CASE STUDY EditShare Gets High Marks at Liverpool Screen School

Technically Advanced Student Body conventional film production. They do television More than 600 students enroll in Liverpool production, including live and thematic style TV. Screen School’s popular Journalism, Media They’re even getting into things like projection Production and Film Studies programs each mapping, event visuals, colour management, and year. Noted for their “theory and hands-on content quality control (QC).” practice” approach to education, the school enjoys an internationally recognized reputation Upgrading its Infrastructure to Take on for their work as well as the strong links they the Future have forged with companies across the creative Putting out an industry-wide call for information, and digital sector including the BBC, ITV, and the Liverpool Screen School reviewed Lime Pictures. submissions for a range of media storage and management solutions on the market. “With With much of the teaching based on real-world increasing student numbers, we were about to media production techniques and an ever- hit a wall with capacity in the existing system. evolving technical based curriculum, the school Also, the way the system was originally set up five sought to revamp its media infrastructure, years ago, it wasn’t integrated with the university’s ensuring students keep pace with the fast- main network, which limited access,” explains changing technology landscape. “Our student O’Bree. “Students outside the network could not experience spans a broad range of technical access media projects. With the mobility of media expertise,” states Darcy O’Bree, Technical applications, we needed to open this up and find Resource Manager, Liverpool Screen School. a way to give students and teachers remote access “The diversity of our courses requires us to teach a to projects with the ability to collaborate with one range of different technical methods for realizing another in an organized way while eliminating risk the student’s creative vision. The students do of losing track of project assets or worse.”

1 EditShare & Liverpool Screen School The school’s technical team looked at how EditShare Supports the Full Creative they could leverage industry storage solutions Scope and media management tools to expand the Ensuring students had full accessibility to the workflow options. Darcy adds, We“ evaluated the creative tools was the number one priority for market to help us determine whether we should upgrade our existing EditShare system, or start the new upgrade. O’Bree explains, “With this from scratch with a new system. After receiving upgrade, we want to increase accessibility to our responses from a number of vendors, we decided post-production tools in general. The students to install a new EditShare XStream EFS 450 system use a variety of different editing applications. for our primary storage, and repurpose our existing We’ve got Avid Media Composer, Apple’s Final Cut system as nearline and archive storage.” Pro, and the full Adobe Creative Cloud suite, with different courses using different combinations of “The inclusion of EditShare Flow for asset applications. And this year, we are introducing management gives our students some powerful tools for managing their media offsite and students to advanced colour grading via effectively gives them 24/7 access to their work. Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve. This is why we opted We’ve also added EditShare’s new QScan Pro for EditShare.” Darcy goes on, “Any student or staff solution to our range of colour and quality doing any form of post-production can store their management tools. This is a direct response to projects on EditShare. And not only on campus, but increased industry demand for graduate experience off campus as well. These buildings are not open in this area of post-production workflow. With the around the clock, but students are working all sorts retention of our existing EditShare Geevs system of hours and complete access was paramount.” to manage studio ingest and playout, we have maintained a seamless, single-vendor ecosystem The new EditShare installation seamlessly which can be continuously rescaled to meet our integrates the school’s creative applications changing requirements.” including the main post production solutions With a track record of success and proven - Adobe Creative Suite CC, Apple Final Cut Pro, technology evolution, there was confidence that Avid Media Composer, and Blackmagic Davinci EditShare could meet the new millennial creative Resolve - with supporting important round-trip demands as well as the demands of the real world workflows, advanced project sharing and easy broadcast, commercial and filmmaking facilities. previewing via proxy files.

Advanced Capabilities Logging, Metadata Creation Remote Access Project Sharing Studio recording/playout Integrated Automated Quality Assurance Multicam recording – Both TV studios to ingest 4 channels of HD simultaneously (3 cameras, 1 program) with NLE metadata in a common exchange format. Playout – Both TV studios to have four playout channels with GPI and MOS integration Web streaming of program output from both studios simultaneously Archive and backup storage provided as a nearline solution.

2 EditShare & Liverpool Screen School Late Night Edits Quality Control - Its A Real World Need With students working at all hours of the night, With the expansion of platforms to distribute the fully integrated EditShare Flow and AirFlow content too and the number of content media asset management applications provide producers and myriad of formats in which critical automated transcoding, asset tracking you can produce and deliver content in, and remote access for after-hours creative work. file compliance is an important element in O’Bree adds, “In addition to the access, we wanted production and production handoff in the to also see what we could give them in terms of real world and no one knows this better than capabilities off-campus. That’s where the AirFlow Liverpool Screen School’s O’Bree, “I actually module within Flow comes into play. With browser- caught up with Lime Pictures Post-Production based editing, they can sit at home and, at the very Technology Manager, Alistair McMath, at BVE in least, put together a draft timeline of their edits and London earlier this year. Together with another just get all the main blocks in place, and then bring media manager from the BBC, we had quite a long that back into the editor of their choice when they discussion about quality control management come back on campus to finalize. This was, broadly and how there’s a shortage of skills for that in the speaking, what we needed to achieve. It was secure industry and that students and graduates are not access, availability and the flexibility to be able to mastering these skills in the classroom. We also use the tools anywhere at any time.” have a lot of students that submit their productions into various film festivals, and even they are EditShare Flow and AirFlow expand Liverpool demanding fairly rigid quality standards these Screen School’s workflow to include logging days, so incorporating quality control management media and tracking metadata as well as through QScan into the curriculum has become providing basic remote ingest, logging and quite important.” editing through the Airflow web-based browser. And thanks to the university’s 10Gb/s backbone, Liverpool Screen School is expanding their the network can easily handle the masses curriculum to include automated QC techniques working late at night. using EditShare’s QScan AQC system. The

3 EditShare & Liverpool Screen School intuitive QScan UI is visually designed for the like Liverpool Screen School give students access creative. Simple-to-use features and easy-to- to the same editing and storage systems you find read report results make it easily adaptable in world-class facilities like Lime Pictures. And it’s to classroom environments. Students can go great to see that they are further expanding the frame by frame and understand the values of exposure to include QC. With the various delivery parameters and tested results, easily spotting standards, it’s a real asset to have this knowledge, problems with their content. O’Bree elaborates even if it’s minimal.” Alistair explains, “In recent of the simplicity of the applications “I saw a years, QC has moved from being a task performed demo of QScan at BVE, and just thought that’s just before broadcast to a task that can be done a really simple tool that students can run their at almost any point across production and post- work through and it throws out a very easy-to- production. Whilst it’s not the most glamorous read report that shows them exactly where their side of TV, it is incredibly important for students deficiencies are and what they need to fix, as a coming out of school to have a framework of what starting point for colour and quality.” QC is. They need to understand that there is QC for photosensitive epilepsy as well as all of the Providing Liverpool Screen School student technical standards. They need to know what levels interns a real-world experience is Lime Pictures, are legal and be familiar with QC terminologies the British production house for blockbusters such as audio true peaking and audio loudness. such as Hollyoaks, The Only Way is Essex, I realize that this can be technically challenging Geordie Shore, and Free Rein. Lime Pictures’ to master, but the fact that the Liverpool Screen Alistair McMath, who oversees the infrastructure students will have been exposed to QC systems and for Lime Pictures post-production and is processes gives them a step up when entering the connected with the student interns, elaborates real world.” on the evolution of technology-based learning and the importance of understanding quality For more on EditShare QScan QC solutions visit assurance workflows coming out of university. https://qscan.editshare.com. “When I was at university, it was all theory-based learning. It wasn’t massively technical and I very For more on EditShare storage and media quickly realized when I started working in the management solutions visit https://www. industry that the technology that I had learned editshare.com/products/xstream and https:// was obsolete. Today it is different. Institutions www.editshare.com/products/flow.

4 EditShare & Liverpool Screen School