Life Advice for Working Remotely with Large Media Assets

TL;DR

The industry is focusing on shoring up remote workflows, making them more permanent and scalable by turning to solutions that can adapt quickly as business demands evolve.
For industry pros working with extremely large file sizes, highly valuable assets and time- sensitive collaborative projects, standard web-based file sharing tools such as Dropbox, Google Drive, SharePoint, and WeTransfer just don’t cut it.
Signiant has listed seven capabilities that it thinks are necessary for any large-scale media project, including storage independence and removing restrictions on file sizes.

File Acceleration

The more diffuse your workforce is — the more partners or collaborators that make up a supply chain — the more critical speed becomes. According to Signiant, while some solutions offer the potential for remote access and work, many lack the core file acceleration capabilities that make them convenient or useful at all in media and entertainment.

“Working remotely often comes with its unique pressures. Your team shouldn’t have to compound those with the fear that the files they just sent will take more time than necessary to reach the next person who needs to work on them.”

No File-Size Restrictions

In M&E, files are exponentially larger than those identified with other industries. As files continue to get bigger with more content created in new formats, including 4K and 8K — tools with file size limits are nonstarters. In Signiant’s view, specific remote tools that work for other businesses simply will not support the workflows that film studios, television stations, OTT broadcasters, or game developers require.

“The power of remote work solutions ultimately lie in their flexibility and the idea that teams would be limited by what they could send and share simply because of file size almost entirely defeats the purpose. File size limits stifle remote collaboration and in many cases it’s simply not appropriate.”

Checkpoint Restart

If file transfer is interrupted, it’s not only frustrating, it damages time and cost and productivity. Signiant advocates tools with a “checkpoint restsart” function. This is why the ability to automatically restart an interrupted transfer from the point of failure, is so essential when it comes to remote access tools.

“When your upload, download, or transfer simply picks up from where it left off, users don’t need to worry about wasting precious time hoping that that progress bar doesn’t fall back to zero again.”

Web-Based Administration

Features like delegated administration, storage configuration, access control and permissions, reporting, and managing notification settings make it easy to track all the activity surrounding valuable content when working with disparate teams. It also makes training, onboarding, and getting started far easier for users.

“The more distributed your teams and partners are, the more important it is to organize and delegate administrative responsibilities effectively. Without an easy, web-based solution for that, things will get messy quickly.”

Storage Options

Because remote team members need access from many different locations at all different times, storage independence (in the cloud, on-prem, or across a hybrid architecture) becomes a key element of security and control.

Onramp to the Cloud

While storage independence is paramount, quickly and easily accessing the elasticity of the cloud provides even greater flexibility. Cloud storage offers IT teams the ability to immediately spin up the storage they need without setting foot in the office. So, for a company that must quickly implement a remote work environment, tools that make it easy to work with cloud storage from any provider are essential if and when they need it.

Enterprise-Grade Security

Perhaps security is the most prominent feature remote collaboration and file sharing solutions should possess. Even major media organizations such as Disney and HBO have suffered massive security breaches. Signiant calls out the need for “defense-in-depth security” in any solution you select in order to access the benefits of remote while ensuring that no unauthorized access occurs.