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Live Event Media Team Preparing Major Broadcast
Company Situation
The company operates within the live event media production industry, preparing for a major inaugural event following multiple prior regional broadcasts. Their team handles large volumes of high-resolution video content across promo shoots and live event coverage, including broadcast-grade footage. The company is in a growth phase, scaling up their digital asset needs while managing a distributed team that requires remote content access and collaboration.
Existing Workflow
Currently, the company relies heavily on physical external drives—specifically a large 196-terabyte external RAID setup—to store and share raw and edited footage. These drives are copied and physically shipped between team members, which includes remote collaborators. Review and approval processes are fragmented, involving tools such as Frame.io and Google Drive, but these are not fully integrated into a unified workflow. Organizational challenges exist due to historical content management and lack of metadata tagging.
Issues with the Existing Workflow
Scalability concerns: Managing nearly 200 terabytes on external drives is unsustainable as event footage alone can generate over 50 terabytes weekly.
Risk of data loss: Drives can fail, and RAID solutions, while more stable, are not a long-term answer.
Inefficient remote collaboration: Physical transfer of drives delays access and editing, causing wasted hours sourcing footage.
Fragmented review process: Use of multiple platforms (Frame.io, Google Drive) complicates content review and feedback consolidation.
Cost barriers: Cloud-based DAM solutions like Iconik are financially prohibitive, with initial and recurring costs that exceed the company’s current budget and staffing model.
Organizational gaps: Legacy footage is poorly organized, increasing the workload related to metadata and tagging.
How Shade Would Change Their Workflow
Shade offers a scalable, cloud-enabled media asset management platform that bridges the gap between local storage and full cloud workflows. The company can start by integrating Shade alongside their existing RAID setup, enabling gradual migration ("crawl, walk, run" approach) without disrupting current operations. Shade facilitates remote access to large media files without the need for physical drives, drastically reducing lag times and improving collaboration. Its unified platform consolidates review and approval workflows, cutting down on fragmented communication. Shade’s pricing model and modular deployment allow the company to avoid the high upfront costs of traditional cloud DAMs while positioning them for future growth and full cloud migration.
Benefits
- Enables remote, real-time access to large media files without physical drive shipping
- Reduces risk of data loss associated with external drives and RAID arrays
- Consolidates review and approval workflows into a single platform
- Supports phased migration from local storage to cloud-based workflows
- Improves metadata management and content organization
- Provides a cost-effective alternative to expensive cloud DAM solutions
- Facilitates better planning and scalability for upcoming event seasons and media volume growth
Technologies Used
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