Post Syndicated from James Flores original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/object-storage-for-film-video-and-content-creation/

Twenty years ago, who would have thought going to work would mean spending most of your time on a computer and running most of your applications through a web browser or a mobile app? Today, we can do everything remotely via the power of the internet—from email to gaming, from viewing our home security cameras to watching the latest and greatest movie trailers—and we all have opinions about the best browsers, too…

Along with that easy, remote access, a slew of new cloud technologies are fueling the tech we use day in and day out. To get to where we are today, the tech industry had to rethink some common understandings, especially around data storage and delivery. Gone are the days that you save a file on your laptop, then transport a copy of that file via USB drive or CD-ROM (or, dare we say, a floppy disk) so that you can keep working on it at the library or your office. And, those same common understandings are now being reckoned with in the world of film, video, and content creation.

In this post, I’ll dive into storage, specifically cloud object storage, and what it means for the future of content creation, not only for independent filmmakers and content creators, but also in post-production workflows.

The Evolution of File Management

If you are reading this blog you are probably familiar with a storage file system—think Windows Explorer, the Finder on Mac, or directory structures in Linux. You know how to create a folder, create files, move files, and delete folders. This same file structure has made its way into cloud services such as Google Drive, Box, and Dropbox. And many of these technologies have been adopted to store some of the largest content, namely media files like .mp4, .wav, or .r3d files.

But, as camera file outputs grow larger and larger and the amount of content generated by creative teams soars, folders structures get more and more complex. Why is this important?

Well, ask yourself: How much time have you spent searching for clips you know exist, but just can’t seem to find? Sure, you can use search tools to search your folder structure but as you have more and more content, that means searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack—naming conventions can only do so much, especially when you have dozens or hundreds of people adding raw footage, creating new versions, and so on.

Finding files in a complex file structure can take so much time that many of the aforementioned companies create system limits preventing long searches. In addition, they may limit uploads and downloads making it difficult to manage the terabytes of data a modern production creates. So, this all begs the question: Is a traditional file system really the best for scaling up, especially in data-heavy industries like filmmaking and video content creation? Enter: Cloud object storage.

Refresher: What is Object Storage?

You can think of object storage as simply a big pool of storage space filled with object data. In the past we’ve defined object data as “some assemblage of data with one unique identifier and an infinite amount of metadata.” The three components that comprise objects in object storage are key here. They include:

1. Unique Identifier: Referred to as a universally unique identifier (UUID) or global unique identifier (GUID), this is simply a complex number identifier.
2. Infinite Metadata: Data about the data with endless possibilities.
3. Data: The actual data we are storing.

So what does that actually mean?

It means each object (this can be any type of file—a .jpg, .mp4, .wav, .r3d, etc.) has an automatically generated unique identifier which is just a number (e.g. 4_z6b84cf3535395) versus a folder structure path you must manually create and maintain (e.g. D:\Projects\JOB4548\Assets\RAW\A001\A001_3424OP.RDM\A001_34240KU.RDC\
A001_A001_1005ku_001.R3D).

It also means each object can have an infinite amount of metadata attached to it. Metadata, put simply, is a “tag” that identifies how the file is used or stored. There are several examples of metadata, but here are just a few:

• Descriptive metadata, like the title or author.
• Structural metadata, like how to order pages in a chapter.
• Administrative metadata, like when the file was created, who has permissions to it, and so on.
• Legal metadata, like who holds the copyright or if the file is in the public domain.

So, when you’re saying an image file is 400×400 pixels and in .jpg format, you’ve just identified two pieces of metadata about the file. In filmmaking, metadata can include things like reel numbers or descriptions. And, as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools continue to evolve, the amount of metadata about a given piece of footage or image only continues to grow. AI tools can add data around scene details, facial recognition, and other identifiers, and since those are coded as metadata, you will be able to store and search files using terms like “scenes with Bugs Bunny” or “scenes that are in a field of wildflowers”—and that means that you’ll spend less time trying to find the footage you need when you’re editing.

When you put it all together, you have one gigantic content pool that can grow infinitely. It uses no manually created complex folder structure and naming conventions. And it can hold an infinite amount of data about your data (metadata), making your files more discoverable.

Let’s Talk About Object Storage for Content Creation

You might be wondering: What does this have to do with the content I’m creating?

Consider this: When you’re editing a project, how much of your time is spent searching for files? A recent study by GISTICS found that the average creative person searches for media 83 times a week. Maybe you’re searching your local hard drive first, then your NAS, then those USB drives in your closet. Or, maybe you are restoring content off an LTO tape to search for that one clip you need. Or, maybe you moved some of your content to the cloud—is it in your Google Drive or in your Dropbox account? If so, which folder is it in? Or was it the corporate Box account? Do you have permissions to that folder? All of that complexity means that the average creative person fails to find the media they are looking for 35% of the time. But you probably don’t need a study to tell you we all spent huge amounts of time searching for content.

Here is where object storage can help. With object storage, you simply have buckets (object storage containers) where all your data can live, and you can access it from wherever you’re working. That means all of the data stored on those shuttle drives sitting around your office, your closet of LTO tapes, and even a replica of your online NAS are in a central, easily accessible location. You’re also working from the most recent file.

Once it’s in the cloud, it’s safe from the types of disasters that affect on-premises storage systems, and it’s easy to secure your files, create backups, and so on. It’s also readily available when you need it, and much easier to share with other team members. It’s no wonder many of the apps you use today take advantage of object storage as their primary storage mechanism.

The Benefits of Object Storage for Media Workflows

Object storage offers a number of benefits for creative teams when it comes to streamlining workflows, including:

• Instant access
• Integrations
• Workflow interoperability
• Easy distribution
• Off-site back up and archive

Instant Access

With cloud object storage, content is ready when you need it. You know inspiration can strike at any time. You could be knee deep in editing a project, in the middle of binge watching the latest limited series, or out for a walk. Whenever the inspiration decides to strike, having instant access to your library of content is a game changer. And that’s the great thing about object storage in the cloud: you gain access to massive amounts of data with a few clicks.

Integrations

Object storage is a key component of many of the content production tools in use today. For example, iconik is a cloud-native media asset management (MAM) tool that can gather and organize media from any storage location. You can point iconik to your Backblaze B2 Bucket and use its advanced search functions as well as its metadata tagging.

Workflow Interoperability

What if you don’t want to use iconik, specifically? What’s great about using cloud storage as a centralized repository is that no matter what application you use, your data is in a single place. Think of it like your external hard drive or NAS—you just connect that drive with a new tool, and you don’t have to worry about downloading everything to move to the latest and greatest. In essence, you are bringing your own storage (BYOS!).

Here’s an example: CuttingRoom is a cloud native video editing and collaboration tool. It runs entirely in your web browser and lets you create unique stories that can instantly be published to your destination of choice. What’s great about CuttingRoom is its ability to read an object storage bucket as a source. By simply pointing CuttingRoom to a Backblaze B2 Bucket, it has immediate access to the media source files and you can get to editing. On the other hand, if you prefer using a MAM, that same bucket can be indexed by a tool like iconik.

Easy Distribution

Now that your edit is done, it’s time to distribute your content to the world. Or, perhaps you are working with other teams to perfect your color and sound, and it’s time to share your picture lock version. Cloud storage is ready for you to distribute your files to the next team or an end user.

Here’s a recent, real-world example: If you have been following the behind-the-scenes articles about creating Avatar: The Way of Water, you know that not only was its creation the spark of new technology like the Sony Venice camera with removable sensors, but the distribution featured a cloud centric flow. Footage (the film) was placed in an object store (read: a cloud storage database), processed into different formats, languages were added with 3D captions, and then footage was distributed directly from a central location.

And, while not all of us have Jon Landau as our producer, a huge budget, and a decade to create our product, this same flexibility exists today with object storage—with the added bonus that it’s usually budget-friendly as well.

Off-Site Back Up and Archive

And last but certainly not least, let’s talk back up and archive. Once a project is done, you need space for the next project, but no one wants to risk losing the old project. Who out there is completely comfortable hitting the delete key as well as saying yes to the scary prompt, “Are you sure you want to delete?”

Well, that’s what you would have to do in the past. These days, object storage is a great place to store your terabytes and terabytes of archived footage without cluttering your home, office, or set with additional hardware. Compared with on-premises storage, cloud storage lets you add more capacity as you need it—just make sure you understand cloud storage pricing models so that you’re getting the best bang for your buck.

If you’re using a NAS device in your media workflow, you’ll find you need to free up your on-prem storage. Many NAS devices, like Synology and QNAP, have cloud storage integrations that allow you to automatically sync and archive data from your device to the cloud. In fact, you could start taking advantage of this today.

No delete key here—just a friendly archive button.

Getting Started With Object Storage for Media Workflows

Migrating to the cloud may seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Especially with the acceleration of hybrid workflows in the film industry recently, cloud-based workflows are becoming more common and better integrated with the tools we use every day. You can test this out with Backblaze using your free 10GB that you get just for signing up for Backblaze B2. Sure, that may not seem like much when a single .r3d file is 4GB. But with that 10GB, you can test upload speeds and download speeds, try out integrations with your preferred workflow tools, and experiment with AI metadata. If your team is remote, you could try an integration with LucidLink. Or if you’re looking to power a video on-demand site, you could integrate with one of our content delivery network (CDN) partners to test out content distribution, like Backblaze customer Kanopy, a streaming service that delivers 25,000 videos to libraries worldwide.

Change is hard, but cloud storage can be easy. Check out all of our media workflow solutions and get started with your 10GB free today.

The post Object Storage for Film, Video, and Content Creation appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Post Syndicated from James Flores original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/virtual-vs-remote-vs-hybrid-production/

For many of us, 2020 transformed our work habits. Changes to the way we work that always seemed years away got rolled out within a few months. Fast forward to today, and the world seems to be returning back to some sense of normalcy. But one thing that’s not going back is how we work, especially for media production teams. Virtual production, remote video production, and hybrid cloud have all accelerated, reducing operating costs and moving us closer to a cloud-based reality.

So what’s the difference between virtual production, remote production, and hybrid cloud workflows, and how can you use any or all of those strategies to improve how you work? At first glance, they all seem to be different variations of the same thing. But there are important differences, and that’s what we’re digging into today. Read on to get an understanding of these new ways of working and what they mean for your creative team.

What Is Virtual Production?

Let’s start with virtual production. It sounds like doing production virtually, which could just mean “in the cloud.” I can assure you, it’s way cooler than that. When the pandemic hit, social distancing became the norm. Gathering a film crew together in a studio or in any location of the world went out the door. Never fear: virtual production came to the rescue.

Virtual production is a method of production where, instead of building a set or going to a specific location, you build a set virtually, usually with a gaming engine such as Unreal Engine. Once the environment is designed and lit within Unreal Engine, it can then be fed to an LED volume. An LED volume is exactly what it sounds like: a huge volume of LED screens connected to a single input (the Unreal Engine environment).

With virtual production, your set becomes the LED volume, and Unreal Engine can change the background to anything you can imagine at the click of a button. Now this isn’t just a LED screen as a background—what makes virtual production so powerful is its motion tracking integration with real cameras.

Using a motion sensor system attached to a camera, Unreal Engine is able to understand where your camera is pointed. (It’s way more tech-y than that, but you get the picture.) You can even match the virtual lens in Unreal Engine with the lens of your physical camera. With the two systems combined, a camera following an actor on a virtual set can react by moving the background along with the camera in real time.

This also means location scouting can be done entirely inside the virtual set and the assets created for pre-vizualiation can actually carry on into post, saving a ton of time (as the post work actually starts during pre-production.

So, virtual production is easily confused with remote production, but it’s not the same. We’ll get into remote production next.

What Is Remote Production?

We’re all familiar with the stages of production: development, pre-production, production, post-production, and distribution. Remote production has more to do with post-production. Remote production is simply the ability to handle post-production tasks from anywhere.

Here’s how the pandemic accelerated remote production: In post, assets are edited on non-linear editing software (NLEs) connected to huge storage systems located deep within studios and post-production houses. When everyone was forced to work from home, it made editing quite difficult. There were, of course, solutions that allowed you to remotely control your edit bay, but remotely controlling a system from miles away and trying to scrub videos over your at-home internet bandwidth quickly became a nuisance.

To solve this problem, everyone just took their edit bay home along with a hard drive containing what they needed for their particular project. But shuttling drives all over the place and trying to correlate files across all the remote drives meant that the NAS became the next headache. To resolve this confusion over storage, production houses turned to hybrid solutions—our next topic.

What Are Hybrid Cloud Workflows?

Hybrid cloud workflows didn’t originate during the pandemic, but they did make remote production much easier. A hybrid cloud workflow is a combination of a public cloud, private cloud, and an on-premises solution like a network attached storage device (NAS) or storage area network (SAN). When we think about storage, we think about first the relationship of our NLE to our local hard drive, then our relationship between the local computer and the NAS or SAN. The next iteration of this is the relationship of all of these (NLE, local computer, and NAS/SAN) to the cloud.

For each of these on-prem solutions the primary problems faced are capacity and availability. How much can our drive hold, and how do I access the NAS—local area network (LAN) or virtual private network (VPN)? Storage in the cloud inherently solves both of these problems. It’s always available and accessible from any location with an internet connection. So, to solve the problems that remote teams of editors, visual effects (VFX), color, and sound folks faced, the cloud was integrated into many workflows.

Using the cloud, companies are able to store content in a single location where it can then be distributed to different teams (VFX, color, sound, etc.). This central repository makes it possible to move large amounts of data across different regions, making it easier for your team to access it while also keeping it secure. Many NAS devices have native cloud integrations, so the automated file synchronization between the cloud and a local environment is baked in—teams can just get to work.

The hybrid solution worked so well that many studios and post houses have adopted them as a permanent part of their workflow and have incorporated remote production into their day-to-day. A good example is the video team at Hagerty, a production crew that creates 300+ videos a year. This means that workflows that were once locked down to specific locations are now moving to the cloud. Now more than ever, API accessible resources, like cloud storage with S3 compatible APIs that integrates with your preferred tools, are needed to make these workflows actually work.

Just one example of Hagerty’s content.

Hybrid Workflows and Cloud Storage

While the world seems to be returning to a new normal, our way of work is not. For the media and entertainment world, the pandemic gave the space a jolt of electricity, igniting the next wave of innovation. Virtual production, remote production, and hybrid workflows are here to stay. What digital video started 20 years ago, the pandemic has accelerated, and that acceleration is pointing directly to the cloud.

So, what are your next steps as you future-proof your workflow? First, inspect your current set of tools. Many modern tools are already cloud-ready. For example, a Synology NAS already has Cloud Sync capabilities. EditShare also has a tool capable of crafting custom workflows, wherever your data lives. (These are just a few examples.)

Second, start building and testing. Most cloud providers offer free tiers or free trials—at Backblaze, your first 10GB are free, for example. Testing a proof of concept is the best way to understand how new workflows fit into your system without overhauling the whole thing or potentially disrupting business as usual.

And finally, one thing you definitely need to make hybrid workflows work is cloud storage. If you’re looking to make the change a lot easier, you came to the right place. Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage pairs with hundreds of integrations so you can implement it directly into your established workflows. Check out our partners and our media solutions for more.

The post Virtual vs. Remote vs. Hybrid Production appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Post Syndicated from Jennifer Newman original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/work-smarter-with-backblaze-and-quantum-h4000-essential/

How much do you think it costs your creative team to manage data? How much time and money is spent organizing files, searching for files, and maybe never finding those files? Have you ever quantified it? One market research firm has. According to GISTICS, a creative team of eight people wastes more than $85,000 per year searching for and managing files—and larger teams waste even more than that.

Creative teams need better tools to work smarter. Backblaze has partnered with Quantum to simplify media workflows, provide easy remote collaboration, and free up on-premises storage space with seamless content archiving to the cloud. The partnership provides teams the tools needed to compete. Read on to learn more.

What Is Quantum?

Quantum is a data storage company that provides technology, software, and services to help companies make video and other unstructured data smarter—so data works for them and not the other way around. Quantum’s H4000 Essential (H4000E) asset management and shared storage solution offers customers an all-in-one appliance that integrates automatic content indexing, search, discovery, and collaboration. It couples the CatDV asset management platform with Quantum’s StorNext 7 shared storage.

How Does This Partnership Benefit Joint Customers?

By pairing Quantum H4000 Essential with Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, you get award-winning asset management and shared storage with the ability to archive to the cloud. The partnership provides a number of benefits:

• Better organization: Creative teams work visually, and the Quantum platform supports visual workflows. All content is available in one place, with automatic content indexing, metadata tagging, and proxy generation.
• Searchable assets: All content and projects are searchable in an easy to use visual catalog.
• Seamless collaboration: Teams can use production tools like Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X, and others to work on shared projects as well as tagging, markup, versioning, chat, and approval tools to streamline collaboration.
• Robust archive management: Archived content can be restored easily from Backblaze B2 to CatDV to keep work in progress lean and focused.
• On-premises efficiency: Once projects are complete, they can be quickly archived to the cloud to free up storage space on the H4000E for high-resolution production files and ongoing projects.
• Simplified billing: Data is stored on always-hot storage, eliminating the management frustration that comes with multiple tiers and variable costs for egress and API calls.

Purchase Cloud Capacity the Same Way You Purchase On-Premises

With Backblaze B2 Reserve, you can purchase capacity-based storage starting at 20TB to pair with your Quantum H4000E if you prefer a predictable cloud spend versus consumption-based billing. Key features of B2 Reserve include:

• Free egress up to the amount of storage purchased per month.
• Free transaction calls.
• Enhanced migration services.
• No delete penalties.
• Upgraded Tera support.

Who Would Benefit From Backblaze B2 + Quantum H4000E?

The partnership benefits any team that handles large amounts of data, specifically media files. The solution can help teams with:

• Simplifying media workflows.
• Easing remote project management and collaboration.
• Cloud tiering.
• Extending on-premises storage.
• Implementing a cloud-first strategy.
• Backup and disaster recovery planning.
• Ransomware protection.
• Managing consistent data growth.

Getting Started With Backblaze B2 and Quantum H4000E

The Quantum H4000E is a highly-integrated solution for collaborative shared storage and asset management. Configured with Backblaze B2 for content archiving and retrieval, it provides new menu options to perform cloud archiving and move, copy, and restore content, freeing up H4000 local storage for high-resolution files. You can easily add on cloud storage to improve remote media workflows, content collaboration, media asset protection, and archive.

With the H4000E, everything you need to get started is in the box, ready to connect to your 10GbE and higher network. And, a simple Backblaze B2 archive plugin connects the solution directly to your Backblaze B2 account.

Simply create a Backblaze account and configure the Backblaze CatDV panel with your credentials.

The post Work Smarter With Backblaze and Quantum H4000 Essential appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.