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Around the world, production houses large and small are finding answers to the challenge of remote editing with Avid | Edit On Demand, a turnkey, cloud-hosted, SaaS subscription video editing and storage solution. Speed, ease of use, security, ingest, and the ability to scale are just some of the benefits realized by Avid | Edit On Demand users in the U.S., Canada, London, France, and New Zealand. Here are six cloud editing use cases from feature films, episodic and reality TV series, and in video post-production.

“[Avid | Edit On Demand] allowed us to save costs and leap into something that we had planned would take maybe a year-and-a-half or two years — and we did it in five weeks,” explains Sébastian Grandsire, managing director of post production for La Fabrique, France TV's internal productions.

Quickly take on new projects
Avid | Edit On Demand runs in the Microsoft Azure cloud and comes with built-in accelerated upload and download tools to get media quickly into and out of cloud storage.

Eggplant Picture & Sound in Toronto faced a daunting task: a short turnaround time on a massive reality series with thousands of hours of footage and a 26-member team located in different geographic areas. Project leaders quickly realized that there was no time to create and staff an on-premises studio. With Avid | Edit On Demand, the producers formed a full production environment in one day and added seats as needed within minutes.

“With Avid | Edit On Demand you place the order, set up your workspace, and you could be up and running in a day or two,” says Joseph Murnaghan, Eggplant system administrator.

No need for cloud expertise
Getting started on Avid | Edit On Demand is easy. No specialized cloud knowledge is required. Your team can be up and running quickly.

Luminosity Entertainment, a Los Angeles-based film and television production company, required a remote editing solution for a top-tier low-budget feature. Most of the company’s editors were trained on Avid Media Composer, making the move to Avid | Edit On Demand easy. Editors didn’t even need specific cloud experience, as the Media Composer interface was the same as in an on-prem edit suite.

“Our editors worked pretty much seamlessly; they really didn’t need much setup at all,” says Chris Rash of GVN Releasing, who served as post-production supervisor on the film. “It was such a smooth transition for them.”

When Gorilla TV, a Cardiff, Wales-based editing boutique, made the switch to Avid | Edit On Demand during the pandemic, its editors couldn’t believe they were working in the cloud. They thought they were controlling one of the edit suites in the Gorilla facility.

“Connecting was easy, straightforward, and lightning fast,” says Alun Edwards, editor at Gorilla TV. “You forget that it’s a virtual PC. You forget that you’re streaming media from the cloud. It’s fantastic.”

Collaborate remotely with distributed teams
Cloud-based platforms and technologies are empowering smaller media production companies to scale operations and tackle projects that would previously have been impossible.

Phok Productions, a Los Angeles-based editing team, and Milligan Media Ltd., a New Zealand production team, needed to collaborate on the feature film “X,” but how to overcome the distance and 19-hour time difference between them? The pandemic, cost of team flights, and complexity of the project added to the challenge. Project leaders needed a reliable remote editing solution. Avid | Edit On Demand was the answer, not only for this film but for future global collaboration.

“Having the freedom to be able to do your work from wherever you are at any time is extremely useful,” says Scott Milligan, assistant editor at Milligan Media Ltd.

Black Spot Media Group, a creative services agency based in New York City, went remote at the start of the pandemic when it was producing up to 250 pieces of content daily for a large streaming client. One of its other clients, a financial company, needed six hours of content, shot across four continents, delivered within four weeks – a significant challenge with everyone working remotely. After experiencing latency issues with various remote services, Black Spot turned to Avid | Edit On Demand to provide the reliability and flexibility it needed.

“We were able to work across continents, across all the different time zones, as if we were literally sitting in our office. We found no difference at all,” says John Laskas, Black Spot creative director and founder. “And, because we could add seats whenever we wanted, our creative directors, who weren’t necessarily editors, were able to log onto the system and review content in real time. It was a seamless experience.”

Share and store media securely
Media ingest is a huge plus with Avid | Edit On Demand as France TV discovered.

When the COVID-19 lockdown shut down production, France’s national broadcaster France TV had to quickly reinvent its post-production process to enable remote editing at its 10 different sites. Having switched earlier to Avid | NEXIS shared storage, the transition to Avid | Edit On Demand was easy. Rather than producers or directors sending hard drives, media could be ingested through Avid | Edit On Demand, giving France TV the flexibility and efficiency to cover large events such as the Olympics, the Tour de France, and the French Open.

“Instead of renting and installing a whole system of servers and editing stations, we can now simplify by installing fiber and placing some workstations,” explains Sébastian Grandsire, managing director of post production for La Fabrique, France TV's internal production unit. “From there we have access to post production where and when we want.”

For Black Spot Media Group, Avid | Edit On Demand is now allowing the company to take on more projects and expand its business, with the long-term goal of doing 80 percent of their work in the cloud. “We were at capacity before the pandemic, so we were renting systems and stuffing people in corners,” Laskas explains. “The ability to instantly spin-up an edit user and get access to storage is incredibly beneficial.”

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