Cutting the Fat

By Nick Manning, Media and Entertainment EMEA Business Development Manager, Autodesk

As dazzling creative video and imagery has gradually become more mainstream and increasingly used by a wider range of industries outside traditional media channels, the pressure has grown on creative teams to produce the highest standard of creative video projects.

Within the post production industry, a variety of creative toolsets and workflows are available to meet a growing demand for high-quality finished content.

For companies looking to build a profitable business, the sheer number of creative applications and workflows results in a daunting array of options. When coupled with a crowded competitive space, increased client demands and tighter deadlines, business owners and artists must find solutions that minimise complexity and provide proven optimum efficiency.

Complex Structures

Many facilities today have workflows built around multiple, dedicated applications and plug-ins to finish content. These multi-product workflows may be sufficient for specific post production tasks but are often overly complex - making it difficult to build an end-to-end pipeline for delivering content that is efficient enough to grow businesses and take advantage of new marketplace opportunities in professional finishing.

By following a set of characteristics that an ideal post production workflow ought to embody, facilities can reduce complexity and realise maximum creative and business potential.

Characteristics and Limitations of Post Production Workflows

Digital workflows have changed the landscape of post production. In the last twenty years, off-the-shelf software has replaced costly hardware previously required for finishing content. Creative professionals at all levels of production are able to engage in projects that break new creative ground. However, this explosion of creativity has been accompanied by an increase in complexity.

It has never been easier to access creative tools for tasks such as editing, graphic design, colour correction and compositing, resulting in new unrelated post production solutions. Workflow inefficiency leads to overly complex processes. When coupled with client expectations for high-quality creative content and faster delivery times, anyone trying to build a successful business in post faces a fundamental challenge: finding an efficient solution that mitigates complexity and delivers outstanding creative results.

There are many examples of complexity in post production workflows today.

The first of these is application complexity. In most post production workflows, projects start in a non-linear editorial application. These applications are good storytelling tools but when moving from editorial to finishing, additional software is often required to deliver a polished, finished result.

High-resolution digital cinema cameras make it easy to shoot film-quality raw footage, but producing a final finish on par with expectations set by Hollywood blockbusters may challenge pipelines built from incongruent creative solutions. If scenes within a project require extensive retouching, for example, a dedicated compositing application may be needed within the finishing workflow. Add in colour correction, complex keying, tracking, titling and/or 3D visual effects, and the result can quickly become a patchwork of applications and plug-ins that complicates the workflow and extends time to completion.

The second important issue is process complexity. When working with multiple applications, changes introduced once finishing has begun can create a considerable amount of additional work. Creative processes tend to be fundamentally non-linear where changes can happen late in the post production timeline. Finished results already completed may have to be redone, which often requires backtracking to original source files and re-rendering multiple steps through various applications and plug-ins. Not only does this extend time to completion, it also increases the risk of compromising or losing data and/or metadata when moving between various applications.

The third main consideration is format complexity. In a typical creative project, media may undergo numerous format changes from acquisition to editorial and finishing. When finishing using multiple applications, additional changes to media may be required to move between creative tasks. Each step of finishing - such as keying, colour correction and compositing - may introduce complexity through reformatting or by generating additional media. New media must then be re-integrated into the master timeline - a process that may require format conversion, introducing the additional risk of degrading media and metadata through multiple conversions.

The final important issue for consideration is business complexity. Today’s clients expect high-quality results and full-service creative offerings—often for less money and on faster-than-ever delivery schedules. Few are willing to pay for time added to a project timeline by inefficient and complex workflows, numerous format changes (data management) and disparate creative applications. When operating on tight deadlines and fixed budgets, time lost to complexity can have a critical impact on profitability.

What’s Needed in Post Production Today

Businesses delivering finished content need to address workflow complexity to maximize output from their creative pipeline and meet client demands. If they were able to have all of their tools in a single application, streamlined efficiency would save time and money and offer more creative freedom within the post production environment.

Solutions in this space need to answer the challenge of complexity by providing a seamless workflow between editorial and finishing, allowing artists to move projects quickly through their pipeline. Merging editorial workflow and finishing tools in a single application saves time with a streamlined finishing process, and enables operators to leverage editorial skills while mastering powerful and proven finishing tools.

To successfully meet these challenges, businesses need solutions that provide all of the above capabilities and empower post production companies by inspiring creativity and delivering higher quality finished results.

Finding a Solution

Within the chosen solution, editorial finishing should ideally be an all-in-one creative process that combines an editorial timeline workflow with powerful finishing tools in a single integrated environment.

With Autodesk Smoke professional editing software, artists leverage familiar editorial conventions to navigate complex timelines and move smoothly between creative tasks such as keying, colour correction, rotoscoping and advanced visual effects in one application. As a single, integrated creative environment for editorial finishing in post, Smoke lets artists concentrate on being creative and minimise time wasted moving and converting media between finishing tasks.

The power of editorial finishing is in its ability to simplify workflows while providing the tools needed to meet increasing customer demands. The best solutions for editorial finishing should help companies reduce complexity and overcome limitations to become more productive.

Recent independent research by Pfeiffer Consulting demonstrates that Autodesk Smoke is twenty-two minutes and fifty-one seconds faster than a multi-product workflow when performing an identical set of common finishing tasks. That’s an increase of 35.4% in a single session. This productivity gain increases when one considers the number of times individual creative processes must be repeated in order to complete a single project. When considered over the course of multiple projects or even an entire year, the potential to save time grows exponentially.

Business and Creative Benefits

There are two primary ways to stay competitive in today’s post production industry. One way is for companies to embrace the growth in Internet media and offer high quality website video and multimedia finishing. Another way is to capture more of the shrinking television and broadcast dollars per account by working more efficiently.

Reduce Complexity

Efficiency is key to building a profitable and productive business in post production. The best finising solution in this sector should help businesses to reduce complexity and streamline creative workflows using proven finishing tools in a single application. This allows projects to be completed faster. The time saved can mean more profit in jobs booked on a per-project rate, and allow facilities to take on more projects over a given period of time.

Own the Creative

Workflow and creative toolsets directly impact the kind of jobs a post production provider can take on. Again, companies should seek out solutions that help them to keep more of each project’s finishing work in-house with an efficient all-in-one workflow based on proven creative tools. They should allow companies to confidently take on the most challenging creative projects by offering services built on a solution that doesn’t fall down when faced with complexity, throughput or time challenges.

Work in Context

Editorial is at the core of modern storytelling. Delivering the most compelling content requires a fast and interactive workflow. Finishing solutions should be able to deliver this through an integrated finishing environment in the context of the editorial timeline. By not interrupting the creative process to move between multiple applications, they help artists and editors stay true to the intention of the project - creating consistency across the final result.

Native Media Workflows

In today’s post production landscape, native support for a wide range of the most common media formats is critical. Finishing solutions should act as a complimentary workflow to editorial, bringing more flexibility to post production pipelines and allowing businesses to accept more projects and waste less time converting formats so artists concentrate on the creative.

Better Results

Finishing software that features efficient all-in-one workflow helps companies meet the needs of their clients by streamlining finishing tasks into a single application. The result is a modern pipeline based on proven tools that frees the creative process while eliminating complexity.

The best software solutions in this space reduce the workflow complexity found in post production today by providing a seamless workflow between editorial and finishing, allowing artists to move projects quickly through their pipeline. With its timeline workflow, all-in-one creative tools and 3D visual effects, Smoke software’s editorial finishing workflow has fundamentally changed how post production companies create and deliver high-quality finished content, enabling them to realize dramatic benefits and return on investment.