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NEWSCASTSTUDIO.COM
By DEREK BARRILLEAUX
CEO, Projective
As we prepare for the much-anticipated
NAB Show, the buzz in the air is undeni-
able. The broadcasting industry continues
to evolve at a rapid pace, and hot topics
such as AI, cloud storage, and advanced
editing tools are on everyone’s lips. But
there’s one subject that Projective is par-
ticularly excited to discuss at the event:
how to make post-production simple.
If you’ve been in the post-production
industry long enough, chances are you’ve
heard at least one person describe it as
“the Wild West.” It’s a fitting analogy — akin
to the rugged and lawless times of the fron-
tier, post-production workflows are often
chaotic, unstructured, and nobody seems
to know exactly what is happening. One
editor might be saving files on a shared
NAS drive, another might have stock foot-
age sitting on their desktop. Freelancers
bring in completed edits from external
drives, while cloud storage usage balloons
to unsustainable levels. Questions are
asked in frustration: “Why is my media of-
fline?” and “Don’t we have that shot in the
archive somewhere?”
What you’re left with is a landscape
teetering on the brink of disarray, where
media is misplaced, files are scattered,
and collaboration is hampered by confu-
sion. The result? Missed deadlines, wasted
time, and frustrated teams.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. With
the introduction of software-based collab-
oration frameworks and project structure,
there are strategies enterprises can adopt
to bring efficiency and order without sti-
fling creativity - something that I look for-
ward to discussing with the wider commu-
nity at this year’s NAB show.
Why is post-production
so chaotic?
The evolution of post-production work-
flows has been an exciting one — empow-
ered by tools like Adobe Premiere Pro,
Avid Media Composer, and cloud storage
solutions, creators have unparalleled flex-
ibility. However, this same flexibility is a
double-edged sword. While
these tools allow for dy-
namic and adaptable editing
processes, they also create
an environment where orga-
nization often takes a back
seat.
For example, Adobe Pre-
miere’s ability to work with
media spread across mul-
tiple locations — local hard
drives, external drives, cloud
folders, and NAS servers — is
both a blessing and a curse.
On an individual level, it’s
empowering. For a team, it’s a ticking time
bomb. Where is the footage? Who moved
the files? Why isn’t this asset linked? Me-
dia offline errors and frantic Slack messag-
es are all-too-common symptoms of this
“Wild West” scene.
Add to this the pressures of modern
post-production. Faster turnaround times,
leaner budgets, growing demands for re-
mote work, and higher expectations for
creative output leave little room for error.
If the creative team is just trying to get the
job done, standards, structure, and securi-
ty suffer. “I’ll just upload that to dropbox,”
or “I’ll just work on my drive for
now,” they often think.
The need for a
collaboration framework
If “the Wild West” is the prob-
lem, then a collaboration frame-
work can serve as the law and
order. A well-crafted framework
doesn’t just organize media; it
structures the entire lifecycle
of a post-production project —
from ingest, to creation, to ap-
proval, and to archiving.
By implementing a collaboration frame-
work for projects, processes become pre-
dictable and controllable. These project
guardrails provide the starting point to
automate project setup, centralize media,
and simplify collaboration. A collaborative
framework offers automated project setup,
centralizes media, and streamlines col-
laboration. But most importantly, it frees
creative teams to focus on their work, and
not all of the tedious media management
required to even get started.
Chaotic ‘wild west’ of post can
be lassoed with collaboration
Continued on next page
NAB SHOW PERSPECTIVES
BARRILLEAUX