Caretta Research survey commissioned by Blackbird suggests a huge transition to the cloud for remote editing and production

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Cloud production and remote editing are now used by 90% of video professionals, according to new research commissioned by cloud video editing platform Blackbird.

The global survey of video editors, producers, managers and prosumers was undertaken by Blackbird, in partnership with Caretta Research.

The survey found that 90% of video professionals have adopted cloud production and remote editing in their workflows, with collaborative working and client review and approval as the top use cases.

However, most remote editing is still completed slightly cumbersomely, with users moving original high-res media files around the internet to support remote editing workflows. This was the case for 65% of respondents to the survey.

Many others move around proxy files, or remote back to an edit workstation in a facility, which is a model Blackbird believes is wasteful of resources.

Cloud workflows were already in use by 60% of users before the pandemic but grew significantly during lockdown, with 84% of respondents seeing cloud production and remote editing grow in response to the pandemic.

58% expect it to expand further as business gets back to normal.

The top benefits of cloud production identified by users are:

  • Faster production workflows
  • The freedom to work from any location at any time
  • Cost savings over using traditional tools.

Caretta Research co-founder and managing director Robert Ambrose said: “From our experience of talking with hundreds of industry professionals, we’re seeing a distinct shift from cloud-enabled workflows to cloud-native workflows. This study shows the flexibility of working remotely has unlocked new value and savings but has often been compromised by adapting legacy ways of working. We’re now seeing the adoption of workflows and tools that are optimised for cloud, avoiding the cost and security issues of constantly moving content around.”

Blackbird CEO, Ian McDonough, added: “This study is illuminating in that we can see that cloud tools are being widely used and having an impact, but true progress is hampered by deploying inefficient, non-cloud native workflows. These inefficiencies can be most evident in speed, cost and flexibility which also happen to be the most important factors in any cloud workflow, according to the data we have collected. The encouraging news is that highly optimised, energy and carbon efficient cloud native technologies exist to solve these issues.”

The full report can be downloaded at http://downloads.carettaresearch.com/cloud-production

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