How MSPs Help Video Editors Manage Post-Production Work From Home

By Julie O’Grady, LucidLink

Let’s face it; nowadays, everyone is faced with millions of people no longer in a conventional office. For most managed service providers, lifestyle change is significant, as we all focus on the new norm and work from home, so do all your customers. The media and entertainment industry is no different. If anything, working from home presents more significant obstacles.

Post-production editors are dealing with massive files that need to be accessed, collaborated on, and shared with colleagues. There are no more “water cooler” discussions. Most remote workers struggle with bandwidth issues and aren’t used to paying for expensive upload capability and have not needed this type of access before. In order to work on large video files, editors are downloading digital assets overnight, in hopes that data files are complete by the morning. Production houses are trying everything that might work, like using Gigabit from home. But it is not a methodology for a long-term solution.

Virtual National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) panel discussion

In case you missed it, there was an excellent virtual pre-NAB Editors Lounge panel discussion. Industry notables included Katie Hinsen, Executive Producer, Nice Shoes, Terence Curren, Colorist & CEO, AlphaDogs Post Production, Mark Raudonis, Senior VP Post Production, Bunim/Murray Productions, Jeff Sengpieh, Chief Technologist, Key Code Media, with moderator Debra Kaufman, an entertainment technology journalist at USC’s ETCentric.org.

Consistent with the times, much of the panel discussion focused on the topic of remote work. The industry is challenged by providing teams with appropriate data access as well as enabling remote collaboration. Production and post-production will be a train wreck if they can’t figure out how to get the infrastructure ready to support this distributed workforce. No one wants to get caught with their pants down. Key themes that resonate within M&E include difficult access to hardware, lack of technology innovation, and the mounting costs associated with storage and data access.

“We are seeing a sea change on how ‘post’ is done, and we need to get ready for that change.”