Case Study

The Challenge

It takes a lot of technology to create the seamless Hollywood magic we see on-screen. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, MTI Film was forced to reimagine how creative collaborators worked together in specialized workflows with high-tech equipment, where colorists, finishing editors, and others transform raw footage into the polished product you see on TV.

The Solution

To drive an effective post-production workflow for editing teams, MTI Film launched a state-of-the-art Remote Data Center, which features a combination of networking, editing, storage, workflow management, and transcoding technology. An editor’s playground, it houses all the tech that converts media into magic. 

MTI’s clients access the Remote Data Center from anywhere in the world using Parsec, editing sound and video media just as they would onsite. From the editor’s point-of-view, the process is virtually seamless, as they can view high-resolution media in real-time with synchronous audio and video and low latency. They can also access media data stored on the facility’s servers.

• Seamless performance that makes you forget the distance
  Editors’ workflows hinge on using high-performance workstations to process terabytes upon terabytes of footage. (Just one day of shooting can yield 8TB alone!) Latency and audio/video sync are the biggest nemeses of editors working remotely, because film and television have tight deadlines – editors can’t afford to be held back by access to the workstation. Parsec’s high-performing remote desktop offers accuracy and control with minimal latency. It works with Windows and Mac, so the editors can access the specialized software they need, like AVID, without missing a beat.
  
  “Teams of four to eight editors can work together as if they were in the same production office connected to a local storage device,” says Guthrie Demetrios, Senior Engineer.
• Feel like you’re in the same room, but skip the commute
  Leaning into flexible workflows and hybrid work enables MTI to offer a massive benefit that other production houses can’t match: the ability to work on top-of-the-line machines with your colleagues from anywhere. For MTI’s clients, the lack of time spent in Los Angeles traffic commuting means improved efficiency and a higher quality of life.
• Next-level security means never losing the hard drive
  The days of toting massive hard drives filled with terabytes of confidential footage have also come to an end. Once editors upload their content to MTI’s servers, their whole team can access it remotely. MTI keeps the physical servers secure, and Parsec for Teams’ admin empowers admins to easily, instantly grant or revoke access to individual editors. 

Onto the Next Act

Remote work became common in television post-production out of necessity, but the lifestyle shift appears to be here to stay. While some shows have resumed editing onsite, others remain remote and still others have set up workflows that combine the two. Many editors have discovered that they are more productive working remotely and enjoy the lifestyle benefits of spending more time at home.

As a result, MTI Film’s Remote Data Center continues to experience growing demand. “Thinking past the pandemic, we have concluded that a hybrid between remote and on-premises work is the new normal,” says MTI CEO Larry Chernoff. “Recognizing that the industry has evolved, we’ve made a concerted effort to build a comprehensive ecosystem that will support a range of workflows.”

Parsec will remain an essential part of the Remote Data Center ecosystem. “We reviewed other collaboration tools and determined that Parsec is the only solution that meets the needs of our clients in terms of ease-of-use, performance, audio and video sync, low latency and security,” says Demetrios. “We like it because it gets the job done for our users.”