Media Company Handling High-Resolution Video Workflows

The company operates within the media and entertainment industry, focusing on high-resolution video content production and post-production workflows. Their team relies heavily on collaborative editing across multiple locations and requires efficient management of large media assets in various formats such as Blackmagic RAW and RED files. The scale of their operations involves handling petabytes of media, necessitating robust storage solutions that can support both active editing and long-term archival needs.

The company’s current workflow involves managing original resolution media files stored across active and archival storage tiers. They utilize cloud storage services like Wasabi and Cloudflare for active and archival media, respectively. Editing teams use industry-standard tools such as DaVinci Resolve, working with proxies to facilitate real-time editing without the overhead of large file transfers. Archival storage traditionally requires moving media back to active storage before editing, which introduces latency and delays.

- Significant latency when retrieving archived media due to cold storage solutions that require lengthy transfers to active storage before editing can begin. - Challenges maintaining file path integrity and metadata visibility when moving files between storage tiers, leading to disjointed workflows. - High egress costs associated with moving media out of cloud archives. - Limited flexibility when integrating with existing storage investments, especially for companies with petabytes of data already housed in S3 or similar buckets. - Proxy workflows were either manual or required third-party solutions, adding complexity and cost.

Shade’s platform offers a seamless integration that supports both active and archival storage with minimal latency, leveraging Wasabi for archival storage in a way that maintains active access. Their system automatically generates proxies for high-resolution files at no additional cost, enabling editors to work locally on compressed versions of media without waiting for large file transfers. Utilizing LucidLink-like functionality, Shade allows mounting of drives that enable real-time streaming and caching, preserving file paths and metadata integrity. This eliminates the traditional cold-to-hot storage delays and removes egress fees, while enabling companies to bring their own storage or use Shade’s optimized storage solutions. The platform’s offline and online workflow support via a native desktop app further enhances flexibility for remote or hybrid teams.