Posted: 03/03/2015
My first BVE with Forscene was a bit of a “Baptism of Fire” as I had only joined the company two weeks prior to the show. All I had to do was get to know the application well enough to demonstrate it to video professionals at a busy trade show. No pressure!
The show itself was busier than I expected and our stand was consistently full of people, some of whom had come specifically to see us, and some people who where just passing and were intrigued by the concept of editing in the cloud. The very mention of the word “Cloud” raises all sorts of issues with regard to security and this was one of the main concerns of anyone looking at Forscene for the first time.
The first thing to realise is that Forscene only uploads low bandwidth proxies of your material to your account, which is of course password protected. All your original material remains entirely under your control. Secondly, the codec that is used is unique to Forscene, so even if a hacker did manage to access the servers and download some media, they would not be able to play the files.
Comparing the typical workflow of most productions with the workflow using Forscene, the two things that really stand out is the time saving and ease of collaboration.
Typical post-production workflows involve so many steps that require time:
- Time taken to get the rushes back from the shoot
- Time taken to ingest the material into the editing system
- Time taken to transcode media to an editor friendly format
- Time taken to log and organise the Rushes
- Time taken to render versions for approval
- Time taken to transfer approval copies to producers/directors
- Time taken to download approval copies and respond with comments
- Time taken travelling to meetings.
Forscene allows you to cut out many of these steps:
- Using the latest cameras with WiFi or Cellular data capability, proxies of the media can be uploaded to the Cloud as the shoot is happening, with the full resolution material loaded into the system later for the final conform
- Forscene is compatible with almost every native camera format, from RED to GoPro, so no transcoding is required
- As soon as the material is in the system it can be accessed by the entire team, so logging and transcription can take place simultaneously with the editor starting to cut the material.
- No rendering is necessary in Forscene, everything happens in real time
- Approval copies can be sent to other team members instantly, they can open and play media immediately online and can add comments and markers that can be seen by the editor straight away.
It was amazing to see the realisation on the faces of the editors and producers I was demonstrating to, when they realised how much time they could save in their workflow and how easy it would be for their whole team to work together, wherever they were in the world. We even managed to persuade Larry Jordan, world famous editor and Cloud sceptic, that Forscene had definite advantages for production teams.
Neil
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