South African Sasani Studios Opts for EditShare Workflow Solutions

EditShare, LLC, in scale-out storage, Automated Quality Control (AQC), editing and media management solutions, announced that South African media firm Sasani Studios (Pty) Ltd. has designed its next-gen multi-camera workflow production around EditShare workflow solutions EditShare Flow, EFS scale-out media engineered storage, multi-channel Geevs ingest and Ark archiving.

Boasting 10 main television and film stages and 3 additional acoustically-designed studio spaces, Sasani Studios is one of the largest multi-functional complexes of its type in Africa. The service studio is responsible for five of Africa’s most popular soap operas: 7de Laan, Isidingo, Scandal!, Skeem Saam, and The Rhythm Citizens.

The intense production schedule produces 6 shows per week for each soap opera year-round, turning out more than 1,400 original episodes to keep viewers consistently engaged.

Approaching a decade on its original EditShare shared storage platform, Sasani’s head of engineering, Kim Smith, made a planned investment to upgrade to the latest EFS distributed scale-out storage platform, expanding the media management capabilities of its operation, which also features Flow production asset management and Ark LTO archiving, as well as Geevs for multi-channel ingest management from every studio.

Underpinned by 4 new EFS nodes, the media foundation further connects production and post with media management tools for automating complex transactions and simultaneously managing mass content as well as the various workgroup’s access across five distinct programs. 

“With this next stage of our multi-camera production infrastructure, it was important to move forward with the future in mind. EditShare’s deep industry knowledge combined with our longstanding relationship allowed us to build a high-performance media foundation with the flexibility to incorporate emerging technologies as well as expand and augment our productions as needed,” comments Smith.

In addition to enhancing the internal media infrastructure, Sasani is looking to leverage the benefits of cloud-based production. Evaluating Airflow and Flow story to build a secure hybrid workflow, it is looking to add flexibility to the rigid review and editorial workflow.

Smith explains, “Flow Story and AirFlow will allow us to securely access content outside the facility which would give producers more space with regards to the review and approval process, whether it’s looking at an episode’s continuity or making a quick edit off hours.  There are lots of options from teams collaborating across departments to tapping into creative talent outside the studio to work on projects.“

“Effectively managing media across a multi-camera soap opera production workflow is a difficult task. Multiplying this scenario by five is daunting even for the most experienced production facility,” explains Tara Montford, EVP business development, EditShare. “EditShare worked closely with Sasani to design a next-generation workflow that enables them to tightly control the immense amount of content from capture to finish.”

Based on the EFS file system, the new EditShare foundation will manage the growing list of formats and delivery requirements with flexibility to incorporate emerging technologies as they arise.  

Montford concludes: “Like its predecessor, we expect the new EditShare platform to revolutionize the collaboration with capabilities like remote review, approval, and editing and take Sasani into the next decade. EditShare is about building your future.“