At SIGGRAPH this year, Avere Systems shared how its hybrid cloud technology is behind the most recent season of Game of Thrones.
Many of Avere’s customers have had a significant role in Game of Thrones to speed rendering workflows, transcode media, and to supplement rendering capacity using cloud compute resources.
A topic that isn’t spoken about much on the Game of Thrones fan sites is what HBO’s Game of Thrones has done for television, and therefore studios. For many, this is the first TV series on which the studios have ever worked. Game of Thrones has proven big screen artistry has a place on television and that its success can even surpass the theater in popularity while providing long-term stability for the producers and studios who work on them. The series has proven that television doesn’t have to be the predictable plot lines and cinematography that it once was. And, perhaps best of all, it has created an appetite among television consumers for special effects that surprise and immerse.
Post-production teams are quickly turning to the cloud for rendering capacity. While the cloud offers sought-after benefits like unlimited capacity and pay-as-you-go models, the Avere vFXT eliminates latency between cloud compute services and on-prem storage. Hybrid cloud rendering, or the ability to render using cloud compute resources and traditional on-prem storage, becomes possible without the need to move large data sets or worry about mismatched protocols. Artists can move to cloud resources quickly and easily, and shut them down with equal swiftness. Avere creates a high-performance caching layer keeping data accessible to the cloud renders and making the completed files available to the artists to continue their work
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