I now have an ISIS it's been suggested by a few editors that we should install it. I've read all the promotional material  for interplay and have a basic understanding of how it works.

This isn't urgent but as I don't know of anyone else currently running it I was wondering if anyone could tell me how it's benefited workflow etc and the general day to day running of things.

I want to be confident if we change we change for everybody rather than a handful of people if you know what I mean.

Thanks in advance for sharing any experiences.

Hi,

if you've got a lot of media you're sharing between a lot of projects, or you have big projects being worked on by a lot of editors simultaneously, and you don't have time to waste looking for clips, Interplay helps.  I do a lot of freelancing for the London bureau of one of the US networks, and they've had Interplay running for a good 6 months or so.  In a news environment, where there is a lot of material coming in constantly, and the editor has to be able to find it quickly, I think Interplay helps quite a bit. 

When a story is assigned, the media librarians create a folder on Interplay and move all the relevant clips into the folder, and add clips as they come in.  All the editor has to do is open the folder in the Interplay window within Avid, and all the material they need is there.  It saves all the time the editors used to waste opening up bins in other projects that looked like they might have material related to the project they're working on.

Interplay also allows the editor to search the whole system for clips by name, or by when the clip was loaded into the system, which saves a lot of time, too.  (There are a lot of other parameters you can search by, those two are just the ones I seem to use most often.)

I'm sure other places use Interplay in other ways, as it seems like it's pretty flexible.  The bureau I mentioned above has tweaked their media organization a couple of times as the media librarians figure out better ways to do things, and it doesn't seem to slow them down at all.

good luck,
Carl

Thanks for your quick reply Camoscato. We had a large project that came in where several sequences had already been cut on location with several 100 tapes digitised too. This was all copied over to the ISIS with projects on the ISIS and the later tapes being sent over so the digitising was being topped up constantly. This is I guess where Interplay would be really valuable especially as graphics and converted material were being FTP'd from the US.

I suppose a lot of this depends on how the material is logged ?

Blue Crow:

I suppose a lot of this depends on how the material is logged ?

Yes.  The media librarians at the bureau do an excellent job of logging and capturing, making sure that clips are organized in a way that makes them easy to find.  I think it helps that they're hired as media librarians, as opposed to kids on work experience who hope to be editors or producers someday.

adios,
Carl

Crow,

Can you elaborate on the nature of the work you do? Interplay is not for everyone. A well organized or small-scale facility/crew/project can get by just fine with Project Sharing and Bin Locking in ISIS or Unity. Interplay adds a layer of complexity on top of everything you do.

I have found, also, that there are very few real-world guidelines as to how to organize your workflow in Interplay, although I believe the documentation folks at Avid are working on some "Best Practices" docs.

That's the thing Camoscato I'm not sure we would have dedicated media librarians which is why I have reservations. The best practices mentioned by lawson r would help a great deal.

We have such a variety lawson r it would take ages but from reading yours and everyone elses the basic projects 1 room on ISIS 150 hours of offline material for stand alone with mutiples of say times 3 for a small series.

What really interests me is the larger projects we have which would be on the scale camo mentioned previously.

I have a series coming in where we have 40 x 60 minute shows which are made up of several 10 minute inserts joined by interviews etc. Previously these would have been consolidated of to seperate partitons / drives to keep them safe from deletion etc as the rushes are huge especially as everything is dig'd DV25. Also many shows look back at previous material to see developments as a sort of how are they now , this also gives issues as they often want say shots of 'A' but rather than repeating the exact same shot of 'A' they will want a bit before or after so they don't look 'samey'.

We got our ISIS as our lanshare just couldn't handle the directory/files counts and was running at 98% full ( I know )  the job above would seem to be an example of how Interplay would help provided everything is logged properly ?

What do you think ?

Hi,

I understand your point.  As long as you have at least one person keeping an eye on where your media is going and making sure there's some sort of standard naming convention for new clips, Interplay will help everyone else find things faster. 

If everything is just getting thrown into the system by whoever is standing closest to the machine at the time, you're screwed whether you have Interplay or not.

good luck,
Carl

Blue Crow:

That's the thing Camoscato I'm not sure we would have dedicated media librarians which is why I have reservations.

depending on the scale of your operation, this is almost requisite. i've run 14 distinct series simultaneously, 40 offline bays, 55 Interplay Assist stations for logging, transcribing, and writing, with 1 scruffy looking kid sitting alone in a dark room pulling all the strings.

but you almost have to have someone who dictates structure and organization and is wholly and solely responsible for building the Interplay folder structure. Interplay is almost too flexible, and has the potential to go horribly awry if there are too many hands on the front end, too many opinions on how to organize things, too many people doing things their own way.

even if the structure and organization is a bit arbitrary, i can't conceive an Interplay system staying viable without at least one, and actually preferably one, core person to manage it.

What he said.

Absolutely – as powerful a toolset that Interplay can become in a shared media environment, its successful integration into an existing post environment hinges largely on its proper configuration and its iron-clad administration.  I’d also reiterate highnoon Eli’s comments about the importance of strict administration and limited front-end interference.  And add to that the gospel of ‘keeping it simple, stupid’ especially in terms of file and folder structure. There are simply too many places where the ‘dangerously-informed’ could wreak havoc on the entire system with just a few misplaced keystrokes.

That said, we would not have chosen to invest in Interplay had it not been for our need at the time to expand our storage capacity and optimize our workflow. In large measure, the bulk of its potential still lies ahead of us.

When we integrated Interplay into our company last year, we were charged with the task of transitioning ISIS/Interplay across 15 to 20 different series cutting on NewsCutters that previously existed among four Lanshares, managing more than 5500 hours of low-res material in the process, with no downtime periods allowed.  It felt like replacing the engine of an ocean liner, without stopping the old engine and without losing momentum, and some days it seemed Titanic. Transforming those series to Media Composer/ISIS/Interplay was challenging enough, but coupled with converting 45 MediaManager Select stations to Interplay Assist, adding 15 more, and also enduring early-on system configuration conflicts (IP ver 1.1.0)  that presented more than our fair-share of troubleshooting long days, nights and weekends trying to appease literally dozens of producers, editors, loggers, transcribers, writers and frustrated company owners. Fun, huh?

Beyond all this now, we remain in a steady-as-she-goes mentality while becoming more familiar with its operation.  I still see areas that we can improve its usage in our particular workflows and remain confident that we can learn to use it even more effectively.  The keys to its success lie in keeping its initial integration and structure simple and its administration strictly controlled.  Try not to let the worker-bees learn too much too fast, let 'em get familiar to the basics and gradually introduce more advanced usage of the system.  Bottom-line is it's only as good as the people running and operating it. We’ve had folks who have been resistant the whole time, and people totally embracing it.

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I need to get this note in – so pardon me if I get a little off-topic.

The guy known to this list as ‘highnoon’ is a remarkable individual. Were it not for Eli and the vision he has held for this operation, our incredibly challenging and intricate move to Interplay/ISIS simply would not have happened.  So, as he moves on from this company this week, I am going to miss him sorely – not only for his depth of intellect and keen knowledge, but also for his uncompromising work-ethic, gentle demeanor (ahem), exquisite fashion acumen, passionate following of Arsenal and all-things futbol, exceptional bowling average and other applied-science endeavors, and in general, being –well - just the friendliest mofo around.

Wherever his next steps take him, I wish him all he best.  And if it warrants, and if he should find himself in your area of the globe seeking a similar position, please know that you can contact me off-list for the highest possible of recommendations.

Damn, I’m gonna miss that guy.  Morale will just never be the same.

Sincerely,

Brian  - aka, soon to be the saddest person asking, "Where's Eli?"

Thanks Eli & Brian. I think we will hold off interplay until 2009 as it needs careful planning if you are in London Eli perhaps we could have a chat then ? How come you support The Arsenal ?

Give me shout when your in London Eli , I'm a massive fan of Arsenal and I'll see if I can get some tickets. I'll show you around my facility and get your perspective which I would really appreciate.

alas, i think the season will be over before i can extricate myself from here.

i was lucky enough to get to attend one game at Highbury during the last season (the game when Sol went mental and took off for Belgium), and one at Emirates last year. 

we've been blessed or cursed to be sort of isolated out here in the mountains, in that there hasn't been a precedent, and we can invent workflow without fighting a long standing culture. i'd love to see how other people are doing it, because as i move around to different markets, i'm not sure if

"i know what's best for you" and "because i said so", will work as well as it does here.

i guess i can always fall back on "just put the pictures in order and shut up".

that one works great.

Hello everyone,

Sorry for replying so late on this thread. I saw a mention regarding the Best Practices guide. We do have a Best Practice guide for Interplay available. You can find it on the Knowledge Base. The latest version available is for v.1.2.1. I believe it is currently listed as one of the top downloads on the main page of www.avid.com.

Also, if you are interested, we recently posted a complete help system of all the Interplay documentation for v. 1.2.1. It's a prototype that we did for our field people - so it's not perfect yet. I had to pry it out of my writers' hands and get them to post it for public use to see how customers liked it. So far the feedback has been positive.  If you do a search on category of Documentation (all subs) and  Keywords Interplay Help, it should come up. The Answer ID is 75515. It's a zipped file that contains a .chm executable.

HTH,

Doris

Thanks AvidPubs. Out of interest why are you called AvidPubs ?