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Media Production Supporting Large Remote Post-Production
Company Situation
The company operates in the media production industry, supporting a large remote post-production team of around 50 people. Their team is a hybrid mix of in-office and remote workers, with over half of the post-production work happening remotely. The company manages significant video content workflows, including multicam podcast recordings and long-form YouTube channel productions, requiring efficient management of large-scale digital assets.
Existing Workflow
Currently, the company uses a combination of on-premises SAN storage and cloud storage solutions. They have a 384-terabyte on-prem SAN that supports much of their work, but it has limited remote workflow capabilities. For cloud, they utilize about 200 terabytes on Wasabi, managed through Iconic, a digital asset management (DAM) tool. Iconic is used extensively for storage management, review and approval workflows, and integration with homegrown applications via webhooks. Their process includes automatic transcription of approved assets, metadata extraction, and AI-driven analysis for brand safety and quality control (QC) using custom-built platforms that pull assets for GPU-based video analysis.
Issues with the Existing Workflow
Storage Limitations: The on-prem SAN is nearing capacity and has suboptimal remote access, causing workflow inefficiencies.
Complex Transition: Moving away from Iconic is challenging due to deep integration with internal tools, including transcription, metadata extraction, and QC workflows.
Remote Collaboration Needs: Over 50% of the team works remotely, requiring robust cloud-based file access and collaboration tools.
Cost and Tool Consolidation: The company is seeking to optimize costs and potentially consolidate tools for better efficiency and scalability.
Workflow Fragmentation: Multiple systems and automation scripts create complexity and risk during migration or transition.
How Shade Would Change Their Workflow
Shade would provide a unified cloud-based storage solution with strong API capabilities that can integrate with the company’s existing automated workflows. It would support seamless remote access for their distributed post team, enable direct ingestion of media into cloud storage without routing through SAN, and streamline the archival process by moving completed projects from active storage to cold storage buckets. Shade’s flexible API would allow the company to maintain integrations with transcription services, AI metadata extraction, and QC platforms, ensuring a smooth transition from Iconic. By offering a scalable, cloud-native storage system, Shade can reduce reliance on on-prem hardware and simplify management.
Benefits
- Enables efficient remote collaboration with cloud-native file access
- Supports gradual, controlled migration away from legacy systems
- Maintains integrations with transcription, AI analysis, and QC workflows
- Reduces on-prem storage dependency and associated maintenance
- Potential cost savings through optimized cloud storage tiers
- Simplifies archival and project lifecycle management
- Provides a single platform for storage management and API-driven automation
Technologies Used
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