Producer of New Zealand’s most popular soap opera implements EditShare’s end-to-end production infrastructure for faster, cost-effective workflow
Brisbane, Australia (April 11, 2011)—EditShare®, the technology leader in cross-platform collaborative editing and shared media storage systems, has announced that South Pacific Pictures (SPP) has implemented EditShare’s end-to-end production infrastructure for New Zealand’s most popular soap opera, Shortland Street. With EditShare (www.editshare.com), SPP now has a completely file-based, tapeless workflow with centralized storage and content readily available to any department at any point in the production chain, enabling the company to handle production faster, better and more cost-effectively than ever.
SPP, a full-service production facility, has a team of more than 150 actors, directors, camera operators, sound mixers, video editors, assistants, loggers and other professionals churning out 250 episodes of Shortland Street each year. Chris Bailey, managing director of SPP, sees the EditShare workflow as a major boon to this operation. “Of course, HD has improved our production values, but so has our EditShare,” he said. “Flow Browse is a great tool with all departments being able to reference shots instantly, which leads to better decisions being made. Footage and information are available to the edit suites faster. We can now finish in-house and grade more extensively, which all helps our look on-screen.”
With the new workflow, the Shortland Street soap is shot, in the studio, with three Sony HDC 1500 cameras that are ingested through an EditShare Geevs broadcast server. During recording, video and audio are stored directly on an EditShare XStream server in full resolution and simultaneously on an EditShare Flow server in proxy resolution. Both sets of media are immediately available to anyone who needs to view or edit it. In the show’s previous workflow, it would take up to a week for footage from a scene to be available for editing. Location footage, recorded on P2 with the DVCProHD 100 codec, is transferred to the XStream and scanned into Flow, where proxy files and database entries are generated. Bailey sees the EditShare tapeless end-to-end workflow as a major boon to the soap opera, which just made the transition from SD to HD this season.
Paul Hayes of the EditShare Australia Pacific team emphasized the importance of integrated archives. “It was extremely important for SPP to protect the footage and edit decisions for Shortland Street from acquisition through archive and retrieval. In addition to EditShare’s RAID 5 architecture, SPP has the added security of EditShare Ark Disk and two Ark Tape LT05 backups, allowing both on- and off-site protection, which has resulted in a reduction in the company’s insurance premium. The combined power of Flow and Ark allows SPP to browse proxy clips of everything in the archive and bring back high-resolution versions with minimal effort.”
Feature Highlights of the EditShare Workflow at SPP
• Geevs records directly to digital files, eliminating costly VTRs from the capture process, with full-quality Replay to review and critique takes
• Media is recorded directly to the EditShare XStream shared central storage with user-level security, mirror copy and offsite backup in EditShare Ark. Content is available immediately for editing.
• During recording, EditShare Flow, the production asset management system, creates low-res proxy files in real time that everyone can then view from their desktop, eliminating tapes and DVDs while significantly improving the review quality and time. Users can review and rough cut media via EditShare Flow and drag and drop clips and sequences into their NLEs.
“EditShare has given South Pacific an ingest-to-archive workflow with metadata management, instant access and comprehensive administration capabilities for controlling and tracking assets,” said EditShare business partner Doug Braddock of AV Intelligence. “And with a single vendor, there are no complex integrations; there’s also a clear line of accountability for system reliability and performance.”
About EditShare Complete Collaboration Products
EditShare’s Energy and XStream Series shared storage solutions enable editors and compositors to easily and economically share media and work collaboratively, regardless of the platform or application. Users connected to an EditShare network can seamlessly access in real time a common pool of media files. Source material, work in progress and finished packages are shared and instantly available to all users on the EditShare network. The rules-driven workflow ensures that no data is ever overwritten or accidentally destroyed. EditShare’s patented bin-locking/project-locking framework allows editors working in either Avid or Final Cut projects to open up and safely work with one another’s project files, bringing unprecedented efficiency and creativity to the editing process.
EditShare Flow, Lightworks, Geevs and Ark bookend the shared storage solutions with production asset management, editing and distribution capabilities. The integrated solutions provide a highly scalable end-to-end media management workflow.
About South Pacific Pictures
South Pacific Pictures has an international reputation for producing world-class television and film. The company celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2008 and to date has produced around 3,000 hours of programming. Drama series and serials, feature films, and more recently, entertainment, reality programming and documentaries are all part of the programming mix. The current slate includes work for New Zealand, Australian, Canadian and UK broadcasters: http://www.southpacificpictures.com.
About EditShare
EditShare LLC is the pioneer of a new category of collaborative editing solutions designed for digital media workgroups and production companies. The EditShare system fuels the collaborative creative process for digital media artists by delivering high-quality, high-performance and cost-effective networked collaborative editing solutions. For more information, please visit www.editshare.com.
©2011 EditShare LLC. All rights reserved. EditShare™ is a registered trademark of EditShare LLC. All other trademarks mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.
Press Contact
Janice Dolan
Zazil Media Group
+1 617 817 6595
janice@zazilmediagroup.com
