EditShare Upgrades Retro Report Workflow System

EditShare, the technology leader that enables storytellers to create and manage collaborative media workflows, has supplied a comprehensive storage and workflow platform for New York-based online news organization, Retro Report. The new system, which was designed, integrated and installed by EditShare partner AbelCine, replaces an earlier EditShare storage system and third-party asset management solution.

Retro Report is a not-for-profit news organization, which aims to correct the record, expose myths and provide historical context using investigative journalism and narrative storytelling. While Retro Report publishes many stories through partnership with distributors, such as PBS, they also maintain a video archive online, which is updated as news events unfold.

The company recently upgraded its existing storage system with the latest generation technology, including EditShare’s EFS 300, providing 160 TB of live online capacity. This supports fast turnaround editing on a network of workstations running Adobe Premiere Pro and other Creative Cloud tools.

A key requirement for Retro Report was to achieve a seamless integration between the storage system and its Adobe environment. To accomplish this, AbelCine proposed the Helmut workflow tools from MoovIT. EditShare is a leading reseller of MoovIT’s technology, delivering customizable workflows encompassing the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of products. The seamless integration of Helmut and EditShare’s FLOW and storage platform, accessible from within Adobe tools, gives Retro Report unprecedented post production power.

“This is much more than simply updating hardware,” says Tom Brown, VP, operations at Retro Report. “The new EFS 300s give us rock-solid storage, of course, but EditShare FLOW is a very powerful and easy to use media management system, and Helmut means that editors can stay in the Adobe environment for everything, keeping productivity and comfort high.”

Jason Zapata, integration manager at AbelCine, adds, “Retro Report now has just one eco-system. It completely avoids the problems that can occur from using sub-systems from different vendors that don’t communicate effectively. And the EditShare team was as supportive as always, tailoring the system and adding the bespoke aspects that Retro Report needed.”

One of those additional services from EditShare was the process of migrating data from the old third-party asset management database to FLOW. This was seamlessly and accurately accomplished, allowing users to focus on improving productivity through the tightened workflows.

While the storage system is implemented in Retro Report’s Manhattan headquarters, the pandemic has meant that many editors have been operating remotely from their homes and the new system has supported this without any delays to their operational efficiency.