my prediction - cloud based editing

J Davis

J Davis

Veteran
my prediciton - future editing will be cloud based
- media goes from camera thru wifi to cloud
- proxy editing for uhd and raw
- touch based (ipad like) tablet driven ui
- exports made to cloud and url for that export emailed to appropriate parties
- revision control for multi editor projects
- fcpx first to implement and others follow
 
Exact said:
I don't see my cameras uploading 250GB of footage over Wifi to the cloud as fast as I can edit it locally.... we'd still be waiting for upload next week!
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Exactly. Where do you think the infrastructure to allow fast uploads of your footage to the cloud is going to come from? I have the fastest tier available for residential use, and while my download speed is great (I've seen it hit 2MBps), the upload speed leaves a lot to be desired. About this time last year I tried to FTP footage from a shoot out to LA, and the 46GB of video/audio was going to take 3-4 days to upload. Do you really have the patience to allow your Internet connection/computer to be taken up for that length of time for such a piddling amount of data already?
 
Gary Huff said:
Do you really have the patience to allow your Internet connection/computer to be taken up for that length of time for such a piddling amount of data already?
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....not to mention the ISP invoking their "fair use" policy and slowing your connection speed down to stop you using all the bandwidth ;)

This may or may not be the panacea many people think it's going to be. If you are some one creating content and want some basic edits doing then it's going to mean access to cheap editing in India, China etc, but if you're an editor it could mean that the people coming to you for editing now could outsource elsewhere unless you're willing to work for $10 a day ;)

I know that's taking things to extremes, but technology rarely protects the status quo!

What it would be useful for is allowing staff editors to work from home, and that's what we would use it for most. While I have no intention of outsourcing our editing overseas at this point, if some one can do it 'well' and 'cheap' and 'fast' then I'm certainly not going to rule it out forever. It's going to be the content creators who are in charge and editors become even more of a commodity, which generally means lower pay for the average guy, with only those stellar stand out editors earning top dollar.
 
Something to think about : 4 years ago, in January 2008, youtube was streaming every video at 320 x 240 and in march that year they went to 640x480.
 
I don't think it's so much outsourcing to India. That includes a whole host of problems that most people would probably not want to deal with (if you can't handle trying to get your issue resolved with an Indian-based call center, imagine trying to communicate your vision for creative work to an overseas editor!). It's just uploading the footage to the cloud in order to use underpowered systems (thin laptops, tablets, ect.) that only need to be able to process streaming video to allow you to edit.

Frankly, it's a terrific idea, and we'll eventually get there, but upload speed in the U.S. is so incredibly piss-poor, and with bandwidth caps being threatened, just how possible is this within a decade? We would, first, have to institute sweeping infrastructure changes, to the tune of a mass produced Google Fiber like system all over the U.S., and then keep the cost per month in the range that most people can afford. After all, are you going to jump at cloud editing if the speed of your connection that gives you a few hours spent in upload time for your footage costs $5,000 a month?
 
J Davis said:
Something to think about : 4 years ago, in January 2008, youtube was streaming every video at 320 x 240 and in march that year they went to 640x480.
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That's still down-streaming, not uploading. Playing back the footage isn't the problem. Getting your footage to the Cloud is.

For comparison, 1080p YouTube video is 8mbps. 1080p AVCHD is 24Mbps (VBR of course), and it goes UP from there, not down. Do you seriously think we're going to have the bandwidth that is affordable in the next few years to upload ProRes 1080p to the cloud?
 
Gary Huff said:
That's still down-streaming, not uploading.
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the example was to illustrate how rapidly bandwidth is increasing. The solution to files that are too large to upload is proxy and this would be the sensible step when deciding which takes are selected before editing. If there is a need for online edits the proxy is swapped out after each file uploads.

Gary Huff said:
Do you seriously think we're going to have the bandwidth that is affordable in the next few years to upload ProRes 1080p to the cloud?
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Its already here - plenty of companies here in Manhattan use Amazon s3 cloud storage for their offsite backup, just leave it uploading during the night.
 
You can't ignore the fact that while download speeds have been going up, upload speeds are still just kind of piddling along. That's also great that Amazon s3 cloud storage is being used, but what are they paying for the pipes necessary to send that data so that it just takes overnight? What if sending your KiPro Mini/Atmos Ninja/ect. footage up to the cloud costs you $5000 per month in order to upload it overnight? How many of us are going to plunk down for that?
 
J Davis said:
Its already here - plenty of companies here in Manhattan use Amazon s3 cloud storage for their offsite backup, just leave it uploading during the night.
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Lots of companies here using the cloud for backups too..... but they are typically incremental backups and not the sort of size that HD video produces, day after day after day.

I think that the majority of the time the original footage will have to be loaded on to the server locally and accessed as a form of proxy remotely. I can't see many people having the bandwidth to upload a full day of HD shooting out in the field.
 
Exact said:
I think that the majority of the time the original footage will have to be loaded on to the server locally and accessed as a form of proxy remotely. I can't see many people having the bandwidth to upload a full day of HD shooting out in the field.
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Then the problem becomes: why would you pay for that? If you have to still maintain the disk space for the full-size clips, why would you upload the proxies to the cloud? If you have proxies already, there's almost no computer you can by today that can't handle the editing duties.
 
If you are a one man band then it wouldn't really be helpful but the vast majority of productions are bot. There is a huge need to get takes in front of a lot of eyes quickly just to get selects. Edits often go thru many hands so editing a cloud full of proxies makes sooo much sense.
 
J Davis said:
my prediciton - future editing will be cloud based
- media goes from camera thru wifi to cloud
- proxy editing for uhd and raw
- touch based (ipad like) tablet driven ui
- exports made to cloud and url for that export emailed to appropriate parties
- revision control for multi editor projects
- fcpx first to implement and others follow
Click to expand...

Agree, except that it's not the future. Avid is already doing it for news:
http://www.avid.com/US/products/Interplay-Sphere/Features

>
Avid Interplay Sphere lets you:
  • Extend real time collaborative production to anyone anywhere with an Internet connection
  • Edit projects from any location, incorporating both locally acquired and workgroup media assets
  • Browse and use streamed workgroup media in real-time
  • Transparently handle transcoding, uploading, and check-in of finished projects and locally acquired media in the background with a WiFi or 4G connection
  • Upload H.264 proxy media, full-resolution media, or proxy followed by full-resolution media
  • Work with supporting releases of Media Composer and NewsCutter editing software and the Interplay Production asset management system
  • Begin uploading media before project is finished
  • Quickly upload H.264 proxy media
>

And there is Adobe working on stuff. And a bunch of other startups.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
The idea behind Adobe Anywhere isn't that you throw it up on the cloud. It's that you ingest to a local server on your premise and people on-site access it as well as remote users via broadband connections.
 
J Davis said:
If you are a one man band then it wouldn't really be helpful but the vast majority of productions are bot. There is a huge need to get takes in front of a lot of eyes quickly just to get selects. Edits often go thru many hands so editing a cloud full of proxies makes sooo much sense.
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Well, for bigger production houses, yeah, they can spend the money on the bandwidth. But how does that jive with production houses shrinking and not expanding? What use is it for smaller houses that can't afford that bill?
 
Gary Huff said:
Well, for bigger production houses, yeah, they can spend the money on the bandwidth. But how does that jive with production houses shrinking and not expanding? What use is it for smaller houses that can't afford that bill?
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The bigger production houses typically buy more seats, so they are a valued and higher profile customer. Some of them would like to out source editing (even within their own locality) to smaller independent shops instead of having editors and loggers sat in a large facility that costs more to run each month than a large data pipe does.

For the small guy, this is not going to be a big deal, unless you want to have an associate be able to edit off site this is not going to be a major feature for you.

Remember, not all products are aimed at all customers. Historically, Apple have made products that the smaller shops didn't buy / couldn't afford, including the older Final Cut Server, XSan and the XRAID systems etc. Today, Adobe make a lot of products that the smaller shops don't buy, including their media servers etc aimed at broadcast facilities. Most people don't even realise these products exist.

Cloud / Remote editing may well fall in to one of these categories. You'll either want/need it or you won't. It may even cost more money that you don't want to (or can't afford to) pay for. But then that's just like everything else in life :) If the feature arrives and we can use it - great. If not, well, there are lots of other products and features I don't use already.
 
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