ocean with a single sweeping statement or approach, cloud when introduced cautiously and carefully, can greatly increase productivity and throughput at various stages of the average production workflow. For example, restrictions for content ingest from set are usually tied to the horsepower of the one or two computers we have in our racks to process rushes into an offline edit ready state. Yet, when applying the infinite horizontal scale of parallel compute available in the cloud, ingest processing can be hugely accelerated. 

As many of us already appreciate the dreaded cloud egress pretty much always features when trying to devise a workflow modification in production using cloud. Ingressing bulk rushes content from a shoot into the cloud is free. The cost comes when egressing the relevant files the edit needs back to ground. But one must consider the benefits of the cloud when we are not reliant on just the one or two machines being available for rushes ingest. Potentially ten’s if not hundreds can add a game changing effect to your production’s labour budgets and turn-around times. 

For example, egressing 1 hour of DNx36 1080p25 proxy (~16GB) can cost as little as £1.75. This may sound high when you counter that with, “I’ve already got machines that can do this overnight”. But when you throw infinite compute breadth at your rushes processing, as well as then intelligently and automatically transferring them to your nearline or even online storage ready for a Dailies assembly to start, your project lead times can really be reduced.  

Also stepping backwards up the workflow pipeline, the cloud can assist with the offload from set without having to rely on the usual transport drive overhead. Content is invariably written to disk directly on set. So, if the upload to cloud ingest processing is directly configured on this set storage, then a download of rapidly produced offline proxies can occur automatically. Mitigating the whole transport drive wrangling process, purchase, and even potential loss. Plus, an added benefit is that all content stored in the cloud is underpinned by SLAs more watertight than your own on-premises equipment.  

Another fringe benefit may be to create a production specific archive on the most applicable type of storage for the duration of the project. This can avoid the cost centre of investing in an on-premise archive strategy using technologies such as LTO, which also dictates its own labour and engineering overhead.  

As mentioned at the start of this blog, there are many topics that can be touched when considering a move to cloud. Major take-aways from this would be that any cloud resource usage can easily be aligned to productions. The previous examples have focused on how technology can accelerate stages of the workflow. Another reason that cloud is the future for production companies is that it aligns itself with the economic fluctuations that a production company faces when managing the business between commissions.  

The traditional CapEx model requires you to build infrastructure to suit a project’s requirement. How does this model align to the business when its quiet or when you need to expand? The ultimate argument for cloud production is that it allows you to take advantage of the expansion and contraction. Expand your production architecture when the commission requires it and contract in the fallow period. With technology such as Teradici and SRT streaming from Haivision, an editor will have no idea that they are working on a virtual cloud environment. So, align your tech to an OpEx model.  

By using simple techniques in AWS such as Cost Allocation Tagging, deployment of cloud infrastructure being conducted with fully orchestrated platforms such as Tyrell Cloud can greatly assure you of success. As all cloud consumption billing and costs incurred can be reconciled against a particular production, again further advancing towards OpEx.  

nicksoper

Nick Soper, Tyrell Cloud Platform Owner
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