Blackbird Offers Up 35% Lower Total Cost of Ownership Than Cloud Adapted On-Prem Video Editing

Blackbird has launched its report ‘Video editing in the cloud: An analysis of the true Total Cost of Ownership.’ Based on independent research, the report highlights the hidden costs of traditional on premise video editing workflows adapted for the cloud, known as ‘cloud based’, when compared to cloud native Blackbird.

“With Blackbird we don’t move large media files, so we avoid the drawbacks of editing in the cloud,” says Blackbird CEO, Ian McDonough. “Blackbird isn’t a technology where efficiency is ‘bolted on.’ It’s intrinsic. We designed it that way.”

The report highlights that whilst it is possible to find the market costs of traditional video editing workflows adapted for the cloud, there are multiple hidden costs associated with these workflows that are not immediately apparent and can lead to ‘bill shock’. These include:

• moving content to the cloud and between different regions and types of storage is expensive and time consuming
• virtualized cloud based systems accessed through virtual desktops require high bandwidth for acceptable video performance
• virtualized cloud based systems require expensive high-end workstation infrastructure with significant graphics processing unit (GPU) resources
• hidden storage, connectivity and egress costs can add significant expense
• spiralling costs when scaling up for additional users
• lengthy content upload/download times produce dead time for editors

The report outlines how cloud native Blackbird, which has been specifically designed from the ground up for efficient video editing and publishing in the cloud, eliminates or reduces these costs entirely for users through:

• enabling professional standard video editing in a browser from anywhere
• requiring just 2MB/s of bandwidth to operate
• running on any laptop with no GPU requirements
• needing no remote connectivity into other systems
• no need to move content from or to other storage
• no dead time waiting for the download / upload of content
• enabling seamless scaling up when adding new users
• needing no virtual machine infrastructure – minimizing egress costs

“It’s an end-to-end editing ecosystem that’s quicker and more mobile than any other solution,” adds McDonough. “Large sports, news, entertainment and government organizations use Blackbird because it gets their work done faster and better. We know it’s a technology that works. Our customers see the results daily, in the harshest production environments, where time and cost are of the essence.

The report demonstrates the Total Cost of Ownership (“TCO”) savings using cloud native Blackbird compared to cloud based workflows for a variety of scenarios. For a video production workflow with 35 users and 5 live streams plus file-based content, Blackbird delivers 35% lower TCO than a full on premise non-linear editor (“NLE”) operating in a public cloud workflow.

“We’ve engineered Blackbird so that efficiency, sustainability, and low TCO go hand in hand,” he concludes. “With our system, you can’t have one without the others. We think it’s an unbeatable proposition. It’s a virtuous circle that’s good for speed of production, good for sustainability and good for your budget too.”