Blackbird video study finds optimized cloud native production tools can transform inefficient workflows

Blackbird plc, the technology licensor, developer and seller of the market-leading cloud native video editing platform, Blackbird, today announces the release of some data from the Company’s recent video industry study which finds the cloud is impacting  production but the vast majority of workflows remain inefficient. However natively optimized production tools offer transformative efficiencies.

The study found cloud production and remote editing are now a universal part of content creation, used by 90% of video professionals who responded. Yet the impact on workflows risks being undermined by widespread use of inefficient methods for accessing content remotely that are not cloud native. That’s one of the headline findings of a new study by Blackbird, in partnership with Caretta Research, based on a global survey of video editors, producers, managers and prosumers.

The research reveals:

• 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.
• But most remote editing is still implemented using old-school, inefficient and slow workflows – with 65% of users moving original high-res media files around the internet to support remote editing workflows.
• Many others are moving proxy files, or remoting back to an edit workstation in a facility, a model that is wasteful of expensive resources.
• 27% of remote editors are making use of a cloud-native browser-based production platform like Blackbird — twice as popular as using PC-over-IP to connect to a cloud edit workstation.
• Cloud workflows were already in use by 60% of users before the Covid-19 pandemic but grew significantly as a result: 84% of users saw cloud production and remote editing grow in response, and 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, and cost savings over using traditional tools.

Robert Ambrose, Caretta Research’s Co-founder and Managing Director, 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 just that – 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 plc CEO, Ian McDonough, added: “We’re proud that Blackbird is once again able to put some much needed, independently verified data into the market around adoption of cloud production following our recent sustainability and total cost of ownership papers.

“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 optimized, energy and carbon efficient cloud native technologies exist to solve these issues.” BCS Bureau