Videos are no longer a means of storytelling; they are now a necessity. If you want to increase your brand’s engagement and conversion, video content is the only way to go.
From short clips to extended explainers, the use of videos as a marketing tool has increased by 63% over the last year (source: HubSpot).
While video marketing is a potent tool, creating a video takes a lot of time and effort. With the rise of 4k and 8k content, video editing now means working with huge files. Such files present many new hurdles, from frustratingly slow performances to continually running out of shared storage space for video editing.
Before you order another external hard drive and subscribe to another collaboration app, think that these will indeed help you get better results. Make sure that the investment you put in ensures good returns.
Suppose you, too, are struggling with large video sizes, sharing them with your team, and following up on the post-production work. In that case, we have a one-stop solution to help you overcome these and a lot of other recurring problems – quickly, effectively, and within a budget.
Sounds good?
Please keep reading to understand more about the concept of shared storage, its benefits, and how our state-of-the-art platform helps you with increased productivity and seamless collaboration.
Types of Shared Storage Systems
Before we shed more light on the best-shared storage solution, you must understand the different types of shared storage systems available in the market. Not only will this help you make the right decision, but it will also help you cut down your marketing expenses.
So, what’s shared storage?
Shared storage is a system that multiple users across multiple devices can access. It allows you to store all of your files, irrespective of size, in a centralized database. Shared storage is designed for teams operating with several tools for non-linear editing. Instead of shuffling between hard drives, a shared storage solution allows you to keep all of your content in a shared space while ensuring that multiple editors of your team can access them simultaneously.
There are multiple strategies for video storage that accommodate different volume and workflow needs. Here’s a short rundown of the usual choices:
- Portable Hard Drives – Be it a solid-state drive (SSD) or a disk, portable hard drives have been the go-to option for every video professional for numerous reasons. They are cost-efficient, easy to carry and offer a lot of space. However, when it comes to long-term reliability, portable hard drives don’t cut. As a result, one has to go through an additional task of backing up the data.
- RAID - RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks.It is your best choice when you have lots of data to store, protect, and share.Most RAID set-ups look like a rack-mounted system as they use multiple storage devices configured to work together. One of the best things about this storage is the flexibility to choose from different levels depending on your requirement of performance and redundancy.
- NAS – Network Attached Storage (NAS) is a server with storage space built into it and is quite popular with small businesses and enterprises across industries. It is a setup wherein a storage device is connected to the network, allowing authorized users and clients to store and retrieve data from a central location. Think of it as your private cloud that is faster, cheaper, and gives you complete control.
- SAN – Storage Area Network (SAN) is a high-speed computer network which provides access to consolidated, block-level data storage. Usually, each SAN consists of several components like the storage devices, elements, switches, and hosts that are interconnected using a variety of protocols. This storage system is based on Fibre Channel (FC) technology and utilizes the Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP), thus improving application availability, performance, storage utilization, and data security.
Why Agencies Should Move To Shared Storage?
Compared to other forms of content, videos are unique file types, especially when it comes to storage. Shared storage for video editing is the future, as video editing has become excessively demanding with the rise of large file sizes.
You need to be able to quickly access and edit files from anywhere. It requires ultra-fast transfer speeds as well as substantial storage space. Besides, it would be best to consider other factors such as archiving, backups, seamless collaboration, and more without hampering productivity.
Here are our top 7 reasons why agencies should move to shared storage to stay ahead of video content demands:
- Collaboration and flexibility – Shared storage server is the perfect solution for a seamless creative partnership. Instead of passing around physical drives or digging through dozens of emails, shared repositories make editing, reviewing, commenting, and approving video content very simple. It allows collaborators to work seamlessly on one or multiple files from different devices at the same time.
- Save time and money – Compared to manual data transfers and copying data from one drive to another, shared storages help you with ample space to store, backup, and archive your data without drilling a hole in your pocket. It will help cut down hardware costs substantially. Besides, it takes a lot of time to copy, edit, and re-copy the edited files from editor to editor. On the other hand, a shared storage system removes this recurring work, saving you a lot of time, money, and effort.
- Reliability and data integrity – When it comes to storage, video content demands a lot more than images and doc files. It is mainly because each video frame contains tons of information such as metadata, visuals, audio, timestamps, and more. It requires large storage space, fast transfer speeds, and long-term reliability. With physical hard drives (HDD), the biggest concern is that of reliability. However, shared storage allows you to connect multiple HDDs into a logical and unified setup, ensuring enhanced reliability and a more extensive data backup capacity.
- Central management and archiving – File management becomes extremely easy because shared storage provides that you’ll always have one centralized copy. Your team of editors won’t have to browse through hundreds of files to find the one file they are supposed to work on. With a shared storage setup, you’ll be able to perform all user and data management tasks from a centralized dashboard. It also makes data archiving easier, allowing you to archive your video assets as and when you need them, with little to no effort.
- Highest performance and scalability – To be honest, transferring large files (4k, Ultra HD, etc.) is extremely difficult and demands a lot of bandwidth. Shared storage solution offers higher data transfer speeds and also scales better than local or external storage. The higher the video quality, the more storage you need. Unlike physical drives, you can quickly expand a shared repository, that too, without any downtime or massive changes in your overall workflow.
- Elements systems – Shared storage servers have been developed using years of media industry experience. It offers advanced tools and features that have been built keeping video content creators in mind. With a dedicated platform like ProMAX tailor-made to fit your unique needs, recurring tasks such as asset management, archiving, and backups are seamless, straightforward, and blazing fast.
- Workflow automation – Instead of manually working through each aspect of editing, re-linking, indexing, and other monotonous tasks, shared storage solutions help you automate a significant portion of your video content creation workflow. With powerful and easy-to-master toolkits and user dashboards, shared storage allows you to speed up everyday tasks and eliminate human-made errors.
Conclusion
Moving your video content team to a shared storage system will improve productivity and enable seamless collaboration, thus allowing you to deliver high-quality videos faster.
With shared storage, you’ll be able to save time, money, and a lot of effort by eliminating the tiring process of copying the same file on multiple devices for multiple editors to work on.
Now that you understand the importance of shared storage for video editing, it is time to optimize your business for better scalability, user-friendliness, and a lot of storage space.
Not sure which is the best storage setup for video editing?
Worry not! We at ProMAX Systems offer fast and cost-effective shared storage for video editing workflows. On-premises servers, remote servers, seamless integration with the full suite of professional video tools, and other widely used video editing software, asset management, cloud backups, and archives – ProMAX is the most preferred choice for innovative Single Vendor Media Management solution.