Dock 10 offers cloud editing

The system has been in development for more than seven months and is pitched at producers wary of using public cloud tools for offline, but who are reluctant to invest in their own cloud infrastructure.

It will operate over MediaCityUK’s campus-wide fibre-optic network, use standard editing interfaces such as Media Composer, Final Cut Pro or Premiere, and incorporate asset-management ingest and logging tool Central ParQ, which was developed by Dutch post facility Park Post.

Producers will be offered the chance to ingest, log, browse and edit proxy rushes in HD stored on an Isis server and hosted over a private cloud.

Remote ingest and archive management will also be served.

“We are pushing the boundaries of cloud-based editing beyond anything currently in the market,” said Dock 10 commercial director Ian Munford.

“This is an enterprise solution offered as a shared infrastructure and sold on a payas- you-go basis.”

The system is initially for production teams based at Media- CityUK, but a second phase will see the system integrated into The Loop, a 50-mile fibre network around the Manchester area that was originally built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

“Our aim is to connect the platform to fibre networks across the UK and then globally,” said Munford.

“Our long-term aim is to move the editing capability away from proprietary hardware and onto software, with all the processing crunched in data centres.

“Several things need to be fixed before you can trust the ability to edit high-quality video in the cloud,” added Munford.

“You need reliability of bandwidth, resilience in the system and a pricing structure that fits with production cycles.”

Existing private cloud-based platforms such as Quantel QTube and Avid Sphere are aimed at production of news and sport and require hardware investment.

Adobe Anywhere, which launches later this year, will also offer real-time collaborative workflows.

Aframe, a private cloud-based production-management system, would seem to be Dock 10’s most immediate competitor, though it does not offer cloud craft editing.

Systems such as Forbidden Technologies’ Forscene, which use the public cloud, are widely used for logging, review and assembly.