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COVID-related internet throttling
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[Bob Zelin] “As for 5G ? Well – Tim can tell us about that more than anyone else now. But of course, that won’t be the ultimate solution for what we are talking about.”
Remember, the “sales pitch” for 5G is all about IoT – “smart homes,” self-driving cars, etc. What sort of bandwidth draw is that going to be? I suspect 5G will be a speed bump, only to be gobbled up by more things we don’t need.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Bill Davis] “I’m sure there are panic meetings happening right now at the Board of Education level down to the district and individual schools levels in case the public schools need to remain closed for months.”
Both my kids are music teachers – one in public school, one does private instruction. They’ve been doing online classes for about the past week or two. So far, so good. The school systems all recognize that as a stop-gap, not a long-term solution. However, in some cases, this will add a potential option that might not have been considered in the past.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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It seems that all of the various solutions hinge around the “last mile” issue. That’s either local internet speed, the time it takes to transfer a large amount of media to drives, or the need to have someone still in an office/lab/facility/etc dealing with high-res media.
Moving around small proxies for editing isn’t that difficult, but it does not solve the problem. It merely becomes a way to work that is limited to a few workflow scenarios. Most of the scenarios that can work with high-res media through the cloud involve a small amount of footage – media managed selects, a flattened file for grading, or individual shots for VFX. Those situations work and are manageable. Syncing project files between mirrored drives also works.
None of this is really that taxing on the internet structure, but it’s not fast, either. Until we can all count on getting 100GB+ reliably and consistently to/from the cloud in under an hour, I don’t see a lot of that changing.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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Tim Writes –
“Disruptions are pretty much becoming more common than not, aren’t they? LOL Anybody not getting their cows in a row by now, I know that Bob is ready to put an end to social distancing, and I’m sure he will be only too happy to show up at your place with a baseball bat and show you everything you need to know about disruption, and tell you everything hes been learning about remote workflows so that no kid half his age will replace him because they’ve been thinking about this stuff and he hasn’t. He has, RIGHT BOB?”REPLY –
well, what I should really do is fly (or drive) up to Connecticut to the chairman of Charter Communications (owner of Spectrum Cable) – take the baseball bat out of the trunk and say “listen you @#$%%^ #$%^#$ – you are going to stop this nonsense with the 80 million dollar Christmas bonuses, and start running some FIBER CABLE into businesses, so the world can move forward”.
Of course, I will be shot by his security, and nothing will change.SO – what will this take ? (this is for entertainment value only – this is not a political discussion) –
when Alexandria Cortez decides to run for President, Google will approach her, and say “Ms. Cortez, here is a nice $50 million dollar campaign contribution for your presidential run, and we would love to provide wonderful high speed fiber internet to every business in the United States – will you help us do this, because we are being blocked by Comcast, Cox, Spectrum and the others”. And she will say YES, and while we will all be standing in line for a loaf of bread, we will all have FREE HIGH SPEED CABLE ! And remote editing will become a reality.Bob
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
[Bill Davis] “Imagine the bandwidth that will need to be deployed to live stream real-time lessons to all the students of a major system like the California Public Schools.”
Since we all work in a high tech field, it’s very easy to forget about the digital divide which may be a larger issue than bandwidth.
I have two high school aged kids in the San Francisco public school system. This system has been a very positive experience for our family from kindergarten to the present. We have no problem switching to online learning as a family but other families in our city don’t have the same access that we do. The public schools have a mission to serve kids from all socioeconomic backgrounds. And so in order for the programming to transition to online, the school system has to first get all of the kids online.
San Francisco is the epicenter of the tech world but unfortunately, that doesn’t translate to all children here having equal access to the internet. The SFUSD (San Francisco Unified School District) is attempting to level the playing field by giving out chromebooks to any families without home computers. That takes time and so the online learning curriculum start date has been delayed to accommodate the distribution of these laptops.
But even with these efforts by the SFUSD, there’s the added issue of wifi access. So I think it’s important to keep all of this in mind when discussing converting something as large and complex as the California public schools to online learning.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmprods
tallmanproductions.net -
If nothing else will be examined after this worldwide event by the most hard nosed bean counter for a post production house, the justification for renting a large facility with space for multiple edit suites is number 1. If a firm can use a cool new hybrid storage system, handle proxies well and move everyone onto laptop based edit machines instead of heavy lifting desktops with high energy requirements and save vast amounts of cash by having half the creative workforce work from home or anywhere else, they will.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
Tom writes –
“If nothing else will be examined after this worldwide event by the most hard nosed bean counter for a post production house, the justification for renting a large facility with space for multiple edit suites is number 1. If a firm can use a cool new hybrid storage system, handle proxies well and move everyone onto laptop based edit machines instead of heavy lifting desktops with high energy requirements and save vast amounts of cash by having half the creative workforce work from home or anywhere else, they will.”reply –
oh, I always cause so much trouble. And before I read Tom’s reply I read Greg’s reply .
I know this is a political answer – but it’s the answer.Coming from MY background (starting in the late 1970’s) – I mean WHO THE HELL had a million dollars to build an on line facility ? Oh – I know – rich people. So the film editors would edit on their Steenbecks/KEM’s/Movieolas, (kind of like what you are suggesting, where everyone edits on their laptops) and then the “heavy lifting” is done by renting a LARGE FACILITY with space for multiple editor suites that can conform the show. (if I am wrong about what I just said – you better stop me now). So in the OLD days, the film editors would get the one light, edit the show, and go to the LARGE FACILITY to conform and color grade the show. And now, in April 2020, you are suggesting that the “editors” cut on their laptop, and now the “bean counters” will just have to give in to THE RICH PEOPLE that can afford the on line facility, to conform the show back to the full res 8K media, and deliver to the TV network or film production company that has financed the movie.
There is only one thing that has mattered from the beginning of time – how can I get MOST of the money ! What is the cheapest way I can work, and still get MOST of the money. Who cares if it’s film, or 3/4″ video, or h.264, or 8K (or 16K) – how can I get MOST of the money ? And this is the only goal. That’s what .mp3 was all about. It was not “good enough” – but guess what – it became “good enough”. Will “proxy” be good enough, when you want to see the latest Billie Eilish music video, and it’s released on YouTube in h.264 (ok, maybe h.265) and it never is conformed back to anything else (and maybe it was shot on an iPhone – hey, Selena did a music video for Apple that was shot on an iPhone) –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgJMrgDABAYis that good enough. Does a 16 year old who is watching this care if it was shot in 8K on a RED at 5:1 compression, using AVID Media Composer with a 2019 Mac Pro with dual AMD Vega Pro II cards ? Its GOOD ENOUGH, and she got 3.8 Million views on this.
So the REAL QUESTION of the “bean counters” is “how do we NOT hire Tom Sefton”. Because he is SO expensive. Can’t we get rid of him and his exorbitant fees ?
The battle is always the same battle. Who gets to keep most of the money. You, the owner of the large facility, the owner of the agency that hired you, or the owner of the internet service provider that allows your show to be seen.
Bob
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
[Oliver Peters] “[Bob Zelin] “As for 5G ? Well – Tim can tell us about that more than anyone else now. But of course, that won’t be the ultimate solution for what we are talking about.”
Remember, the “sales pitch” for 5G is all about IoT – “smart homes,” self-driving cars, etc. What sort of bandwidth draw is that going to be?”
That was exactly my point in…this thread? Another thread? I don’t remember. LOL But yeah, 5G isn’t for anything we’re talking about. Even for mobile, it’s not going to be many places, and when it arrives, for many people it will be SLOWER than 4G. Not forever, but remember when 3G and 4G first showed up? Same deal. Started slower than the thing they were replacing, because by definition of early maps, more people were on the fringe of new coverage and it was flaky, where their old coverage may have been slow, but it was predictable.
What we need is all about the pipe to our homes, offices, home offices, etc.
[Tom Sefton] “If nothing else will be examined after this worldwide event by the most hard nosed bean counter for a post production house, the justification for renting a large facility with space for multiple edit suites is number 1.”
That’s also what I was talking about just above. It’s not that the tsunami that took out Sony’s HDCAM manufacturing ENDED tape. It accelerated the end, though, by a LOT. It’s not that the writer’s strike ENDED scripted programming in prime time. It’s easy to make the case that the scripted programming since then is generally better, and there really HAVE been some scripted TV shared experiences of a breadth that was supposed to be over — but Mark R. at Bunim/Murray, or anybody who still has a TV, can tell you that the balance irrevocably shifted toward unscripted, and it may never tilt back. Certainly hasn’t in the intervening dozen years.
There will absolutely be A return to “normal”, but there will be other NEW normals that won’t look like anything like this. Yes, the nature of this and similar threads here is that we’re lamenting this, or fretting, or speculating or what have you, because we’re all way, way downstream from where a lot of these decisions will be made. But there will be bean counters and other bosses who’ll be looking to the folks on this thread who are actually working on this stuff (eg, not me) for advice. The more advice we have to share with each other, the better-informed these decisions will be for all of us.
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[Bob Zelin] “But there is only one “next big thing” – the pipeline, that needs to be run by the cable companies. I cannot ever conceive that the current owners (Spectrum, Comcast, Cox, RCN, AT&T, etc.) will ever do this. You need someone with a vested long term interest (like Amazon, Google, Apple) that is willing to buy these companies out, or pay off whoever needs to get paid off, so they can run fiber lines – not into people’s homes, but into businesses that are willing to pay for it (which is probably everyone). “
Things happened like this here but upside-down ☺
We have a great little local ISP that partnered with our city to work on building out fiber across town. They started downtown and are looking to expand neighborhood by neighborhood.
In a twist from what you’ve described I believe AT&T felt threatened by this and saw an opportunity to grab the market by firing the money cannon. I’m not sure when the decision was made to do it but AT&T rolled fiber down our street over a matter of weeks. I felt a bit guilty going with AT&T but the local ISP likely won’t be ready to provide fiber to my house anytime in the next 3 years.
So in the end it was Comcast that lost out. I pay less now for service that is 5x faster down and 80x faster up than what I had from Comcast. When fiber is available from my local ISP I hope to make the switch but in the meantime I’m a bit flabbergasted by the value AT&T is offering in this case. That’s not something I’m used to from Ma Bell.
Darby Edelen
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[Bob Zelin] “Does a 16 year old who is watching this care if it was shot in 8K on a RED at 5:1 compression, using AVID Media Composer with a 2019 Mac Pro with dual AMD Vega Pro II cards ? Its GOOD ENOUGH, and she got 3.8 Million views on this.
“There does seem to be a healthy co-existence between the professional video world and the low/no budget world.
I see my 15 year old daughter as a barometer. She’s an avid TikTok fan and contributes her own videos to the platform. The viewing numbers for TikTok videos are stunning to say the least. And if anyone isn’t familiar with the platform, here’s their trending videos: https://www.tiktok.com/trending
At the same time, my daughter is also a devoted fan of high quality television shows like HBO’s Euphoria and a wide variety of Netflix and Hulu series.
I see a clear separation between the professional video/film world and the amateur internet video world. But for someone like my daughter, who’s grown up a digital native, I don’t think there’s any separation at all. It’s all just entertainment.
Hopefully, as long as there remains this balanced demand for content the industry can remain viable for us professionals. Hard to predict where it’s headed though.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmprods
tallmanproductions.net
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