Remote media workflows
Everything you need to stabilise, secure and improve your remote media workflow so you can reap the benefits of remote working long-term.
Remote media workflows
Everything you need to stabilise, secure and improve your remote media workflow so you can reap the benefits of remote working long-term.
When the UK went into lockdown, many companies had to design and implement a remote working solution overnight. While this was a huge challenge, many businesses have found that the lower overheads and more flexible schedules that result from remote working have had a positive impact on their business, the talent that works for them, and their clients.
But in many cases, the emergency systems put in place at the start of lockdown lack the robustness, reliability and scalability need to support a facility in the long term. That’s why we’re here – to help you stabilise and secure your remote infrastructure and build a sustainable, futureproof workflow.
Why Jigsaw24?
First off, we do all this already. We have multiple sites across the UK and for years now, they’ve been remotely linked to each other and our UK datacentre. Not only does that mean our engineers have years of experience with remote technologies, but we can provide live demos and proof of concept tests with your own footage, so you can be sure you’re choosing the right solution for you, complete with accurate, real-world costs projections.
We’re accredited by key players including Amulet Hotkey and Avid (in fact, we’re their sole certified UK Cloud Partner). But because we have our own datacentre infrastructure, we can also offer services to link your key technologies together. Our Via24 suite of cloud services is designed to help bring together everything you need for common cloud workflows in a single, dependable service backed by our support team.
And because we’ve been in the industry for over 27 years, we've develop fantastic relationships with a range of industry-leading vendors and can provide solutions and support for your platform of choice, rather than locking you in to a single vendor or forcing you to shift to an unfamiliar platform. Get in touch today to see our Via24 solutions in action, or book a demo of the key kit you see here.
Underlying technologies
Workstation access
Your employees’ home computers aren’t going to be as powerful as the workstations they usually have access to in-house. Luckily, they don’t need to be. PC over IP infrastructure in a secure, industry-proven way to give editors access to hardware hosted in your machine room or datacentre, without them needing anything more than a display, controls and thin client at home.
There are plenty of PCoIP solutions to choose from. Teradici set the industry standard for PCoIP with their protocol, and their Cloud Access toolkit is a great software-only option. However, we recommend that for demanding roles like editors or colourists, you opt for a hardware PCoIP solution. Try Amulet Hotkey’s, which provides hardware acceleration and added security to deliver a fantastic all-round experience for talent and tech teams. Using HP workstations? Ask us about getting to grips with the ZCentral Remote Boost solutions.
Connection brokering
If you’re implementing remote working long-term, you’re going to have users connecting from and to multiple platforms, locations and PCoIP services. To avoid confusion, technical troubles and bottle necks, invest in a connection broker like Leostream.
A connection broker gives your engineers a ‘single-pane’ view of everything you need to manage. With Leostream Gateway, technical staff can manage access rights, load balancing, authentication and more from a centralised interface, giving you tighter control of your workflow without adding complexity to end users’ experience.
We can install and configure a range of brokering solutions from the likes of HP, Leostream and Teradici – get in touch to find out more.
Cloud storage
Microsoft, Amazon, EditShare, Object Matrix, Wasabi and Avid all offer cloud storage solutions, and they all have their selling points: Amazon S3 is massively scalable, Wasabi don’t charge egress fees, and Avid’s Cloudspaces offer a seamless extension of your existing NEXIS storage.
The tricky part is working out which solution is right for you, and managing it once you’re up and running. That’s why we offer MCS24, a simple, fast and flexible way to access cloud storage. It offer flexible storage delivered into your facility or premises, file transfer acceleration and a range of sizing and capacity options, all backed by guidance and support from our media storage specialists.
Asset management
In a remote workflow, users aren’t just separate from each other, they’re separate from their media, too. You need a solid asset management system that will not only support ingest from multiple sites to a single, central pool, but will also help you redistribute that media to editors, finishing teams and producers in the field.
The current leader in asset management workflows is IPV Curator, a user-focused asset management system that’s eCommerce-style GUI makes it easy for creatives to find their assets quickly, and through which editors can work with proxies as small as 2% the size of the original file.
But that’s far from your only option – Avid’s MediaCentral | Editorial Management suite is a scalable solution for smaller teams, Projective’s Strawberry workflow is popular among Adobe users, and EditShare’s Flow system is a great way to build asset management right into your EFS array. Get in touch to run through your options and start designing your system.
File transfer
Moving your files quickly and affordably is key to developing an effective remote workflow. We offer a range of solutions – from user-friendly solutions like LucidLink, which allows you to mount cloud storage on your computer like a local volume, to surefire solutions for final delivery, like IBM Aspera, a suite of file transfer, streaming and sharing solutions that deliver 100x faster transfers than your FTP server.
We can help you develop on-premise, cloud-hosted or hybrid solutions, complete with intelligent management that ensures your data keeps moving, even when you’re relying on poor connections or WANs.
Key tools for production
NewTek
NewTek’s NDI solutions offer a flexible, affordable way to connect remote workers and deliver live content. Their established ecosystem already works with hardware from every key player in live production and post, so solutions can slot right into your existing systems.
EditShare
EditShare’s uniquely powerful storage solutions are now available in the cloud thanks to EFSv, a virtual version of their popular storage platform. Simply rent hosted EFS storage as and when you need it, and manage your storage capacity and costs during peak times and fallow periods.
Extending your Avid workflow
Avid Edit on Demand
Avid | Edit on Demand allows you to rent virtual instances of Media Composer and cloud-based NEXIS storage on an as-needed basis. These powerful virtual workstations and NEXIS workspaces are hosted in Microsoft Azure, so you can spin up post-production capabilities in any location.
Access to your virtual machines and storage is provided via a Teradici PCoIP client running on a local Mac or PC, and delivers performance that’s indistinguishable from editing on a local machine attached to local storage – especially once we set you up with a high speed file transfer tools like FileCatalyst or IBM Aspera to slash your upload and download times.
MediaCentral | Editorial Management
MediaCentral | Editorial Management is the foundation of MediaCentral for Post, designed to help small-to-mid-sized post facilities make the most of MediaCentral and their NEXIS storage. It brings powerful, simple to deploy asset management capabilities to your editing workflow, meaning more efficient collaboration, faster turnaround on projects and better visibility over the media you already have available.
Media Composer Cloud VM
A Media Composer | Cloud VM licence gives you the ability to run Media Composer on a virtual machine that your editors can then access using low-cost PCs, Macs or thin clients. The number of Cloud VM licences you have dictates how many virtual machines you can run at any one time.
There’s no limit on where licences are accessed from, what kind of hardware your editors need to be using, or the Media Composer feature set – remote editors get a fully functional virtual editing workspace, just like their in-house colleagues. This is a great option for on-set or on-location work.
MediaCentral | Cloud UX
MediaCentral | Cloud UX gives you mobile and browser-based access to Avid’s full MediaCentral management toolkit, so your tech team can work remotely as efficiently as your editors can.
Cloud UX licences are available in four flavours (View, Browse, Edit and Full) that offer role-based restrictions on which tools users have access to. It’s a simple, effective way to set different permissions for people at different stages of the approvals process – and it’s totally flexible, as you can adjust how many of each licence you support at any time.
Avid Cloudspaces
The latest option for extending your NEXIS storage, Cloudspaces allow you to mirror whole NEXIS workspaces in the cloud, creating and instant offsite backup of your work, with the project structure intact.
Available as a subscription service to all current NEXIS users, Cloudspacesintegrates with existing asset management and backup tools like Marquis Project Parking and Archiware P5, so it’s easy to integrate into your existing backup workflow.
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Other great tools for post
Adobe
Creative Cloud is designed from the ground up to allow users to move collaboratively between applications and projects. As a Platinum Partner, we provide flexible pricing for large scale deployments.
XenData
XenData’s intelligent management applications allow you to mirror your LTO storage in the cloud for universal access, and you can even back up a small, remote tape library to your HQ and a cloud provider simultaneously.
NVIDIA Grid
NVIDIA’s powerful GPUs have always been a key component in editing and finishing workstations. Now, they offer equally powerful virtual workstations, and you can even harness virtual GPUs to breeze through renders.
Streamline your approval workflow
Streambox
Streambox’s pixel perfect codecs and transport protocols that maximise the use of all available network paths for faster transmission and colour-accurate playout, suitable for remote grading and approvals.
Gallery SIENNA
The UK’s leading NDI developer, Gallery offer browser-based plug-ins for NDI workflows, including news, sports, film, television, outside broadcast (OB) and cloud delivery workflows.
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