Traditional post production processes are clunky and outdated—here’s everything you need to know about editing the “old way” versus doing it via Suite’s cloud-based workstations.

If you’re reading this post, we’re guessing that you’re already familiar with video production. But you’re a post production creative only called into action once the cameras stop rolling. Here, we’re going to outline the traditional workflows of video post production and compare those with the cloud-based workflows offered through Suite. Yes, this post is self-serving, but we’re here to prove a bigger point—the processes of video post production are caught in the past and there’s now a better way of doing things that will save your studio time, money and energy. 

The old way of doing things…

When a videographer completes a shoot, the first thing they do is create a local backup of the footage before sending it—usually via a physical hard drive through the mail—to the project’s producer. That producer then creates their own local backup, before reviewing the footage and sending it along to an editor. The editor then… yep, you guessed it… creates a local backup before diving into their first round of layouts and sending it to the next person in line. That’s a lot of local backups, with each of them taking hours to complete depending on the size of the project.

As you can see, the time is already adding up…

Once the rough cut is done, an editor will export it with a timecode and send it back to the producer. The producer will provide notes, the editor makes the changes and re-exports it again. Hopefully, the editor implemented the changes correctly on the first pass, or that process might happen again, or even several more times, before a final cut is ready to be exported and sent to the client. If the client also has changes, that will send the video project back through the cycle again, over and over, until everyone is happy with the ultimate end product.

To make the point even clearer: If each backup takes several hours, as does each export, you can start to see how the time adds up quickly—and inefficiently—when it comes to traditional post production workflows. Depending on the size of the project, and the size of the team working on it, just the time spent backing up, sharing, and exporting could more than triple the amount of time spent actually editing and producing a project.

The benefits of cloud-based workflows

Now, we’re going to rewind the post production process back to the beginning, apply a cloud-based workflow like Suite offers and witness all of those inefficiencies disappear.

When a videographer completes a shoot, rather than backing it up locally, they upload it to a cloud-based storage drive like Suite. As far as backups go, that’s it—you’ll never need to worry about losing or misplacing a file again. Literally, you are more likely to be struck by lightning while winning the lottery than you are to lose media by storing it in the cloud.

As editors go about their work—also completed in the cloud—they can check in with their producers for review, no time codes or exports necessary. Just by simply signing in and accessing the files on the shared, cloud-based storage drive, producers can track progress and provide feedback. Even better, producers and editors can work together on the same cloud-based workstation, making edits—and getting them right—in real time. Never again will an editor hear something like, “I wanted the music louder, but not that loud,” or “I wanted to switch out the other shot, not that one.” With Suite’s cloud-based solutions remote collaboration begins to really feel like you’re sitting in the same room with your team of creatives. 

Just like file backups only have to happen once, exports only happen once too. Off to the client it goes, potentially weeks faster than could ever be accomplished through traditional workflows.

Does it sound too good to be true? It might. But, with Suite, it’s entirely possible. 

By offering our users a completely cloud-based workstation, which can be fully customized and scaled to meet your studio’s exact software and storage needs, you can work with teammates on video production projects around the world, just like you could if they were right down the hall. Projects can be completed quicker and easier than ever before, and when creativity strikes you won’t be waiting for files to transfer or download to get to work.

‍Suite makes it easy to transition to the cloud…

Suite is making it easy for studios to utilize cloud-based workflows not only to improve the known inefficiencies in video production workflows, but also help prevent the unknown and unexpected problems that can arise—like a hard drive getting damaged in the mail—slowing everything down even further, sometimes by days or even weeks.

Utilizing Suite’s cloud-based storage works in your favor and automatically keeps multiple redundancies of your media assets in place. So when your client calls you six months after a project has shipped asking for that a detail to be changed in the final edit, accessing the footage and making the swap is as easy as a quick search through your file storage on Suite. No clunky filing cabinets or sticky-noted hard drives required. Never again will you have to feel that stomach-dropping cringe from losing unsaved work or learning about files damaged in transit.

So, consider how many more clients you could win, or how pleasantly surprised your current clients would be, if you told them you’d be delivering a final cut weeks earlier than the competition. Imagine the response if you were able to invite your clients and collaborators to real-time editing sessions to make important decisions together in real-time. With Suite, those efficiencies are available to every production studio and accessing this streamlined workflow is truly as simple as turning on your computer.