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EDITSHARE TAKES ON MAJORITY INVESTMENT FROM PARKERGALE CAPITAL

nick@zazilmediagroup.com — Mon, 20 May 2019 13:07:43 +0000

Boston, MA, USA — May 20, 2019—EditShare, a technology leader in intelligent scale-out storage, Automated Quality Control (AQC), editing and media management solutions, today announced it has taken on a majority investment from private equity firm ParkerGale Capital (ParkerGale). Focused on profitable founder-owned technology companies, ParkerGale’s carefully curated portfolio is a mix of software-oriented businesses that are supported by the firm’s financial investment and in-house operating team whose mission is to help portfolio businesses rapidly scale and bring to market new innovative products and services. EditShare founders, Andy Liebman and Tara Montford, will continue to lead EditShare innovation and customer success and remain the company’s largest individual shareholders. Industry veteran, Conrad Clemson, will join the leadership team as EditShare CEO.

“We have created a company that not only delivers products and solutions that appeal to the media production market, as shown by our returning customers, but also to a company such as ParkerGale, which has had the insight to see how valuable EditShare has become. ParkerGale’s deep-seated history of helping profitable companies like ours achieve their next stage growth goals will enable our team to expand and develop the EditShare product range into even better solutions for our customers in the future,” comments Tara Montford, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President Business Development, EditShare. “EditShare has always been extremely customer-focused and without our customers’ engagement, we would not be where we are today. Riding the momentum of double-digit growth over the last three years combined with the investment by ParkerGale, we will have the resources at hand to accelerate all our plans and deliver on our innovative roadmap while retaining that personal touchpoint with our customers.”

Deployed at thousands of facilities around the world, EditShare solutions are used to power the creation of many of today’s blockbuster feature films, captivating TV series, documentaries, sports programs, live events, educational programs, corporate communications and more. Its ultra-scalable distributed media management platform enables businesses of all sizes to drive media production workflows with greater ease. EditShare’s secure collaboration environment connects users to content and production tools, allowing businesses to hire the talent they require, anywhere in the world.

“We are proud to offer industry-leading solutions that enable our customers to respond to market demands with greater efficiency and ultimately take advantage of new opportunities to grow their businesses,” comments Andy Liebman, EditShare Co-Founder and newly appointed Chief Strategy Officer. “Our incredibly talented team is dialed into our customers’ needs and next steps. They are developing and delivering innovative solutions that facilitate collaboration and efficiency such as the EditShare Flow hybrid media management platform that can cut production time by as much as 50% and EFS Shared Storage Auditing, an important content security capability that helps mitigate content theft. Our innovations span all aspects of media production from an individual storyteller who is using the Emmy-award winning Lightworks to enterprise broadcasters automating productions with EditShare’s metadata-driven workflow solutions. With ParkerGale’s infusion of capital, EditShare will be able to execute much faster on the many more incredible product and workflow ideas we have for all of our customers.”

Leading the company through this next stage of growth is EditShare’s new CEO, Conrad Clemson, who recently led Cisco’s Video, Mobility, and Cloud organizations. “Andy founded EditShare in 2003 when he needed a more flexible and affordable solution for media sharing. His invention of high-performance Network Attached Storage for editing transformed the industry in a way others weren’t imagining at that time," comments Clemson. "EditShare’s history of leading the industry with groundbreaking innovations and solving customer problems before they even recognize them goes deep, and with this investment, the EditShare team will be even better positioned to continue to deliver transformative solutions to an industry that is in greater demand for it now more than ever.”

Devin Mathews, Founding Partner at ParkerGale concludes on the new partnership and expanded resources, “We couldn’t be more excited to embark on this partnership with the EditShare team. In our research, we were particularly impressed by just how much customers love the EditShare suite of products - a testament to the tremendous foundation this company has built.”

To learn more about the expanded EditShare leadership team and its solutions for media & entertainment production, please visit https://www.editshare.com/management

About EditShare

EditShare is a technology leader in networked shared storage and tapeless, end-to-end workflow solutions for the post-production, TV and film industries. Our groundbreaking products improve efficiency and workflow collaboration every step of the way. They include video capture and playout servers, high-performance EFS central shared storage, AQC, archiving and backup software, media asset management, and Lightworks – the world’s first three-platform (Windows/OS X/Linux) professional non-linear video editing application.

Press Contact

Alex Molina

Zazil Media Group

(e) alex@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 (617) 834-9600

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Raygun Creative Builds Its Media Foundation Around EditShare

nick@zazilmediagroup.com — Tue, 12 Feb 2019 14:32:18 +0000

Basingstoke, UK — Febuary 12, 2019 - EditShare a technology leader in intelligent scale-out storage, AQC and media management solutions, announced today that Raygun, located in the heart of Dublin, Ireland, has centered its creative media workflow around EditShare Flow media asset management, EFS shared storage, and archiving solutions. A stand-out in national commercial work, Raygun’s busy facility is known for its high-end visual effects and audio capabilities. To manage the growing complexity of working with 4K media files, Raygun architected a media foundation that featured several EditShare XStream EFS single node shared storage systems, ARK tape library, and Flow media asset management. Offering a centralized content repository with tools to collaborate, manage and automate the full content lifecycle from the moment it arrives in post to the tape archives, the new EditShare workflow connects the facility’s creative rooms which include Avid and Premiere edit suites; DaVinci Resolve colour grading suite; Autodesk Flame finishing suite and Avid Protools sound studios. Raygun co-founder Jess Felton comments on the immediate value of the investment, “The EditShare system has transformed how we share content between departments and is very much at the heartbeat of our facility. With the ever-increasing demand for 4k content and beyond, we were in need of an intelligent shared storage workflow which was bulletproof and scalable, a system all departments in our facility could connect to and work from with ease. We identified EditShare's EFS Scale-Out storage nodes as a perfect and affordable fit for Raygun, initially setting-up a 2-node system, with a plan to bolt on extra nodes as our workload grows.”

The EditShare single-node Xstream EFS enables small and emerging studios to migrate their workflow into a modern scale-out environment that can expand by simply adding a node, easily supporting business growth without sacrificing performance or reliability. “The beauty of an XStream EFS–based installation is that it can be configured with additional capability such as High Availability Metadata servers, dedicated Flow and Ark servers, workflow automation, QC solutions along with nearline disk and offline tape libraries to create a dynamic workflow infrastructure that adapts to the facility’s needs. This is important for fast-paced and fast-growing facilities like Raygun. The flexibility to scale on the fly without overinvesting in the infrastructure optimizes the overall investment in tools and technology without sacrificing on firepower or innovation,” states Tara Montford, Managing Director, EditShare. The fault-tolerant XStream EFS design ensures that there is no single point of failure with options for configuring for high availability workflows. Presented as a single namespace, XStream EFS eliminates administrative tasks such as balancing project workloads on multiple raids, luns, volumes or file systems. Completing the storage infrastructure, EditShare Ark seamlessly integrates with XStream EFS, providing a tiered storage flow that keeps archival content searchable and easily retrieved.

Providing a control layer across the storage and archives is EditShare Flow media asset management. Staff can log on from any laptop or workstation and browse content libraries, review work and automate tasks such as transcoding or file migration from online to offline storage. Felton elaborates on the benefit of having Flow. “Flow Browse is the real star here. It has really changed the way we use, search for and archive our assets. Knowing that everything is secure and catalogued really takes the sting out of bringing back long forgotten projects and sometimes obscure elements. It plays well with Avid and it's something I turn to every day.” Raygun plans to expand the media asset management configuration to include the web-based Airflow for remote workflows. Felton explains the value this will add to the facility services and efficiency, “Flow makes sharing projects and content easy, and allows all our creatives instant access to the material they need to complete each job. We're also excited to roll out the remote access features of Airflow to our clients and suppliers, allowing remote collaboration and secure delivery of dailies/rushes from anywhere in the world.”

For more information on EditShare XStream EFS, Ark archiving, and Flow media asset management and all other EditShare solutions, please visit www.editshare.com.

About EditShare

Press Contact

Alex Molina

Zazil Media Group

(e) alex@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 (617) 834-9600

EditShare Gets High Marks at Liverpool Screen School

nick@zazilmediagroup.com — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 16:53:15 +0000

Basingstoke, UK — December 6, 2018 - EditShare a technology leader in intelligent shared storage and media management solutions, today announced that The Liverpool Screen School has upgraded the existing media infrastructure to the latest EditShare XStream EFS storage platform as well as added EditShare Flow media asset management (MAM), AirFlow for remote access, and QScan automated quality assurance to support its Journalism, Media Production and Film Studies programs. Noted for their “theory and hands-on practice” approach to education, the school enjoys an internationally recognized reputation for their work as well as the strong links they have forged with companies across the creative and digital sector including the BBC, ITV, and Lime Pictures. “Our student experience spans a broad range of technical expertise,” states Darcy O’Bree, Technical Resource Manager, Liverpool Screen School. “The diversity of our courses requires us to teach a range of different technical methods for realizing the student's creative vision. The students do conventional film production. They do television production, including live and thematic style TV. They’re even getting into things like projection mapping, event visuals, color management, and content quality control (QC).” O’Bree adds, “With increasing student numbers, we were about to hit a wall with capacity in the existing system. Also, the way the system was originally set up five years ago, it wasn’t integrated with the university’s main network, which limited access.”

Putting out an industry-wide call for information, the Liverpool Screen School reviewed submissions for a range of media storage and management solutions on the market. Ensuring students had full accessibility to the creative tools was the number one priority for the new upgrade. O’Bree explains, “With this upgrade, we want to increase accessibility to our post-production tools in general. The students use a variety of different editing applications. We’ve got Avid Media Composer, Apple’s Final Cut Pro, and the full Adobe Creative Cloud suite, with different courses using different combinations of applications. And this year, we are introducing students to advanced colour grading via Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve. This is why we opted for EditShare.” Darcy goes on, “Any student or staff doing any form of post-production can store their projects on EditShare. And not only on campus, but off campus as well. These buildings are not open around the clock, but students are working all sorts of hours and complete access was paramount.”

QScan Expands Student Skill Set

Providing Liverpool Screen School student interns a real-world experience is Lime Pictures, the British production house for blockbusters such as Hollyoaks, The Only Way is Essex, Geordie Shore, and Free Rein. Lime Pictures’ Alistair McMath, who oversees the infrastructure for Lime Pictures post-production and is connected with the student interns, elaborates on the evolution of technology-based learning and the importance of understanding quality assurance workflows coming out of university. “When I was at university, it was all theory-based learning. It wasn’t massively technical and I very quickly realized when I started working in the industry that the technology that I had learned was obsolete. Today it is different. Institutions like Liverpool Screen School give students access to the same editing and storage systems you find in world-class facilities like Lime Pictures. And it's great to see that they are further expanding the exposure to include QC. With the various delivery standards, it’s a real asset to have this knowledge, even if it's minimal.” Alistair explains, “In recent years, QC has moved from being a task performed just before broadcast to a task that can be done at almost any point across production and post-production. Whilst it’s not the most glamorous side of TV, it is incredibly important for students coming out of school to have a framework of what QC is. They need to understand that there is QC for photosensitive epilepsy as well as all of the technical standards. They need to know what levels are legal and be familiar with QC terminologies such as audio true peaking and audio loudness. I realize that this can be technically challenging to master, but the fact that the Liverpool Screen students will have been exposed to QC systems and processes gives them a step up when entering the real world.”

For more information on EditShare solutions, please visit www.editshare.com or to read the full case study on Liverpool Screen School, please visit editshare.com/case-studies/cs-liverpool.

About EditShare

EditShare is a technology leader in networked shared storage and tapeless, end-to-end workflow solutions for the post-production, TV, and film industries. Our ground-breaking products improve efficiency and workflow collaboration every step of the way. They include video capture and playout servers, high-performance central shared storage, archiving and backup software, media asset management, and Lightworks – the world’s first 3-platform (Windows/OS X/Linux) professional non-linear video editing application.

Press Contact

Alex Molina
Zazil Media Group
(e) alex@zazilmediagroup.com
(p) +1 (978) 866 7354

EditShare Sets Sights on the New Year with the Release of Flow 2019

nick@zazilmediagroup.com — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 18:16:35 +0000

Basingstoke, UK — December 5, 2018 - EditShare, a technology leader in intelligent scale-out storage, AQC and media management solutions, today announced Flow 2019, the media asset management (MAM) solution that simplifies media sharing and collaboration with easy-to-use tools to manage media acquisition, assembly and delivery beyond the confines of the facility. Flow currently supports on premise storage vendors such as Avid ISIS/NEXIS as well as any SMB shared storage. Flow also connects to leading archive providers such as Amazon S3, Generic S3, StorageDNA and Masstech FlashNet.

This latest release improves storage compatibility with new support for Amazon Glacier, Archiware P5, Backblaze and Microsoft Azure. Flow connects siloed storage pools to facilitate file ingest, asset tracking, search and retrieval, storyboarding, media transcoding and migration policies as well as delivery for editors, colorists, and creatives everywhere.

“To meet the demand, production houses and content producers need to tap into a much larger pool of creative storytellers and leverage talent wherever they are located and, if need be, bring them into the creative process remotely. From a production standpoint, it's an enormous challenge and this is where Flow solves the pain point.” Tara Montford, managing director EMEA at EditShare explains, “This latest release of Flow opens up a whole new world of storage vendors, that previously could not utilise a media asset management solution such as Flow. Adding in additional storage vendors such as Microsoft Azure Files and Amazon Glacier whilst also including NFS storage platforms, brings a wealth of opportunities to the Flow ecosystem, enabling more clients to index and categorise their valuable media.”

Flow brings intelligent file ingest, asset indexing, search and retrieve as well as tools to storyboard, annotate and collaborate on media projects. It also offers advanced automation and workflow design tools to automate complex processes such as transcoding and redundant media migrations including moving content from production to nearline to archive storage spaces.

New capabilities in Flow 2019 include:

Expanded storage support with Amazon Glacier, Backblaze and Microsoft Azure Files which provides immense flexibility in terms of scaling productions resources and content volume.
- Amazon Glacier allows users to archive to and restore from Amazon Glacier vaults.
- Backblaze b2 allows users to back up their content to offsite secure data centers.
- Microsoft Azure Files cloud support enables backup and archive to the Microsoft cloud. Flow can also index existing media.
Support for Archiware P5 allowing archive and restore to LTO as well as another supported cloud backends.
Enhanced video and audio codec support.
Support for a virtualized KVM environment.
Support for third-party storage solutions that utilise NFS mounting. New workflow enhancements range from the new advanced metadata update panel to quick searching, improved timeline editing and interchange improvements with leading NLEs such as Adobe Premiere Pro, Media Composer Ultimate and Final Cut Pro X

Flow Pricing and Availability

EditShare Flow is available today in three packages: Basic, Advanced and Enterprise. Volume pricing is also available. Users can test-drive Flow by downloading a free 14-day trial at: my.editshare.com.

For more information, visit flow.editshare.com or please contact sales@editshare.com.

About EditShare

Press Contact

Alex Molina
Zazil Media Group
(e) alex@zazilmediagroup.com
(p) +1 (617) 834-9600

EditShare Releases a Brand New Flow at IBC2018

nick@zazilmediagroup.com — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 14:05:43 +0000

Basingstoke, UK — September 13, 2018 - EditShare a technology leader in intelligent scale-out storage, AQC and media management solutions, today announced that its new Flow software-defined media asset management (MAM) release will be available through a subscription-based model at the end of September. Showcased at the IBC2018 exhibition (stand 7.A35), the latest version of Flow has been completely re-engineered for non-EditShare storage environments including Avid NEXIS, StorageDNA and Amazon S3. Bringing its intelligent media management layer to existing storage pools, Flow opens up new possibilities for collaboration and production from remote locations.

“The days of everyone involved in a production being in the same building, at the same time, are long gone,” states James Richings, General Manager, EditShare. “Whether you’re a broadcaster, post facility, news agency, education establishment, or a corporate media department, this new version of Flow creates flexible ways for teams to make better use of their existing storage infrastructure. With unrivaled collaboration and remote workflows at a price that works for even the smallest of teams, Flow opens up new possibilities for those working in non-EditShare storage environments..”

Educational stalwart, Catapult Learning provides education solutions for students and schools around the world. With more than 5,000 educators on staff, the breadth and depth of its educational content are immense. In charge of producing both the company’s video-based curriculum and promos is production manager and videographer, Kevin Marchese, who was a beta tester for the new Flow release.

“Because the educators are not video producers in the traditional sense, we work closely with them to construct the right outflow of material as well as produce the polished piece,” explains Marchese. “With Flow’s simple-to-use tools, the educators can access video content from any location in the world and storyboard the learning narrative, notate changes and provide feedback. It’s incredibly powerful for collaborating on the video evolution.”

At any given time, Marchese can be working on between eight and 10 video learning projects using various freelancers to help pull together the packages. “We rely on a number of freelancers, whether it’s shooting or editing, to get projects done. And because we have a global footprint, content is stored in various storage pools and cloud pockets. Flow threads these pools together and gives me a holistic view of global assets with a way to collaborate with freelancers as I do with the educational producers. It’s a great approach to managing the vast amount of media for an incredibly low price.”

About EditShare Flow

EditShare Flow brings intelligent ingest, asset indexing, search and retrieve as well as tools to storyboard, annotate and collaborate on media projects. It also offers advanced automation and workflow design tools to automate complex processes such as transcoding and redundant media migrations including moving content from production to nearline to archive storage spaces. The new third-party system integration highlights include:

AVID ISIS/NEXIS - Workspaces can be used natively by Flow for all the usual operations such as scanning, folder watching, proxy creation, copy/move, and transcode to/from.
Amazon S3 - Archive and restore to and from S3 buckets of all storage classes including “General Purpose,” “Infrequent Access” and “Archive.” In addition, users can move or copy assets between these buckets and storage classes.
Amazon Glacier - Archive to and restore from Amazon Glacier vaults.
Generic S3 - Archive and restore to and from any generic S3 object storage, such as Object Matrix.
Storage DNA - Archive and restore to and from StorageDNA defined Tape archives. Flow proxies can also be shared with the StorageDNA media browser.
SGL FlashNet support.
SMB/CIFS - Support for any SMB/CIFS storage platform.

Flow Pricing

EditShare Flow is available in three packages: Basic, Advanced and Enterprise. Subscription pricing starts from 19 GB/25 EUR /29 USD per user, per month (based on a 12-month commitment). Volume pricing is available. For more information, please contact sales@editshare.com or visit flow.editshare.com.

Attendees to IBC can book a private demo of the latest version of Flow and other EditShare innovations at www.editshare.com/ibc-2018.

For more information on EditShare at IBC2018, please visit editshare.com/ibc-2018. To book a private press briefing, please contact Nick Govoni at nick@zazilmediagroup.com.

About EditShare

Press Contacts

Nick Govoni
Zazil Media Group
(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com
(p) +1 (978) 866 7354

Ka-Boom Bolsters Its Post-Production Business On EditShare

nick@zazilmediagroup.com — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 16:11:15 +0000

Basingstoke, UK — September 12, 2018 - EditShare a technology leader in intelligent scale-out storage, AQC and media management solutions, today announced that post-production and creative facility Ka-Boom has invested in an end-to-end EditShare workflow solution that encompasses EditShare Flow and AirFlow media asset management (MAM), XStream EFS scale-out storage, EFS 40NL parking storage and EditShare Ark archiving solutions to support its growing media business. Located in the heart of Belfast, Northern Ireland, Ka-Boom’s busy facility is currently working on a wide range of documentary and entertainment programs including Channel 5 “Celebs on Solitary” by Stellify Media, the BBC NI Drama “Counsel” for Lacada Entertainment, and the BBC Network daytime series “Holding Back the Years” for BBC Studios, to name a selected few.

“We’ve just opened up a new facility with more offline suites and have greater expansion plans over the next six to 12 months, which is where EditShare comes in,” comments Zach Willis, Ka-Boom’s co-founder and producer. “With the facility and projects expanding, we had to scale our technology to meet the client needs as well as give our team a way to better collaborate.” Zach explains, “While our current building and new building are in the same location, there is a bit of a gap between them and we needed a technology solution that could span across multiple sites with ease. With EditShare, we can house the entire EditShare infrastructure platform in our main building and then easily connect to the content hub and to each other from the new building and anywhere else in the world via Flow and AirFlow so that it is all very seamless.” Ka-boom have six offline suites with another five coming online shortly, all of which are connected to the EditShare tiered storage infrastructure, which includes XStream EFS scale-out storage, 40NL parking storage, and Ark tape archiving. Seamlessly integrated, Flow and AirFlow provide the control layer for managing assets and automating migration policies across the EditShare tiered storage pools with simple-to-use production tools for producers and directors to review content, annotate notes, storyboard ideas and collaborate with teams across departments and beyond facility walls.

Zach elaborates, “With the capabilities of the Flow and AirFlow, producers and clients can be located anywhere in the world and review media, storyboards and collaborate with editors, colorists and other staff back at the facility. This setup far better suits with our expanding filmmaking workflow.” Within Flow, all assets and relative metadata are tracked, making searching and retrieving media fast and efficient, even for those assets stored on tapes. AirFlow provides team secured remote access to content with tools to facilitate editorial review and approval from anywhere. Zach adds, “We have quite a few projects that can be very quick turnarounds. There is typically lots of material where the edit producers and the execs along with their actors want to sit down to review the rushes or do rough assemblies and things like that. It’s not like a drama or a feature or scripted material, where you know what the story is and you have only two or three takes and that’s it. A lot of what we are doing is you have a story but you have no scripts. You’re working on the material that you’ve got and many times the team is dispersed in different locations, so the Flow and AirFlow product lends itself absolutely perfectly to what we do anywhere, and that type of flexibility is really our bread and butter of TV.”

With content indexed across the tiered EditShare storage environment, staff can use Flow to easily search and retrieve content, even with material shot years earlier. Willis explains the impact of this new capability, “Even when a project is finished, staff still have access to the proxies. They can search for that shot that they always wanted to use but didn’t because it would have taken them half a day to find it in all those drives we used to store content on. With Flow, they can find it in seconds and that’s been big. Our clients are going to love this.”

See Ka-Boom Workflow at IBC 2018

Attendees to the IBC2018 exhibition can see the Ka-Boom workflow on the EditShare stand (7.A35). For more information on EditShare at IBC2018, please visit editshare.com/ibc-2018. To book a private press briefing, please contact Nick Govoni at nick@zazilmediagroup.com.

About EditShare

EditShare is a technology leader in networked shared storage and tapeless, end-to-end workflow solutions for the post-production, TV, and film industries. Our ground-breaking products improve efficiency and workflow collaboration every step of the way. They include video capture and playout servers, high-performance central shared storage, archiving and backup software, media asset management, Automated QC, and Lightworks – the world’s first 3-platform (Windows/OS X/Linux) professional non-linear video editing application.

Press Contacts

Nick Govoni
Zazil Media Group
(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com
(p) +1 (978) 866 7354

Legendary Windmill Lane Post Facility Opts for EditShare EFS Tiered Storage

nick@zazilmediagroup.com — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 14:12:27 +0000

Basingstoke, UK — September 6, 2018 - EditShare a technology leader in intelligent scale-out storage, AQC and media management solutions, announced today that end-to-end full service post production facility Windmill Lane has invested in the XStream EFS scale out storage platform and Flow media asset management. The facility, whose portfolio includes commercial brands such as Virgin Mobile, Tesla, Toyota; feature films such as Terminal, starring Margot Robbie and Miss Julie, starring Jessica Chastain and Colin Farrell; and music videos for U2, rolled out EditShare media workflow solutions to centralize its storage infrastructure and foster collaborative efficiency across the facility to meet the demands of international clients.

Tim Morris, partner and head of VFX at Windmill Lane comments, “Windmill Lane has built a global brand as a credit to the talent we employ and the forward-thinking approach to managing workflows. Our team embraced the promise of digital cinema cameras long before the more traditional post-production facilities did, and in doing so, we designed some of the most sophisticated processing workflows in the industry. Essentially we run a digital lab that mirrors the film labs of yesteryear in terms of processing rushes over night for delivery in the morning, with reports and look-up tables. With the addition of EditShare, we have put our lab on an advanced media infrastructure that accelerates production on all fronts, amplifying the benefits our world-class post production facility brings to clients while also allowing us to maintain competitive pricing models.”

Heralded as a cornerstone of creativity for over four decades in Ireland, Windmill Lane became world renowned for its recording studio, music video production and commercials in the 80s and 90s, with founder James Morris branching out to set up The Mill in London in 1990 and TV3 in 1998. Since then, the company has developed into a formidable force both in the Irish and international markets for its passion and expertise in commercials, feature film, TV drama and content creation.

Due to the breadth of services offered, projects often leverage multiple departments across Windmill Lane, a reality that ultimately resulted in many disparate workflows and a need for simplification throughout the facility. Initially, each department had its own storage infrastructure, making it challenging for other departments to share content and control versioning across workgroups. By implementing EFS across production and near-line in concert with Flow media asset management, media became easily accessible and shareable across departments, a marked improvement from past processes.

“Before we brought EditShare on board, departments had their own storage, and if we needed another department to work on footage the whole project would have to be moved onto the network. The result was multiple copies of the same thing and in different states of post production living on different storage environments,” says Gareth Rennicks, technology manager, Windmill Lane. “Just managing the whole thing was very difficult because you’re moving across the network, copying, pasting, changing; tracking the whole thing was a nightmare. EditShare is really what we were looking for, it enables building-wide accessibility and collaboration without sacrificing system performance, which is absolutely critical for our success.”

Tim Morris elaborates on the improved mobility of media, “It was not only moving files amongst our facility, but moving files to other media companies around the world that we needed to improve. The disciplines we require, but also the ability to move data around, is why we went for the EditShare solution.”

Much of Windmill Lane’s ingest work was left to the grading department, which utilizes Baselight systems, creating workload congestion for the technicians. Because the department was often ingesting daily rushes from feature films, the task often fell on them for the whole building. The time consuming process naturally cut into the working hours that colorists could spend on projects.

Rennicks continues, “The turnaround with feature films and commercial projects is incredibly tight - the grading department doesn’t have the time or resources to also function as an ingest department for the whole building. With Flow, we’ve automated this process and moved it away from the grading department. That’s the beauty of the EditShare media environment, it eliminates admin bottlenecks and lets the creatives focus on the creative.”

“Full service post production facilities such as Windmill Lane need to be able to quickly and comfortably cross leverage different departments to deliver a world class experience to their clients,” says Andy Liebman, CEO, EditShare. “EditShare EFS working in tandem with Flow media asset management removes the baggage from post production workflows, letting the creatives focus on client deliverables.”

For more information on EditShare XStream EFS, Flow media asset management and all other EditShare solutions, please visit: www.editshare.com.

About EditShare

Press Contact

Nick Govoni
Zazil Media Group
(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com
(p) +1 (978) 866 7354

Pixcom International Optimizes Media Workflow with EditShare EFS Tiered Storage Environment and Flow Media Asset Management

nick@zazilmediagroup.com — Thu, 23 Aug 2018 14:03:44 +0000

Basingstoke, UK — August 23, 2018 - EditShare a technology leader in intelligent scale-out storage, AQC and media management solutions, announced today that Montreal, Canada-based Pixcom International, the in-house technical arm of Pixcom Group servicing Pixcom Productions, has invested in a 420TB XStream EFS 450 scale-out shared storage cluster along with 800TB worth of EFS 40NL near-line storage nodes and Flow media asset management. This re-investment in EditShare workflow tools will increase the collaborative firepower across Pixcom Productions’ 22 Avid edit suites, 10 story edit stations, two DaVinci Resolve color grading rooms and two compositing/graphics stations.

Having previously employed earlier generation EditShare storage solutions at Pixcom International, the team was confident in their choice to re-invest in EditShare with the powerful EFS 450 and 40NL near-line storage nodes to support its incoming high-bandwidth, media-intensive projects and accompanying large workgroups.

“Most of the time we’ll have more than one editor on a project. On larger projects, it can go up to six or even 10 people working on it together. The EFS 450 in tandem with the 40NL nodes enable us to easily leverage multiple people on a project, without compromising system performance. It’s incredibly efficient,” says Charles Laflamme, technical director, Pixcom International.

One of the biggest markets for Pixcom Productions is documentaries, often working on projects for Discovery Canada. The team needed a way to manage the vast amount of media files that accompany such projects. First, all incoming footage from various shoots is ingested to the EFS 40NL nodes and then backed up to EditShare’s Ark Tape archiving solution. Then, the files are down-converted to a lower resolution to be hosted in the EFS 450 for screening in story edit rooms and offline editing. For easy access, the original footage is kept in the 40NL until the show is approved so editors can quickly access high-res files and relink them to their timeline. Once approved, the final show is archived to LTO 7 along with the original content. Content parked on the 40NL utilizes the EditShare Clean Sweep function, enabling system readiness for the next project.

Laflamme adds, “The EditShare EFS 40NL greatly simplifies our workflow by keeping all media in the EditShare ecosystem from start to finish. With the purpose-built security features and intuitive user interface designed for media workflows, we have been able to effortlessly streamline our processes. We no longer worry about losing files through round tripping and are able to collaborate more freely on projects.”

The Pixcom International team also makes extensive use of Flow media asset management as a part of their day-to-day workflow. Laflamme continues, “For high value footage that can be reused on other projects, we log as much metadata as possible in the Flow database so we can find the file easily when we need it again. With Flow Browse, we can screen proxies of files that are not on the EFS 40NL anymore without having to restore everything. The editors can choose exactly which files they want to work with and we can restore them right to their media space for integration into new projects. We can even use those proxies for offline work. One of the great features is if the client is off-premises, Airflow allows us to give them access to the files we need them to sign off on. Flow has become a critical time-saving element for us and it fosters a truly collaborative experience for clients and staff.”

Laflamme concludes, “With help from EditShare, we have expanded and simplified our workflow with the EFS 450, EFS 40NL and Flow. We’re now so much better equipped to handle the kinds of media-intensive projects we deal with. In addition, the EditShare team has proven to be a valuable partner in determining the best solutions for an uncompromising collaborative workflow.”

For more information on EditShare XStream EFS 450, EFS 40NL, and Flow media asset management, please visit: www.editshare.com.

About Pixcom

Founded in Montréal in 1987 by Jacquelin Bouchard, Pixcom has seen meteoric growth in their audiovisual and digital production, dubbing and postproduction. Well connected with local creatives, Pixcom works with a permanent team of more than 50 people and employs over 2,000 freelancers (artists, technicians, production teams) to meet every client’s needs.

About EditShare

Press Contact

Nick Govoni
Zazil Media Group
(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com
(p) +1 (978) 866 7354

EditShare Announces Flow Media Asset Management Public Beta Program; Now Available to Select Creative Facilities

nick@zazilmediagroup.com — Thu, 31 May 2018 17:50:12 +0000

Basingstoke, UK – May 31, 2018 - EditShare® a technology leader in intelligent shared storage, AQC and media management solutions, invites the post production community to test the next generation of its Flow media asset management platform. For the first time, any broadcast or production facility can install Flow MAM on top of any storage pool. Now available for download, the first 100 eligible beta applicants will have the opportunity to try the all new storage independent version of Flow for 100 days free of charge and provide feedback. Approved applicants will have unrestricted access to all Flow modules, Flow technical support, and private Flow forums at no cost.

This latest iteration of Flow, has been completely re-engineered for non-EditShare storage environments such as Avid NEXIS, StorageDNA and Amazon S3. As a fully software defined MAM platform, Flow will maximize the value of customers’ existing storage infrastructure by adding an intelligent media management layer that can manage millions of assets across multiple storage tiers in different locations.

Join the beta program today: flow.editshare.com

For more information about Flow, please visit: editshare.com/products/flow

About Flow

With Flow, users can tag, organize, and manage media, improving efficiency and multiplying productivity. Tools like Flow Automation add the ability to automate complex and repetitive workflow tasks including archive, transcoding and automated quality control (AQC). With AirFlow and Flow Story, it is possible to remotely access, edit and package media on a shared storage system, increasing the opportunities for creative development outside the boundaries of a facility. The Flow platform includes server-based modules as well as Mac OS X, Windows, and web client applications to provide a complete palette of production tools.

About EditShare

EditShare is a technology leader in networked shared storage and tapeless, end-to-end workflow solutions for the post-production, TV, and film industries. Our ground-breaking products improve efficiency and workflow collaboration every step of the way. They include video capture and playout servers, high-performance central shared storage, AQC, archiving and backup software, media asset management, and Lightworks – the world’s first 3-platform (Windows/OS X/Linux) professional non-linear video editing application.

Press Contact

Nick Govoni
Zazil Media Group
(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com
(p) +1 (978) 866 7354

SMPTE Report: Flow Management Over Pro Media Networks

Phil Kurz — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 12:52:00 +0000

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.—A new report from a SMPTE study group examining the management of content flowing across a professional media IP network looks at existing and future flow management technologies and recommends a series of steps to move the industry forward.

Howard Lukk

"Based on the expertise of SMPTE members and input from across the industry, the report offers a solid foundation on which to build future standards work—and thereby accelerate the industry's shift toward more efficient, scalable, agile and flexible IP infrastructures and workflows," said Howard Lukk, SMPTE director of engineering and standards, in a press release announcing the report.

Flow management refers to the mechanism to control real-time media flows across a fabric of Ethernet switches from senders to receivers.

The 52-page document, “Report of the Study Group in Flow Management in Professional Media Networks,” addresses:

· Current and future technologies for media content flow management;

· User requirements for professional media networks (PMN);

· Where current standards and specs stand;

· Holes in existing standardization;

· Recommendations for SMPTE standards work on a QoS profile, congestion management and authentication; and

· The need to harmonize existing device control protocol standards.

The report also offers recommendations for the broader media industry on flow switching methods, control of software defined networks (SDN) and anomaly detection.

The report is available on the SMPTE website.