Visual effects (VFX) are everywhere. When thinking of VFX, you may think of the fantastic environments of Avatar or the diverse creatures of The Lord of the Rings universe. Today, visual effects and CGI are no longer limited to blockbuster films and are often used in many TV series and commercial ads. While films of the 2010s saw VFX shots in the hundreds range, movies produced in recent years increasingly use thousands of VFX shots. With the prevalence of VFX in content, we realized that productions, studios, and content owners need an optimized workflow for media management, transcoding, and delivery.
In 2022, we launched Ci Workflow, a beta app developed in partnership with a major motion picture studio. The post-production team used Ci Workflow to produce VFX shots for The Unholy and The Invitation while giving the studio visibility and control of its assets. We’re bringing the solution out of private beta with some notable enhancements.
The challenges of traditional VFX pull workflows
Traditional VFX pull workflows share some common pain points:
- It’s manual: Pulling individual frames from original camera files (OCF) is a manual, labor-intensive process that requires human intervention.
- Speed: Delivering high-resolution media frames, or “plates,” to VFX artists can take hours or sometimes days due to limitations on media processing (rendering) and facility hours.
- Security: Productions copy and send OCF to multiple locations, creating more locations to secure.
- Tracking: Lack of transparency on the status of a shot in the turnaround pipeline leads to a need for additional follow-ups
For post-production workflows to evolve, teams need to adopt a ‘least locations’ model. Rather than moving content to each process, media processing should come to where the content is stored. This is a core tenet of the MovieLabs 2030 vision, composed of 10 principles that imagine a future where workflows can be optimized—so creatives can focus more on creating and less on time-consuming, repetitive tasks.
The Benefits of Ci Workflow
Built natively on the Ci platform, the Ci Workflow app offers a revolutionary solution to streamline workflows and maximize budgets and efficiency. Ci Workflow eliminates downtime and dependency on external parties, maximizing productivity by automating non-creative media management tasks. And it doesn’t stop there; the app’s value comes from a culmination of Ci’s tried and true functionality: secure access models, scalable transcoding, and rich collaboration tools. Let’s explore the benefits of Ci Workflow and how it can transform production workflows, from saving time and budget to ensuring more control and accessibility of your media content.
Save time by automating non-creative processing.
Locating and transferring source files from one system to another and rendering outputs from source files creates downtime in post-production. Ci Workflow does this automatically. With Ci Workflow’s self-serve model, productions no longer depend on other groups to do that non-creative work or limited by “facility hours.” They can pull and deliver content 24/7/365. As the content owner, you can rest assured that your OCF is automatically backed up in Ci to serve as your off-site storage.
“Not having to spend the time downloading and uploading 100s of GB worth of files to vendors has saved an invaluable amount of time, making a much more efficient workflow from beginning to end.”
– Grace McDonald, VFX Coordinator
Save budget by deduplicating storage locations.
By centralizing storage to a cloud-based platform like Ci, companies can eliminate duplicate storage locations throughout the media lifecycle and the associated costs. For instance, Digital Intermediate (DI) facilities contracted with productions often charge for backup copies and related labor.
Scalable cloud-based processing means productions don’t have to consider managing capacity or investing in infrastructure.
Ci’s automated transcoding allows productions to front-load media processing when ingesting camera files to the platform. Generating various flavors of transcodes and making them available in a single central, accessible platform helps to reduce redundant processing in downstream workflows.
Access your content anytime, anywhere.
From set to final cut to marketing to archive, Ci offers secure access models that support workflows across the media lifecycle. Teams can access the files and proxies they need without moving them to another system. The Ci platform supports remote, hybrid, and on-prem workflows to work together seamlessly. As soon as the source content, such as OCF, is uploaded to Ci, transcoding begins, and proxies are viewable by all members of the Workspace—no matter where they’re located.
Stay in full control of your media throughout the lifecycle.
Uploading OCF content to Ci during production means the studio or content owner retains control of the content from the beginning. The four benefits to making Ci the first place your source content lands after shooting include:
- Footage can be stored across multiple storage tiers in your own Amazon Web Services (AWS) account.
- Centralizing content on a single platform to feed multiple workflows means you have fewer storage locations you need to secure.
- Access to the Ci platform is logged and trackable. Flexible access models ensure that partners and vendors only have the right level of access to the needed files or proxies.
- And finally, to give you peace of mind and transparency, when sharing files with vendors, you’ll have a complete audit trail of every view, download, and share.
Ci Workflow for VFX Pulls Explained
Where does Ci Workflow end, and where does Ci begin?
Ci Workflow is a specialized app within the Ci platform that automates the retrieval, transformation, and delivery of files. To better understand this process, let us walk you through VFX pull workflows, a prime example of how Ci Workflow can help streamline post-production workflows. You’ll learn the steps to take yourself and where you can sit back and let Ci take care of the rest.
Step 1: Upload Camera Footage
Typically, the process starts in Ci. Rather than backing up original camera footage to LTO, they can be uploaded directly to Ci and automatically archived in a secure, redundant cloud storage.
If your production uses AWS, Ci natively integrates, allowing you to store footage directly in the production’s own AWS S3 bucket. Your teams can access content stored in S3 through the Ci interface. Content owners can also push down the camera footage to AWS S3 Glacier archive without lifting a finger by leveraging Ci’s automated storage management policies.
Once content is safely backed up, Ci creates preview proxies when applicable, allowing production members to view footage securely from anywhere.
Step 2: Upload an EDL file
When editors are ready to pull shots and deliver frames to the VFX vendors, they can submit an EDL and any reference files (optional) to Ci Workflow to initiate the VFX pull.
Step 3: Leave the rest to Ci
And that’s it! Ci locates the referenced OCF (backed up in Ci) and converts the referenced clips into the desired output formats. Once Ci begins processing frames, Ci Workflow dynamically provisions access to the frames. Within Ci, the VFX pulls are automatically added to the production’s Workspace and organized by shot.
The frames and reference files are sent to the VFX Supervisor or VFX vendors via Ci’s MediaBox share-links. Both the VFX vendor and post team are notified when delivery is complete. If the OCF is already archived, Ci will restore the file to pull frames, and then it’ll be re-archived automatically.
The VFX vendor can then assign specific shots to the designated artists. Deliver VFX plates with the click of a button. However, the benefit of having Ci Workflow as an integral part of Ci is that the VFX returns can come right back into Ci for secure review-and-approve, real-time commenting, and annotation. There is no longer a need to use different applications for every part of the post-production process or to copy files all over the place. Everything integrates seamlessly.
As you can see, collaboration conveniently happens without leaving Ci. With content stored in a single, secure location, the original files and all created content reside in the same storage location, simplifying the eventual handoff to the archive team.
– Nolan Reese, VFX Editor“Drop an EDL & a reference, push a button, and watch frames start to populate instantly, any time of day or night. There’s no time waiting on techs to process your request and no e-mails to send asking when it’ll be ready two days later. It’s like having the flexibility of self-pulling with the automation of a lab.”
A new power pairing: Ci’s integration with Colorfront Transkoder
Ci Workflow is integrated with Colorfront Transkoder, a trusted industry standard for file transcoding solutions in post-production. What does this integration entail?
Expansion of RAW input sources
Users can upload RAW OCF from ARRI, Blackmagic, Phantom, RED, and Sony cameras for VFX pulls in Ci Workflow. Ci creates preview proxies for Sony RAW files, which can be viewed in Ci Workspace from any browser. Support for non-Sony files is coming soon to Workspace. With the addition of Colorfront, Ci Workflow now supports all professional camera formats.
Expansion of output formats
Ci Workflow can now also generate DPX, TIF, and EXR outputs. Workflow Admins can configure a specific resolution, bit depth, aspect ratio, or colorspace.
How the integration works
If Ci is the vehicle that enables the transfer of files and stores them, Colorfront’s Transkoder is the engine that transforms the RAW OCF and creates the output files. Ci delivers the output frames to the specified recipients and stores the frames in production’s Workspaces. Just like with Ci Workflow, this integration starts and ends with Ci.
A Vision for Ci Workflow
Today, Ci Workflow enables a seamless self-serve VFX pull workflow. But we’re not stopping there. Workflow lets you dynamically configure outputs and delivery destinations and supports various input formats. One day, Workflow will enable productions to automate other resource-heavy workflows (conform workflow, anyone?)
Interested in hearing how your teams can benefit from Ci Workflow? Learn more about Ci Workflow here. Or, request a Ci Workflow* demo to learn how your teams can use Ci to automate their production workflows.
*Ci Workflow is offered with Company Network plans and above.
