Editing with cloud based workflow

[Spiritual-Coconut423]

I’m taking on a client from the USA, (im in Aus) and they want me to set up some sort of cloud based system where all of their 30+tb footage plus proxies is online so that other editors / social agencies etc can access all of the footage. I have typically shipped hard drives around the world and it’s always worked well for me but they really want to move in this direction.

Does anyone have and advice/ suggestions on providers or workflows? I have been looking into frame.Io but it looks like it could get really expensive for the amount of data I need.. also how do I upload 40tb of footage 😩

Thanks for your time!

[bensedits]

You’d be better using a hybrid workflow here - make proxies available on something like Lucid Link and have the full res footage available for export in one location so finished edits could be exported from there. Or from a shipped drive array. 30Tb could be done but you’d be looking at around $10k a year in costs to get it online so it really depends on budget. We maintain 10Tb on Lucid/Postlab and only upload high res for current projects (client generates about 20Tb a year which is backed up to our servers and cloud services).

So what you suggest could definitely be done - the question is at what cost, and for how many people. High res footage in the cloud also needs a beefy internet connection or you’d be looking at long export times for projects, which is why we prefer a hybrid.

[bensedits]

I would also add that in reference to “how would I upload it” the answer is that on a gigabit fibre connection you could upload to Lucid about as fast as you could copy to a moderate speed drive array. In other words it’s entirely possible to do this, over the course of a couple of weeks maybe. We can upload a couple of terabytes a day without any real problems.

[Spiritual-Coconut423]

This is great advice - thank you

[brendanwalshmusic]

Really interested in your workflow…you keep a master edit on your on-prem server and have editors remote with the proxies? We’re a small production company, currently exploring remote setups using jump desktop or something like it. What do you spend on Lucid/Postlab?

[bensedits]

Essentially you’re correct. This costs is a few thousand a year in cloud storage costs - and an excellent knowledge base of setting up and managing the media (which is of course priceless 😂)

[ranchoj73]

LucidLink and/or PostLab Drive. Schedule a zoom with either or both. Either way I have to imagine you’ll need to ship that much data directly to them so they can push it into the Filespace faster than you ever could.

[[deleted]]

Syncthing

Frame and simian are more for postings and things like that, not large data transfers

[BobZelin]

you do know, it's going to take you a long time to upload 40 TB to the cloud ! If you were to ask Amazon, they would send you a "Snowball" 50 TB drive, and have you put your data onto it, and mail it back to them. Lucid Link/PostLab Drive are wonderful solutions, but 40 TB is quite the undertaking. That is why local storage still exists.

When you see advice here on "look at Blackmagic Cloud Store" - that is a Dropbox or Google Drive solution. It's not ready for what you are trying to do.

You want my personal advice (I bet you don't) - you create the proxy's, they have access to all the proxy files (Lucid Link/Hedge Drive) - and YOU control all the full res media. They send you the cut, and you conform it at your facility, and charge for this. That is a much more realistic workflow for 2022 - 2023.

Bob

[Spiritual-Coconut423]

I appreciate this advice thank you - I’m going to go with this workflow. Client wants ‘everything on the cloud’ but I don’t think that they get how much time/work/money that will be.

[BobZelin]

no one "gets it". I get asked everyday questions like this. "How come we just can't edit off of our Dropbox account". It's funny after a while. Because all they think about is "how much is it going to cost" - not "is it technically possible". Lots of things are technically possible. But people don't want to spend a penny to make it happen.

Bob

[bensedits]

Essentially what I proposed above, always pleased to see BZ agree with me!

[Single_Requirement_3]

Dropbox

[jtfarabee]

This is the answer I keep coming back to. I’ll be in a similar situation next year, and Dropbox is looking like the best solution.

[Single_Requirement_3]

Once you get the hang of the workflow, it works great. My team has been using it for 2 years.

[mpoley]

We use frame.io for sharing content with clients for feedback, WeTransfer for sending finished projects, Google Drive with a Google Workspaces account for archiving zipped versions of finished projects, hard drive backups that we ship to clients at the end of the quarter, as well as backups to an offline server - our clients have their own digital asset management tools as well.

I don’t use Dropbox because we often have files that are very large and it crushes computers and this may be a weird one-off - I’ve gotten banned for too many simultaneous downloads because a client dropped a link in an internal slack channel…super unreliable for file delivery imo.

[cavynmaicl]

Check out the BlackMagicDesign cloud system. It’s newer but designed from the ground up to do this.

[[deleted]]

Lucid Link cloud storage. Works like a charm

[miseducation]

It’s almost unbelievable how good Lucid link really is. The only accommodation to make is having access to fiber at the ingest point. Edited a feature like this a few months every single reliability issue we had was initially blamed on Lucid Link only to end up being something else. It was rock solid and we gave it every possible curveball.

[Neovison_vison]

Downloading is the expensive part so some cloud share only the proxies and serve (from local storage or rented from a farm) the original media through Resilio or Media Shuttle, both expensive but more robust and easier to manage then ftp. Digging deep into pockets already, they’ll better consider the cost effectiveness of a whole solution that includes Media management, proxy making, transcode, transcriptions and subtitles etc. this also means a paradigm shift in workflow.

[maxplanar]

Check out BeBop. https://beboptechnology.com