STV Productions is using Aframe’s cloud video production platform to expedite collaboration and lower production costs for Catchphrase, a remake of the classic game show airing this March on ITV. In a relaunch where snazzy graphics make all the difference, Aframe’s platform allowed STV’s production team to develop over 300 rich animation collections and store them securely in the cloud – then shave a full-week off of a demanding seven week production cycle by cutting upload and download times as well as allowing anywhere, anytime review by a distributed team of animators and producers. Over 1TB was needed to store and access animation graphics alone for the nine episode package of shows – storage that would have wreaked havoc on the computing budget. The multiple iterations of these rich graphics also would have slowed collaboration, since team members would either need to drive a memory stick with a new iteration across town, overnight ship it, or send large files on the internal network where downloads would drag down network response times. “Aframe saved us a ridiculous amount of time and enabled an immediate, almost live collaboration between producers in different offices that you could never get if we used a traditional on-premises computing network,” said Ed Egan, executive producer for Catchphrase. “We took one look at the size and volume of the animation sequences and knew they would cost us a fortune for the storage that we wouldn’t need once production ends. Aframe took what was a very time-consuming and cumbersome process of collaborating between offices across town and made it super easy.” Using Aframe’s private cloud, each day’s animation content was uploaded once into Aframe, then sent as a link to authorised users, who could review an H264 proxy copy of the content, and comment from anywhere in the world, at any time they had a free moment – even from their mobile phone or tablet. The immediacy of the collaboration shaved at least five hours of time off of each week’s work. “Security can be a concern with a cloud solution,” executive producer Ed Egan continued, “but with Aframe, only those we designate can review content – and no one can view our animations – even Aframe.” www.aframe.com
