Projective introduces hybrid-cloud solution Skies.

Post-production companies have been managing remote work challenges in various ways. From inelegant options like shipping external hard drives to editors to more technologically advanced solutions such as remote desktop technology and file-transferring products, these improvised approaches bandaged the wound but added to the underlying issues of chaos in the production. A year later, as content production accelerates again, and productions need to balance both on- and off-premise work, the hastily assembled solutions of last year are straining under the increased workload. As a result, the media production industry is forced to look for innovative and future-proof solutions.

As the industry is recovering the pace of content production is accelerating, while users are demanding to be able to work both remotely and onsite. Supporting this hybrid model requires a modern, nuanced approach. It is this need that inspired Projective to develop a unique hybrid-cloud infrastructure: Skies.

Skies is a perfect addition to Projective’s award-winning solution Strawberry. It provides the flexibility required for remote working while maintaining the structure on-premise and users love that the interface is the same wherever they are working. We at Projective believe that Skies is groundbreaking because of its synthesis of flexibility, coherent structure, and security.

“As content production ramps up again, with a mix of on and off-premise work, professional companies are having to revise how they approach things at scale and across the globe. The combination of our innovative products Strawberry and Skies is a perfect fit to meet these challenges.” - Derek Barrilleaux, Projective’s CEO

Remote editing today is still limited in many regards. Providing secure access to the media is an obvious challenge, and massive media file sizes and saturated internet connections make working on large projects challenging. Remote-desktop approaches require consistent high bandwidth and distort video colors and sound. Skies is an innovative solution that eliminates these problems. It comes with a plugin that enables remote editors to edit proxy versions. These editing proxies are created automatically on the on-premise storage. They are lightweight, timecode-accurate, and 100% Adobe Premiere-compatible. It also provides easy-to-use tools to conform the proxy-based master clips and sequences to their HighRes versions, while keeping all settings and effects of the remote editors intact.

Skies is a hybrid-cloud solution, which means that typical obstacles such as VPN setups, lengthy media up & downloads, or exhaustive remote desktop bandwidth requirements are a thing of the past. With Skies collaboration becomes a smooth experience for the entire production team.

Not everyone in the post-production workflow needs the extended feature set of, for example, Adobe Premiere. With Projective’s web-based editing tool Preditor, everyone can create rough cuts from home. Whether you want to give internal team members access to projects and media assets or share content with external clients. With Skies, everything is done in no time and right from within a web browser.

Getting draft versions to the right people, maintaining security on that content, getting feedback to the creative team, tracking/utilizing that feedback, all of these steps are a pain. Skies turns approvals into a breeze, and there’s no need to upload anything to a separate platform. This improves turnaround time, and client feedback is immediately accessible to the production staff. Smart notifications ensure that the entire team stays up to date on relevant content.

Traditional cloud-based approval platforms require their customers to upload HighRes media files, and then wait until a streamable preview is created before the content can be shared. This makes every iteration of the approval process a time-consuming undertaking. Skies utilizes the automatically created proxy files. This approach completely eliminates upload times and makes everything instantly searchable and shareable... and because Skies is a hybrid-cloud you never have to worry about ever-expanding cloud storage plans.

The Skies ensures that any media shared with the client is encrypted and immediately available, regardless of where on the planet the client is. Media that hasn’t been touched for a while simply gets removed from the cloud cache until it becomes relevant again.

Skies hybrid-cloud infrastructure is perfect for post-production houses and broadcasters, but it can also be particularly useful for advertising agencies managing multiple campaigns for various clients. A client does not need to worry about how their advertising campaigns are organized and where. Instead, advertising agencies can be in charge of managing all assets for each campaign and relieve their clients of this headache.

Anytime you’re talking about cloud infrastructure, security is a key concern. Skies builds on the intrinsic security capabilities of Strawberry, with multi-factor authentication, encryption, watermarking, and access control at the project level. Because no content needs to be uploaded to a separate cloud platform, clients control their data, and users only see what they are allowed to see. But it doesn’t stop there. The proxies that Skies creates and serve as the basis for review & approval workflows are encrypted streaming proxies. This ensures that only authorized users can stream media to their devices. Furthermore, with freelancers, rather than giving them unfettered access to the facility via VDI or VPN technology, they only gain access to the projects and assets they are working on.

Skies is the result of years of collaborative design and development, not just within Projective, but working in concert with its worldwide client base. Anyone can take advantage of cloud services, but building a coherent post-production workflow that makes cloud technology work for the production was Projective’s aim.

“We built Strawberry because it’s the product I always wished I’d had when I was working in Post-Production. It is the same philosophy that guided our design and implementation of Skies. We’ve taken what we always wished for and combined it with feedback from our customers to build something truly groundbreaking.” - Marco Stahl, Projective’s product owner/ co-founder