BURLINGTON, Mass.—Avid Technology and Amazon Studios have announced a three-year agreement to use Avid’s cloud-based editing and production technologies in the creation of Amazon Studios’ expanding slate of more than 300 original movies and series.
The agreement will allow creative teams working in the cloud to get the same experience and performance as an on-premises editorial bay—including collaborative workflows with shared storage and end-to-end media management—without the complexity and time required to set up and tear down traditional hardware, the companies said.
This collaboration is also an important step forward for Amazon Studios’ vision of a globally scalable studio-in-the-cloud platform, which will eventually include Avid’s MediaCentral production platform.
Avid and Amazon Studios expect to have cloud-based, production-ready solutions by fourth quarter 2022.
“Amazon Studios is prolific in its sheer output of original series and features that achieve the highest standard of creativity and quality,” said Jeff Rosica, chief executive officer and president of Avid. “By building their creative workflows around a complete set of Avid tools and platforms in the cloud, Amazon Studios is kicking off a new era of productivity and collaboration for their creative teams and contributors. Avid is delighted that our open technologies are being chosen by more customers who are innovating how content is produced in the cloud, on a global scale.”
Traditionally, editors need to access massive sets of media files that have traditionally been stored in the same location as the editing team.
In collaboration with Avid, Amazon Studios will untether their editorial process to allow creative work to happen from almost anywhere, and centralize the editorial and content workflows in the cloud, the companies said.
This collaboration will bring Avid’s Media Composer software tool and Avid NEXIS media storage solutions to editors and other content contributors wherever they are, supporting creative teams that are spread across the globe.
“We are on a journey to provide a best-in-class creative platform for our productions,” explained Ben Stanbury, worldwide head of technology for Amazon Studios. “Studio in the Cloud is our overarching vision for how we provide our creative teams with a cloud-based toolset that they can use wherever they are in the world. Avid is a central component of this vision, so we are thrilled to be starting this new partnership with them.”
By leveraging AWS and its global infrastructure, Amazon Studios will further centralize production assets in the cloud, creating a smoother, more unified production workflow, the companies said. Production and Post-Production teams will spend less time duplicating and transferring media to critical team members, allowing more time to be spent on high-value creative efforts.
Productions will also enjoy the peace of mind that comes from having their content, including camera raw files, protected by automatic processes that distribute data across several AWS Regions, the companies said.
