Cinedeck, leaders in the multi-cam video production, partnered with Edit 123 and Studio Something, a Glasgow based production company, as they spearheaded ‘A View from the Terrace’ – a unique lens on Scottish football, evolving into its sixth series. Cinedeck’s advanced technology and innovative take on products has been empowering media creators, broadcasters, and scientific research operations for over a decade.
For Edit 123, the objective was simple. Make the show fresh, the process efficient, and budgets stricter.
The Objective
The primary goal behind Cinedeck’s partnership with Edit 123 was to provide a reimagined approach to the show’s workflow and post-production scenarios, while at the same time maintaining a strict budget.
Before partnering with Cinedeck, Edit 123 were experiencing significant issues and restrictions in their post-production workflow. This prompted Lewis Halloran (Technical Operations Manager, Edit 123) and Theunis Bester (Technical Operations Supervisor, Edit 123) to develop a new workflow to make this happen, with assistance from Cinedeck.
While Lewis and Theunis had known about Cinedeck previously, they now had a project that was the ideal fit for the Cinedeck ingest solution. Studio Something were looking to expand their production to on-location opportunities, and so a hybrid system was required. It was decided that the best course of action would be to implement a new system that could be adpated for an as-live audience.
The Problem
Working with their previous system, all seven of Edit 123’s cameras were recording to in camera media cards. At the end of each of the six recording segments, recorded media would be transferred to G-Raid drive by a data wrangler.
The footage would be duplicated onto two separate G-Raids, taking about 1.5 hours to process. This delay meant the edit team wouldn’t receive the footage until midnight. Given that the footage had to be ingested by Thursday morning for a 10:30pm broadcast, this timing was problematic.
Technical Operations Manager of Edit 123, Lewis Halloran, commented: “It was a lot of long hours for everyone involved. The main objective was to speed up the workflow, and by doing so we opened some doors of opportunity that we didn’t expect.”
The Solution
The new solution includes a Cinedeck ZX85 recording 7 cameras with embedded audio directly to Avid native media files to an on-site Avid Nexis.
The ZX85 simultaneously writes to LucidLink space for transfer to Edit 123 and to an SSD Raid as backup. It also gets stored onto the camera cards for maximum security.
The records are segmented into 5-minute chunks, making the footage available to edit 5 minutes after recording. This is a massive improvement in comparison to the 1.5 hours the post production team would to wait before the footage became available. The only difference in the workflow for the studio (previously developed by Halloran and Bester) is that the as-live version only requires one edit, making the recording time much shorter than the studio show.
James Cranfield, VP Sales EMEA and APAC, Cinedeck, commented: “The work we’ve done for Edit 123 and their post-production workflow was essential – it’s saved time, utilised location possibilities and ultimately changed the game for post.”
The Benefits
On making the big shift to their new and improved workflow, Edit 123 have spoken about the significant benefits they have experienced as a production company since its implementation.
Lewis added: “It’s nothing short of incredible how much time we save. It was taking us 1.5 hours to process one recording, and now it is done in 5 minutes.”
Due to the footage being encoded as Avid native directly on to a Nexis Server, the performance of the workflow greatly improved as well as the collaboration between the offline editors. The new workflow offers more security than the previous one, with multiple simultaneous recording locations, in camera, on the shared storage and directly to the cloud. This reduces the need to rely on drives and the requisite workflow of moving and copying media from drives to shared storage.
The most notable aspect of this new workflow is its applicability to both live and hybrid settings. These system adaptations make it easier to use older venues and high-quality locations in Scotland that aren’t typically broadcast-friendly.
The Future of Edit 123’s Post-Production Workflow
Lewis commented: “The reduced staff workload, and hours, related potential cost savings along with the ability to push the show to the next level are more than worth the extra cost.”
“All of these developments are made possible by the low budgets required for the Cinedeck server. It has the potential to be used elsewhere in other fixed rig or multi-cam productions, maybe even for Scotland at the European Championships.”
Edit 123’s collaboration with Studio Something on A View From The Terrace is constantly evolving, thanks to the new workflow opening up new locations and opportunities. The team at Edit 123 expects a productive year ahead, particularly for the show’s sixth series, as they can now optimize their post-production processes.