Tag: cloud

YETI Case Study

Posted on by Ankita Gogoi

YETI uses Overcast Max to upgrade international video creation and distribution.

Introduction

YETI is an American manufacturer specialising in outdoor products such as ice chests, vacuum-insulated stainless-steel drinkware, soft coolers, and related accessories. The YETI brand has come to symbolise an active, premium, authentic lifestyle. The YETI content team works globally across all major markets. With demand increasing for content across YETI platforms such as Instagram and YouTube, as well as more traditional methods of broadcasting, YETI saw the need to upgrade their solution for managing their media appropriately.

Arlo Rosner

Executive Producer, YETI COOLERS

Bringing together our marketing and production teams through workflow has made new campaigns much more nimble: all video is now stored in one place and easily accessible by all content creators. Everything from original RAW files to finished films and videos. We could never do this previously with other DAM solutions. All of our global departments can now easily access our video content in a way that was impossible previously – this allows us to make better content, faster and with greater continuity across channels and regions.

The Challenge

The YETI team realised they needed to replace numerous hard drives and antiquated equipment with a secure, cloud-native, and searchable indexed collection of finished media assets. They needed to replace separate systems across different departments with an intuitive searchable solution, that provided a single point of truth and allowed access from anywhere in the world for remote working. Critically they wanted a solution that was intuitive for all users in the YETI marketing organisation.

The Solution

With Overcast, YETI undoubtedly saved time spent in handling media but also took their media asset management to next level.

  • Overcast MAX delivers remote collaboration, search, review and approval and archive management. The solution is delivered through a web portal and thus is accessible remotely and from any device. 
  • YETI found synergy within Overcast MAX’s overriding ethos of simplicity of use, much like their own products. With an intuitive user interface (UI), Overcast met YETI’s need to make this a creative and technical operating system, with no prior technical knowledge required by staff. 
  • YETI initially planned to restrict the use of the Overcast MAX video platform for live production management. But they soon realised that Overcast MAX could manage all their content. And now they are in the process of ingesting more than half a million video files and making the platform available for all staff.

Results

  • Over half a million video files ingested
  • Storage cost reduced by upto 80%
  • 10x faster processing from post to publishing

The YETI Content Hub continues to evolve with Overcast with a feature roadmap that includes new AI capabilities and automation.

Diageo Case Study

Posted on by Ankita Gogoi

In just 6 months Diageo have been able to reframe their global video experience and empower teams around the world to do in minutes what used to take days, weeks and even months.

Introduction

Diageo is a global leader in premium drinks with more than 200 brands. With a HQ in London, Diageo employs more than 30,000 people globally and is the home to much loved brands like Johnnie Walker, Guinness and newcomers like Tanqueray 0.0.
Diageo is obsessed with building brands and telling great stories. Creativity with precision describes how they effectively combine data, insights and innovation with creative flair to build stories around some of the world’s most iconic brands. In just 6 months, Diageo have been able to reframe their global video experience by empowering creative teams around the world to do in minutes what used to take day, weeks and even months.

The Challenge

Like many premium brands, Diageo shifted its marketing focus to omni-channel campaigns with an emphasis on video. Despite working with leading creatives, campaign processes were still old-fashioned, time consuming and costly. Workflows simply had not caught up with the times. To top it off, there was no centralised storage. Agencies controlled the content that Diageo owned the rights to, yet each agency had a different way of storing the content – some on hard drives, some on desktops and some clouds like Dropbox. Diageo knew they needed better control of their video assets if they
were going to scale their video operations. And they also wanted to use the latest data technologies like AI tagging and transcription to empower
their teams to find content no matter where they were in the world.

The Solution

The cloud-native Overcast Video Hub is now a core component of the Diageo Content Hub which also includes a cloud-native DAM. Diageo’s content teams and 60+ agencies ingest, store, collaborate on and archive all video marketing campaign material. All content is now controlled centrally.

  • An intuitive user interface meets Diageo’s need to make the system creative and operator-friendly – designed to be used by creatives, producers and staff with no prior technical knowledge.
  • All content is tagged using AI to make it possible to search within the videos and eliminating hours and days of scrolling through content.
  • Reuse targets have been set to extract additional value from rights owned content dramatically reducing costs and aligning with ESG strategies.

Results

  • 500k+ videos ingested and AI tagged
  • £1m saved in first 6 months
  • 60+ agencies & 1,500+ marketers onboarded.

The Diageo Content Hub continues to evolve with Overcast with a feature roadmap that includes new AI capabilities and automation.

Overcast Industry Insights: The Evolution of Media Creation

Posted on by Fiona Ashe

Ever-increasing demand for content. Ineffective legacy technology. Remote
collaboration challenges. Difficulty scaling up. These are just some of the
big issues facing the media industry today.

MovieLabs
— a technology joint venture of the major Hollywood studios, including
Walt Disney Studios,
Universal Pictures,
Warner Bros,
Paramount Pictures
and
Sony Pictures
— says that our industry is at a crossroads. There is a time-critical need
for executives to become more aware of supporting the future of media
creation and to invest in it. So, they have written an
Urgent Memo to the C-Suite: Investing In Production Technology and
Cloud Centricity Is No Longer An Option — It is Table Stakes.

MovieLabs has already developed a roadmap to creating the next-generation
ecosystem for media creation. Its 2030 Vision describes technological
advances that will enable seismic changes in media workflows and proposes
ten foundational principles as keys to that future. MovieLabs published case
studies of technology solutions that fulfil one or more of those principles
from
AWS,
Skywalker Sound, Walt Disney Studios, Sony, PFT, Overcast and
ProductionPro. Overcast provides Full Stack Video Management that radically improves
cloud production and post-production workflows through automation and
simplification.

This article delves into the trends and strategic imperatives outlined in
MovieLabs’ Urgent Memo to the C Suite and reveals how the Cloud MAM
solution that Overcast designed for Britain’s
Royal Opera House
fulfills those strategic imperatives.

Firstly, let’s take a look at the five key trends that MovieLabs identifies
as having a significant impact on media creation and that underpin the need
for commitment, support and investment in cloud-centric production
technologies and secure, interoperable workflows.

Trend 1: There is a growing urgency for scaled high-quality global
content production.

Traditionally, Hollywood content was distributed in overseas territories.
However, streamers have tapped into a growing appetite amongst viewers for
local language and local cultural content. Such content is created by local
production companies, but the streamers’ workflows and quality requirements
are foreign to many of these companies, which creates problems.

Trend 2: As release windows are evolving, distribution models are no
longer one size fits all.

The success of a movie used to hinge on its opening weekend box office.
However, the pandemic ushered in a new era of hybrid release strategies,
such as ‘day-and-date’ (where a film is simultaneously released in cinemas
and on streaming platforms), shorter exclusive theatrical runs, and
direct-to-consumer distribution. These have a major impact on production,
post production and delivery supply chains.

Trend 3: Productions are becoming more complex — what we did in the past
won’t work in the future.

With a wealth of cameras, creative tools and new production processes (such
as virtual production), film/TV/video production is becoming more complex.
We’re in a new era of “snowflake workflows”, whereby technological and
creative innovations make each workflow unique…like the individual shape of
a snowflake. While this is fantastic for content creators, the increasing
complexity of workflows coupled with the challenges of global distribution
and teams working remotely means that current practices just won’t and can’t
scale.

Trend 4: Connected, creative remote collaboration has become the new normal,
and it’s here to stay.

The pandemic was a baptism of fire for film, TV and video teams who were
accustomed to collaborating in purpose-built spaces but were suddenly thrust
into a situation where they had to work from home and collaborate virtually.
But, despite the initial shockwaves, it has turned out to be a positive
change. Creatives have more flexibility in where to work and this production
style will drive efficiency. Cloud-enabled collaboration tools will be the
key to scaling global productions.

Trend 5: Technology is evolving extremely fast, and the vendor landscape is
being disrupted.

An increasingly-connected production ecosystem is migrating to the cloud
while traditional methods of post production are consolidating and
contracting. Virtual production technologies and the democratization of
tools have created new “pop up” services, thus disrupting the vendor
landscape. Cheaper cloud-based business models are enabling new start ups to
avoid the enormous capital expenditure required in years gone by and
facilitates the ‘rental’ of tools, tech and talent as needed.

How is media creation evolving?

How is media creation evolving?

The future of content creation is full of exciting opportunities! But,
according to MovieLabs’ Urgent Memo to the C-Suite:

“We must design, create and implement a future-facing technical
pipeline to address the real challenges and opportunities to produce
content at quality, scale and across production locations and global
markets.”

So, back to the MovieLabs 2030 Vision. As we move towards realizing it,
there are three strategic imperatives that underpin the operational,
financial and strategic planning at all media organizations. Let’s unpack
them and examine how Overcast’s Cloud MAM solution for the Royal Opera House
(ROH) fulfill those imperatives.

1. Planning a multi-cloud strategy

Moving to the cloud is the foundation of achieving media creation at scale.
Benefits include almost unlimited storage and computer resources, a
pay-as-you-go business model, and a creative collaboration environment that
eliminates the unnecessary duplication of media assets. This “single source
of truth” principle is central to Overcast’s media management platform.

But MovieLabs deems that cloud is not enough anymore. It’s time to move to
‘multi-cloud’ (multiple vendors and a vast number of interconnected tools
and workflows). This is essential to complex content creation at scale and
the ability to pivot creative and distribution strategies and choices.

One of the foundational principles of MovieLabs’ 2030 Vision states that
assets go to the cloud and stay there, with applications coming to the
media. Today’s workflows span multiple facilities and move assets between
organizations and public/private clouds. To benefit from scalability, speed
and flexibility in a multi-cloud world, studios must collaborate with
industry stakeholders — including cloud providers — to create open
interfaces that connect silos.

Overcast enabled ROH to adopt a cloud-first strategy, which has delivered
more efficient ways of working: reviewing live rehearsals in real-time
remotely; automatically time-coding editorial reviews and approvals for ease
of decision-making; providing secure role-based permissions for freelancers
and ad-hoc users; and the integration or phased shuttering of legacy
on-premise technology solutions.

Through Overcast’s Cloud MAM solution, ROH created a single repository for
video content across all of its constituencies (the Royal Opera House, The
Royal Ballet and the ROH Orchestra). All of the ROH editors and producers
work from that single repository and can stream content to both internal and
external audiences by publishing links to it. A major advantage is that the
system is easy to use for non-technical collaborators (dancers, singers,
clients, sponsors).

2. Adopting a new approach to security

Erecting a fence and installing CCTV at your premises is a logical approach
to security…except if all of your content is hosted in the cloud by third
parties. So, how do we protect cloud-native workflows? We need a new
security mindset.

Overcast’s Cloud MAM enables ROH to give authorized users searchable access
to their library of assets and the ability to share retrieved content by
emailing links to other authorized users, such as dance notation experts who
work all over the world. The ability to share assets securely has enabled
new remote workflows that save on in-person or travel costs.

3. Enabling flexible workflows with increased automation and
interoperability

Time is of the essence when turning around creative projects. But precious
time can be wasted if your teams’ remote collaboration isn’t optimal.
Production workflows must become more flexible, extensible and easier to
assemble.

Automating simple tasks saves production oodles of time. Overcast has
integrated AWS AI tools such as Transcribe, Translate, and Recognition for
metadata tagging and subsequent search and retrieval. In its Cloud MAM for
ROH, these tools automate metadata tagging for bulk ingest, including
tagging of musical scores, leading players, and video attributes, freeing up
editors from these mundane tasks and allowing them instead to weave their
creative magic into the edit.

Future-proofing media management

Overcast believes that managing video files should be as easy as managing a
Word document. Its cloud native Full Stack Video Management is simple to
use, secure, and empowers teams to make, share and publish more content,
faster. Overcast echoes MovieLab’s call for commitment, support and
investment by C-Suite executives and also its vision of a studio and
industry ecosystem that will more readily enable future content forms and
business opportunities.

Get a free demo

Whatever challenges you are having with managing your media projects,
especially video, Overcast can improve your workflow and save you time and
money. We would be delighted to give you a free demo of our platform.
Click here to request a demo.

Media Industry Predictions 2023

Posted on by Fiona Ashe

The media industry, like many other sectors, is constantly changing, and changing fast!

So, the DPP has published media industry predictions 2023. This is the seventh year it has done so.

The predictions are business focused and they explore the themes that are expected to dominate the boardroom agenda this year.

“This will be the year to control what can be controlled, and make yesterday’s spend the basis for today’s income.”

The report’s predictions emanate from the five key topics outlined below.

AI and Automation 

ChatGPT hit the ground running in November 2022. Within five days, it already had one million users. Generative AI can be applied to computer code, graphics and image generation as well as text. 

Overcast uses AI to transcribe the audio content in a video and to identify people, places, things and events in videos and images.

“People want as many processes automated as possible. And sometimes it requires AI and other pattern recognition to ensure that things are automated successfully — because the number of people who need to touch content and work on it is a huge operational problem.”

While the speed of adoption will be determined by issues such as regulations, privacy and accuracy, the overall prediction is:

Content aggregation and monetisation 

FAST (Free Ad-supported Streaming Television) channels are not new, but were predicted in 2022 to grow in significance. This year, some contributors to the report believe that the traditional linear broadcasters will become more engaged in FAST. One commented, “FAST will grow up.”

“FAST does tick the economics bucket, but it also ticks adaptability: what have I got, what can I reuse? It’s going to be something that the linear broadcasters explore more and more as a way to monetise and to begin their transformation into a future of converged platforms.”

At Overcast, we are big fans of re-purposing content. Our video management platform allows your entire team to effortlessly find, access and edit every video asset for reuse. 

Two predictions came out of this topic:

Organisational transformation 

One of the new themes for this year was transformation — with the focus on the way technological innovations of the last few years are now becoming business as usual. 

“Transformation is continuous. It’s not a thing. It’s the thing that you’re always doing. We’re never going to climb that mountain. You think we’re climbing and we’re going to get to the top. But that’s never going to happen. That mountain will only get longer and further away. That’s just the reality of business today.”

So, the key takeaway is:

Environmental Sustainability 

Sustainability is very important to us here at Overcast. We have removed the need for hardware in the compute and storage elements; therefore, there are no carbon increases due to manufacture, utilities, shipping, air conditioning and physical security.

The DPP report says that there’s been a shift in emphasis around sustainability: it is now regarded as a desirable benefit of reducing costs — not as a strategic imperative that must be delivered even if it adds to cost.

“This is the year where we’re finally going to have an adult conversation about how we deliver environmental sustainability in an economically sustainable way, because to date, we’ve paid lip service to it. We’ve been ticking the box of sustainability. And the only way to move beyond that into actually delivering real change is by focusing on actions that have an economic impact, and the environmental impact will come along with that.”

In other words:

Cloud-enabled consumer engagement 

We’ve been banging the drum about the superiority of cloud-based video systems being easier, faster, cheaper, more efficient and more secure for years…since we launched, in fact — since we provide a cloud-native video management platform.

The contributors to the DPP report discussed how cloud technology is now enabling deeper consumer engagement. 

“Cloud-based video production has completely dropped the barrier for direct to consumer [D2C] and fan engagement. It’s enabling sports teams to go D2C. So D2C has become more accessible with cloud based technology.”

The DPP prediction for 2023 is:

Find out more

There are lots more fascinating insights in this report. You can read the DPP’s media industry predictions 2023 in detail here.

Get a free demo

If you’d like to accelerate your transformation towards more agile video production, collaboration and management, get in touch today for a free demo of our platform.

Trends in the Acceleration of Video Management Technology

Posted on by Fiona Ashe

Trends in Media Technology

Are digital natives planning to take over the world? You may well think so if you look at the media technology industry, where trends support an increasingly digital-native economy, as outlined in Silverwood Partners’ Media Technology: Strategic Industry Analysis 2022.

Video Production in a Remote Working Era

The COVID pandemic jump-started an era of mass remote working, which meant that content creators — who rely on collaborative processes — struggled with video management: searching for clips, reviews and approvals, tracking assets, transcoding, etc. This accelerated technological innovation…as tech companies raced to meet the needs of a broad range of video creators and media companies. 

The Streaming Wars


The confinement of people to their homes led to another disruptive influence: audience numbers for streaming content skyrocketed. En masse, viewers cut the cord with traditional broadcasters and turned their eyeballs to Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Hulu and other streamers.

Upsurge in Video Marketing

Throughout 2021 the demand for content seeped into almost every industry and, in response, the creator economy became more sophisticated.

We’ve seen a significant increase in recent years in the numbers of digital-native ‘influencers’ and professional video creators as they build their personal brand through video. Add to that the rise and rise of video marketing among enterprises, and you get the picture: technology had to ‘fly fast’.

So, it was time to wave goodbye to video files stored on hard drives and face-to-face teamwork —  it was time to embrace the cloud! Remote collaboration became a reality and will need to be a key part of enterprise strategy going forward.

Video Technology Innovation

Top-tier broadcasters and OTT providers require innovative media technology to differentiate themselves and fight for market share. The battle of the streamers is red hot after Netflix recently announced that it lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022 and expects to lose two million more in the second quarter. 

Enterprises and video creators are also operating in a very competitive environment. Broadcast-grade technology such as Overcast’s video management platform — which facilitates effortless collaboration and an efficient workflow — will be essential to their survival.

Request A Demo


We’d be delighted to give you a demo of our platform — please click here to request one.

Serverless Architecture… what’s the point?

Posted on by Overcast HQ

What is Serverless Architecture?

Serverless architecture, cloud services, cloud-native, big data, are all
terms that have been thrown around over the last few years. With claims of
faster speeds, better security and overall improvement in your business
processes!

In simple terms, we will break down what being “serverless” means to us and,
more importantly, what it means for you when you’re using serverless
platforms.

Before “serverless”, there was just “server storage”, which meant that
businesses and enterprises kept their files, images, videos, systems on
physical servers. There were sorted in server rooms on-site at the business
premise or in designated buildings near your business locations.

With serverless architecture, your assets are stored in cloud servers
managed and owned by a cloud service provider such as AWS (Amazon Web
Services). This allows you and your team to access your files from anywhere
in the world, quickly and securely.

How does Overcast use Serverless Architecture?

The Overcast platform is built cloud-native and serverless. It consists of a
number of microservices – a major differentiator in the video asset
management market. Overcast is a proud member of the
AWS partner network.
Overcast also deploys a suite of AWS Elemental services,
including MediaConvert, MediaPackage and
MediaLive.

We use
AWS services
to:
– Transcode your content into any format you require.
–
Storing your content with fast upload and download tools.
– Build our
platform to be as

What are the benefits of being Serverless?

Business Benefits

Quick deployment

Doing business in today’s constantly changing environment means that
enterprises need to move fast and be agile to take advantage of
opportunities as they appear. Adopting a serverless architecture streamlines
the setup process and allows you to deploy new projects quickly.

Easy scalability

Serverless platforms enable businesses to quickly scale up services as
demand grows as they are not limited by server capacity. At Overcast, you
can store an unlimited amount of content but only pay for what you’re
currently planning on using. It also means that increasing your capacity by
1TB, 5TB, 100TB is as simple as one request to our technical team!

Better user experience

User experience (UX) greatly benefits from serverless architecture. By the
nature of serverless platforms, there is no distance between the different
“serverless” servers. This reduces the latency between them interacting with
each other. This translates to a much faster and reactive experience for the
final user.

Cost Benefits

Efficiency

It’s also possible to drastically reduce infrastructure and operational
costs because you don’t have to maintain and service physical servers. One
of the key benefits of serverless architecture is that you don’t have to pay
for idle resources, which you would if you owned the servers yourself.

Accurate resourcing

Serverless models like Overcast also allow you to monitor usage in
real-time. This will enable you to tailor your use with your business
requirements. This greater level of transparency will enable you to monitor
your spending and improve the accuracy of budgets and resource allocation.

Environmental Benefits

If you have environmental goals on the cards, you’re in luck! The data
centres are built at scale to be energy efficient to achieve optimal
utilisation and temperature. This leads to fewer carbon emissions than
traditional data centres.

Another drawback to traditional data centres is the constant waste of
resources while the servers are idle. Serverless computing becomes a
solution to this matter by running on-demand.

Bottom Line – how Serverless helps you?

  • Cost savings
  • Increased agility and instant scalability
  • Faster recall of assets
  • More reactive UI for all users

Overcast:

Overcast HQ provides a white-label, fully intuitive User Interface (UI) to
allow operational staff to exploit the power of the solution and the
underlying serverless cloud infrastructure.

We deliver media pipeline management solutions configured
to optimise existing video tech stacks, optimise complex video workflows,
and allow all stakeholders (not just editors and engineers) to manage video
content. 

Our platform allows customers to collaborate, search, review & approve,
transcode and therefore spend up to 90% less time managing content. We
are one of the very few solution providers built post-2015 to be able to
take advantage of the latest suite of cloud-native, serverless technologies.

We’d be delighted to talk you through all of this, so please feel free to
reach out to our CEO Philippe Brodeur on info@overcasthq.com or click here to contact us to find out how Video Content-As-A-Service will save you time and
money while increasing revenue opportunities.

Image of cloud based programming to represent the move to Serverless Architecture.
Cloud Infrastructure image to represent Serverless
Architecture

Overcast Featured in DPP Media Supply Festival 2021

Posted on by Overcast HQ

Overcast was featured in the DPP Media Supply Festival Demo Zone over the 7th and 8th of September.
We presented our demo alongside the best media providers from around the world and you can find our Media Pipeline Management demo video below:

Check out our Blog Posts.

Check out our New Updates.

Get in touch with us

If you are looking for a bespoke video workflow solution and want to learn more, please get in touch with Overcast CEO Philippe Brodeur — he’s always happy to talk! You can reach him on info@overcasthq.com or through the contact form on our website.

Zahra – a case study

Posted on by Overcast HQ

The following is a brief introduction to our Zahra Case Study which can be viewed in full below.

Zahra is a full-service content agency with owned media in the Food and Parenting verticals. Their mission is to connect brands with audiences through the creation and distribution of purposeful content.

“The review and approval process within Overcast has made it a lot clearer for everyone who is working on the project: clients, videographer, our team. It’s so helpful being able to compare older to newer versions side-by-side using timecodes.” 

— Alan Breslin, Production Coordinator, Zahra Media Group.

The Challenge 

“Content was stored in multiple locations which meant that things were difficult to find. This wasted SO MUCH TIME. It made collaboration (within the team and with clients) difficult because so much time would be spent trying to transfer enormous files. 

— Gina Miltiadou, Managing Director, Zahra Media Group

We needed a space that we could use internally and have versions 1, 2, 3 — and a place for continuing versions to be easily accessed by clients. If we are in a V3 stage and they decide if we want to use something from V1, we need to be able to access it.

— Alan Breslin, Production Coordinator, Zahra Media Group.

The Solution 

Overcast was able to help them with their folder management and metadata taxonomy. Then we trained up the various teams — client services, editorial, etc. — to show them how they too could manage the content in the cloud.

The Result 

After a few weeks of adapting to the new workflows, more people have been able to become part of the video creation supply chain. Editors now get to spend more time working on what they want to work on — great content. 

Perhaps the biggest surprise has been how it has helped client relations and experiences. By getting access to centralised content, an easy-to-use interface, semantic search and a well-defined audit trail, they are also able to engage in a clearer and more productive manner.

You can read the full Zahra case study here.

You can also view our other case studies here. 

Godolphin – a case study

Posted on by Overcast HQ

The following is a brief introduction to our Godolphin Case Study which can
be viewed in full below.

The following is a brief introduction to our Godolphin Case Study which
can be viewed in full below. </em >

Introducing a more streamlined, user-friendly system has enabled Godolphin’s
global teams to find and share content easily. Managing content is now
straightforward — anyone can find the pictures and videos they need for
marketing collateral, when they need it, and so much faster!

“The personal touch from Philippe, Zsolt and George in teaching us how to
use the system and fixing a couple of network errors has been incredible.
Their support in helping us meet Godolphin’s needs confirms that we made the
right choice in Overcast.” — Alexandra Bailey, Media
Manager, CPL

The Challenge:

Having four different storage systems led to several inefficiencies,
including remembering how to use each platform and where to find assets.

“We needed a really good filing system that met people’s expectations when
they were searching and didn’t lead them down a massive rabbit hole.”

The Solution: 

During the planning phase, Overcast worked with Godolphin and CPL to
standardise the descriptive metadata fields across the four platforms. They
then introduced a unique ID system and built an ingest solution using APIs
that could map all of the intelligence into a single, unified system.

The Result for Godolphin:

Time-saving: Content is ingested from around the world in
real-time.

Cost Saving: The consolidation from four separate platforms
to one has reduced subscription fees, training people to use them, and
overheads required.

Security: Content is centralised in a single location so it
can never go missing, and the content is accessed through a secure
login.

Revenue: With more people being able to access more images,
the plan over the coming years for Godolphin is to drive sales using more
sophisticated content marketing.

How Much Does Cloud Digital Asset Management Cost?

Posted on by Fiona Ashe

Overcast MAX #9: Max Simulator

Cost management 

One of the first things anyone asks when they are moving workflows to the cloud is, “How much is this going to cost me?”

It’s a fair question. And we can all go to the AWS or Azure calculator, plug in 25TBs and understand what it will cost to store that content for a month.

But what about the ingest cost, the egress cost, the transcode cost… and what are all those other parameters that the cloud providers list that can affect the cost?

Well, one of things that you will never get a straight answer to is how much your monthly costs are going to be. Why? Too many factors. Simply put, every application is built differently. 

That’s why we build MAX Simulator.

Cloud digital asset management

Whether you call it a Media Asset Manager (MAM), a Production Asset Manager (PAM) or a Digital Asset Manager (DAM), a cloud digital asset management platform is the secret sauce when it comes to managing video content. The reason? Video was traditionally managed on premise by editors and engineers.  Now social and marketing departments need access, as does corporate comms, product, sales and everyone else. It’s no longer reasonable to let “the video guy” hold the knowledge to the video kingdom.

The popularity of video means it’s no longer about whether you use it in business but rather how to leverage it. 

Remote working

Since coronavirus has forced many employees around the world to embrace remote working, it’s now trickier to collaborate on video projects. But a cloud digital asset management platform provides the solution — facilitating streamlined workflows, fast review and approvals, and easy transcoding to different formats.

Take it for a test drive

Which brings us back to cost: how much does is cost to use a cloud digital asset management platform?

You wouldn’t buy a new car without taking it for a test drive, would you? 

Now you can test drive our video platform to calculate the investment required.

Max Simulator

Max Simulator allows you to run a real-time simulation of your video workflows with more than 20 inputs. This will give you an understanding of the CSP (Cloud Service Provider) costs associated with storing and managing your content in the cloud. 

The inputs include everything from archive size to number of users, concurrent users and activity levels for real pricing.

It’s very accurate since you only test what you plan to use. You can then add new services to project those costs too. 

For example, we had one organization ask us how much it would cost to have 50,000 logins, 1,000 concurrent users working on the system 24 hours per day — and generating 3PB (petabytes) of content per year. To put that in context, it’s equivalent to 700,000 DVD quality videos. With that much content, you want to be fairly sure you know how much it is going to cost you to process it, let alone store it.  

Benefits of Max Simulator

Cost Optimisation

CSP costs can be an enigma — but running your workload over a short period of time using Max Simulator helps you better project cost infrastructure.

Customisable Solutions

We know that your business is unique, so let us customise the inputs in Max Simulator to create an accurate understanding of costs specific to you.

Better than a calculator

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has a simple monthly calculator, which is useful for an initial estimate — but you’ll get a better picture by actually simulating a load on a real platform.

Contact us

Max Simulator is one of nine Overcast MAX products that makes video collaboration effortless. If you’d like to learn more about this fantastic suite of solutions, please contact Philippe on info@overcasthq.com or click here to get in touch.

No Limits To Your Live Streaming Ambitions

Posted on by Fiona Ashe

Overcast MAX #1: Max Live Streaming

“The video streaming market is on track to become a $124.6 billion industry by 2025.”

— Grand View Research

There’s no doubting the burgeoning popularity of live streaming. The wide-ranging benefits to business who use it include:

  1. access to a wider audience, unlimited by geographical or size constraints;
  2. direct communication with customers and potential clients;
  3. lower costs than running a real world event or traditional broadcast platforms;
  4. viewers can access your live stream on any device, on the go;
  5. the opportunity to grow your community;
  6. involve viewers through live interaction;
  7. the opportunity to cross-promote your social channels;
  8. repurpose the content by sharing clips from the live stream afterwards;
  9. take advantage of the SEO benefits of YouTube;
  10. use analytics to evaluate the success of your live event. 

Overcast MAX

In our previous blog post, we gave an overview of MAX, our suite of next-generation cloud applications for production, collaboration, storage and distribution that makes remote video collaboration effortless.

Max Live Streaming

You don’t need to be in the media and entertainment industries to grow your business through live streaming. It can be used for in-house trainings, public events, town hall meetings, etc. — in fact, anything you can think of. But you need a simple, high quality, secure way to do it: say hello to Max Live Streaming.

If you’ve tried live streaming before, you may have experienced low quality streaming due to limitations in the available bandwidth — it’s a common problem with free services. No such worries with Max Live Streaming! 

It’s cloud-based adaptive HD streaming, so you are guaranteed a high quality result. You’ll never run out of bandwidth, which means you can be confident about being able to deliver the content to your audience the way you want to. 

If you find that streaming is benefiting your business, you can easily scale up your live stream strategy — with no limits!

It’s quick and easy to set up; and once that’s done you can bring non-tech employees into the workflow and let them manage the content. If you’d like to create a channel, it’s as simple as dragging and dropping content.

We provide you with a network that has enterprise grade security. But while secure live streaming used to be prohibitively expensive, now your event can make money and you can re-invest it in your business.

Max Live Streaming is so easy that you can get up and running in seconds. What are you waiting for?

What else have we got?

In our next post, we’ll explore where to store and archive all those large video files and how to manage them effectively with Max Storage.

Get in touch

If you have any questions about live streaming, please do get in touch. Our email address is  info@overcasthq.com or you can click here to get in touch. Ask for Philippe. He’s always good for a chat!

Is Your DAM Future-proofed?

Posted on by Fiona Ashe

DAM for Enterprise

Your business is complicated. It has many different people in many different divisions doing many different things. Unsurprisingly, they all have unique ways of interacting with your products, services, clients, and assets.

A DAM (digital asset management system) provides an effective, streamlined way to manage your digital assets. Many companies begin by using a tool like Dropbox, but then find they need much greater functionality. So they upgrade to a DAM that services the needs of their organisation. 

But is your DAM future-proofed? It goes without saying that it needs to be cloud-based, but are there other elements of your digital asset management system that could be showing signs of needing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?

Here are three of the key considerations when assessing if your DAM will stand the test of time.

1. Growth Strategy

As your company scales up and your content production increases, your assets will also expand in terms of number and complexity. Now is the time to ask yourself, “What is our growth strategy and will our DAM go the distance?” 

With upscaling comes a vast increase in the size of your team, perhaps globally. So you need your employees in far-flung places to access assets as effortlessly as those in the office next door.

Also, we’re in the age of ‘big video’. Digital files are swelling in size (4K video) and, as if it wasn’t enough of a challenge to store such big files, a DAM must be able to transcode and render them automatically.

Add to this the need for fast file transfers and you’ve got yourself a whole lot of potential headaches if cracks start to show in your DAM.

2. A Seamless Workflow

Nothing sabotages productivity as much as a fractured workflow. Your DAM is your servant in this regard. It can automate laborious processes, thus freeing up your team’s time for more creative tasks.

Slow review and approvals on digital assets is also a common problem for organisations. Consumers’ voracious appetite for content, particularly video, needs to be satisfied but enterprises are struggling to keep up. If team members give feedback on a collaborative video project using time-stamped annotations and approve it through your DAM, this speeds up the time to market considerably.

3. Artificial Intelligence

While your team are busy working smarter, your DAM should be leveraging its smarts too. Through artificial intelligence (AI), a video DAM will enable you to search your video clips for words, objects, colours, sounds, settings, events and facial recognition. Goodbye and good riddance to the bad old days of trawling through hard drives to find that spectacular shot you remember filming but cannot locate.

The Inside Track

Our CEO Philippe Brodeur would be delighted to share his knowledge on future-proofing a video DAM, so please feel free to email him on info@overcasthq.com or tweet him: @philippebrodeur

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