Like pre-production, many of the remote tools our video production house uses in post-production have been a part of our process for years. Receiving elements from clients or working back and forth with graphic artists or music composers usually involves sharing via Dropbox or receiving larger files using WeTransfer. Transcription usually involves one of the online services like Rev.
While clients will come to the edit suite occasionally, most of our projects involve post-production without the client present. We use a couple of cloud tools to allow for remote review.
Suppose we have a project with multiple videos, such as a healthcare video production or an educational series. In that case, we generally use Kollaborate, but we often use Vimeo if it’s just one video, such as for a non-profit or a corporate video. Both platforms allow for viewing and leaving time-stamped comments. I prefer the file management of Kollaborate. Frame.io is a popular option as well, but I have minimal experience with it.
Once we receive comments, we can make the revisions, mark them as completed, and upload a new version. The old version and its comments remain for comparison purposes. Once everything is approved, we can deliver using Kollaborate or Dropbox. I usually use Dropbox because I’m often including not just video files but closed caption files as well, and it’s just easier to keep all those together in one folder. You can easily interchange Dropbox for One Drive or Google Drive. Whatever you prefer.
Reviews using Kollaborate or Vimeo occur independently, which works well for people’s schedules. Some of the healthcare videos or educational videos we produce are good examples. We might have the project manager plus the science team, content team, and marketing team needing to review content. It’s hard to get everyone’s schedules to line up, so allowing those groups’ flexibility to review and leave comments on their own time is convenient.
Collaborative reviews have previously taken place in person. For joint reviews online, you could do some mix with Zoom or Teams and watching online, but that seems clumsy. Evercast and Sohonet both offer cloud tools designed for collaborative review.
The one new item added to the toolbox during this pandemic is backing up entire projects to the cloud. While in the office, our media is stored on network-attached storage (NAS) with RAID protection and then backed up every night to another NAS system. Ultimately, finished projects are archived to LTO.
When we moved to work from home, we needed an alternate way to back up our projects and get them back on the NAS. We could have dealt with this several ways, and we’ve learned a lot over the past year, but I’ll share the process we used.
First, when we moved home, we took our edit systems and a hard drive with everything we needed. After a video production, the source footage would go to the office and backed up on the NAS, but a hard drive would also go home with the source footage. This back and forth with hard drives would still occur on some of the smaller projects.
On larger projects, such as the healthcare videos I worked on throughout 2020, we needed to back up more consistently and not wait until the video project is completed. While the source footage was already backed up in the office, other elements like the project file, graphics, etc., were not.
Implementing cloud backup was the solution. We started with purchasing storage from Backblaze. From there, I tried different backup software that could work with Backblaze. After some frustrating issues with my first choice, I ultimately ended up using Goodsync.
At the end of the day, I set up a backup to happen, and all new files or revised files would backup to Backblaze. Periodically, I would remote into a workstation at the office and sync the project from Backblaze to our NAS. The ultimate goal is that the entire project is protected and on our NAS. I could have set up Goodsync to automate this process. Still, I felt more comfortable setting it up manually and glancing at what was going to upload to Backblaze and then later downloaded to the office.
Now, we are looking at a product from our storage provider that will automatically sync footage from the NAS to local storage at home. It would be somewhat invisible to us and enables our NAS to serve as the central storage system as if we were working in the office. We would still backup to Backblaze in this case, but it would be from the NAS and not our home systems.
That completes the process. We love working with our clients and staff, and vendors, but remote production gives us options. From pre-production through post-production and delivery, we can produce quality videos for our clients while also allowing them the flexibility to come for a visit or skip the travel and stay in their homes and offices. It is up to them.