In our previous blog post we talked about the challenges of uploading existing content to a new digital asset management software. Today, lets talk about working with the same file over and over. It can be a real pain to have to upload and download the same file again and again. This point was made very clear to me on a recent project.
I had spent several days putting together a new product demo video for our website. When I was finished with my first cut I needed to upload it to our corporate server for review. Not a real problem but it took over 40 minutes to upload.
The real problem comes when I am asked to make the inevitable revisions to the project. When I make a change, I will have to upload the entire video again, right? Not at all. Because we use Zoom for our Digital Asset Management, I don’t need to upload the entire file again. With Zoom’s front-end deduplication, I will only need to upload the changes that are made. Or put another way, only the differences (deltas) between the original file and my revised file are transmitted and saved.
Here is another scenario. I produced a very nice video presentation for the lead accounts person to take on the road. Before he left I loaded it onto his computer so as to avoid the initial upload/ download ‘wait time’ associated with a file of this size. Inevitably, while on the road he asked me to make some changes. If I was not using Zoom, it would have been a very difficult and cumbersome process to make the changes and then make them available to him; downloading video files while sitting in your hotel room is no fun at all (imagine if you were sitting on a plane using GoGo inflight!). Fortunately, because he only needed to download the deltas, he was able to download in minutes what could have taken hours.
Therein lies the power of deduplication. Multiple people can upload and download multiple versions of the same file in fractions of the time that it would take if you had to move the whole file. As an added benefit, each revision of the file requires only a tiny amount of storage space on the server.
You can read more about deduplication here: www.evolphin.com/technology