The Cloud

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Bob Woodhead] “That’s quite different from a storage cloud”

Absolutely. Just an example of moving large files around via internets is all.

Bandwidth is certainly the limitation of all of this.

[Gary Huff]

[Jeremy Garchow]Bandwidth is certainly the limitation of all of this.

And data caps.

I love how there are those spouting the “Kid with the laptop” as being the future of video production and then turning right around to praise The Cloud, when the kid with the laptop is probably MANY years away from being able to upload typical DSLR footage without it taking forever.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Gary Huff] “I love how there are those spouting the “Kid with the laptop” as being the future of video production and then turning right around to praise The Cloud, when the kid with the laptop is probably MANY years away from being able to upload typical DSLR footage without it taking forever.”

We talked about this in another thread. Uploading proxies is not out of the realm of possibility.

[Chris Harlan]

With proper bandwidth throughout, distribution across the Internet to an off-site render farm might make perfect sense for an operation, that swells in size several times a year. But this is, of course my point, about “The Cloud.” If I say off-site rendering over the Internet, everyone knows exactly what I’m talking about, but its not as sexy or mysterious as “Cloud Rendering.” “Cloud” is sales jargon that clouds communication and understanding.

[Chris Harlan]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Uploading proxies is not out of the realm of possibility.”

Agreed. That proxy web editor that Avid was showing off last year was pretty cool.

[Chris Harlan]

[David Roth Weiss] ” I’ve been using the MobileMe iDisk on all my Apple products”

Yeah, I’ve been using iDisk for client approval since just after it first came out. It has been a VERY handy pseudo-ftp site for me. I will truly miss it. I’ll start looking in March for a replacement, unless they do backtrack, which I kind of hope they will.

[David Roth Weiss] “However, it seems to me, to be truly useful, there is going to have to be either much great bandwidth on the Internet, or some type of very fast and automated down-rezing of video before it’s sent on its way to the Cloud.”

Some of the stuff that is happening with companies like Aspera are pretty impressive. One of my very large clients uses them to routinely deliver broadcast materials. Here’s a rundown on their data transfer:

https://www.asperasoft.com/en/technology/fasp_overview_1/fasp_technology_overview_1

[David Roth weiss]

q[Chris Harlan] “Some of the stuff that is happening with companies like Aspera are pretty impressive. One of my very large clients uses them to routinely deliver broadcast materials.”

There was no mention of price Chris, so I’m guessing it’s go to be pretty darned expensive. Any idea how expensive?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

Don’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Producing Episodic TV with “24” Producer Michael Klick:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-1_Michael-Klick/1

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.

[Chris Harlan]

[David Roth Weiss] “There was no mention of price Chris, so I’m guessing it’s go to be pretty darned expensive. Any idea how expensive?
“

Oh, yes! As far as I know they are currently priced well out of mine and most mere mortals’ leagues. I think you need to do a huge volume business to make it worthwhile. But I believe there are now companies that are buying into their service and offering transfer to mortals like us. Tim Wilson posted a link to a company that seemed to be doing exactly that. I’ll see if I can find it.

[Chris Harlan]

Actually, I was off. Time was referencing Prime Focus, which does seem to use Aspera as I suggested, but for only slightly less big companies.

TIM: Prime Focus’s pricing is more for corporate customers (BIG corporate customers), but I would expect to see solutions that scale down in the very near future.

[Gary Huff]

[Jeremy Garchow]We talked about this in another thread. Uploading proxies is not out of the realm of possibility.

So how do you get your deliverable then? I guess the program itself would have to support transcoding your local files, but then you lose the speed reason why you’d use the cloud in the first place (rendering).