A shared file store
An array for current projects and separate space for the archive, sized for the number of people working at once and for the codec you actually use.
When editing starts to stutter, the first instinct is to buy faster disks. That is usually wrong, because the bottleneck sits in the network between the workstation and the file store, and it shows up in numbers rather than impressions. This page covers the three things that cost agencies and studios the most: throughput, licences counted honestly, and an archive you can still get something out of two years later.
We are not a studio, we do not do design or editing, and we will not advise you on choosing a camera. We handle the layer underneath: the network, the file store, backups, licences and access. We argue with figures from vendor documentation, because in this field everything can be worked out before you buy.
This is the one area of IT where nothing needs guessing. Codecs have published data rates, links have known ceilings and a disk array can be measured. Put three numbers side by side and you know what to buy, and more often than not it turns out to be something other than you expected.
4K material in ProRes 422 HQ at 25 frames is 737 megabits per second, about 92 megabytes. A gigabit link delivers 90 to 120 megabytes in practice. One stream will pass, then, but with no headroom for scrubbing, audio or anything else. A second editor or a second multicam angle will not fit.
Four ordinary spinning disks in an array give roughly 600 to 700 megabytes per second, many times more than a gigabit will pass. Swapping disks for SSDs on a gigabit network therefore changes little, and it is the commonest unnecessary spend we see in studios.
A ten-gigabit link really delivers 600 to 1000 megabytes per second and settles the matter, but it need not reach the whole office. Usually the editing stations and the file store are enough, and the rest stays as it is. That is a difference of a few thousand zlotys, not tens of thousands.
Before advising anything we measure what actually passes between a workstation and the store and compare it with the data rate of the codec you work in. That is half an hour of work, and it has ended purchase discussions more than once because the problem was a single switch or cabling laid ten years ago. Worth remembering that ten gigabits over category 6 cable only works up to 55 metres; we cover that in more depth under cabling.
This is the commonest misunderstanding in the industry and it costs either money or trouble at verification. Adobe business terms are unambiguous here, so it is better to sort it out once than to explain yourself later.
One licence is one named person, two devices and one active session at a time. There is no model in which five people take turns on three licences. The terms expressly prohibit floating, shared, shift and generic-account deployments.
A licence can be moved to another person without buying more, and that is what you do when somebody leaves or during cover. The limit is one reassignment every thirty days for a given seat. Adobe collects data on how often licences are assigned and moved.
A contractor should not log into the agency account, because that is precisely the shared model the terms prohibit. Either they get their own seat in your subscription or they work on their own licence. Both are fine; there is no third way.
We will admit openly that a promise circulated for years about automatically managing a pool of licences, handing them out as needed and releasing them when nobody is working. No such model exists in team subscriptions and the terms forbid it. What can actually be done: work out who really uses the applications, recover seats from people who have left, and match the number of subscriptions to the actual team. That is usually enough to bring the bill down.
A client comes back two years later asking for a change to a campaign or for the project files. Whether you find them depends on decisions taken much earlier, and those decisions are half legal and half technical.
Copyright law separates rights from the media carrying them, so transferring economic rights does not in itself mean handing over layered files, projects or documentation. That is a separate clause. If you have signed one, you must have those files and be able to find them, and that is a question for the archive rather than the lawyer.
Twenty terabytes on a disk nobody can describe is a cost, not a safeguard. We set a simple naming rule and decide what goes into the archive at all: open and final files yes, raw footage and render caches usually not. That decision alone can shrink an archive several times over.
No regulation dictates this, so the period follows from client contracts and from how often they come back for changes. Better to set it deliberately, even at five years, than to keep everything forever and pay for disks, or delete in a panic when space runs out.
Two things worth remembering about contracts, though this is work for a lawyer rather than for us: transferring economic copyright requires written form with signatures or a qualified electronic signature, so a scan emailed back or an invoice alone will not do, and the contract covers only the fields of exploitation it names explicitly. A formula about "all fields of exploitation" covers none in practice. We raise it because these clauses determine what has to stay in the archive and for how long. Basis: articles 41, 52 and 53 of the Polish Copyright Act.
Six areas we usually start from. Under each one is a link to the page with the detail.
An array for current projects and separate space for the archive, sized for the number of people working at once and for the codec you actually use.
Ten gigabits to the editing stations and the store, the rest of the office as it is. Measured first, so nothing is bought just in case.
A copy that survives an encryption attack for current projects and a cheaper, rarely touched tier for the archive. Restores rehearsed, not assumed.
A review of who really uses which applications, recovery of seats after departures and matching the number of subscriptions to the team.
A place for material going out for approval with links that expire, instead of assorted cloud drives set up by everyone separately.
Working from home on hardware sitting in the office, when moving several hundred gigabytes onto a laptop makes no sense in time or in confidentiality.
What we do not do: run production, handle camera equipment or calibrate monitors. Nor do we claim partner status with Adobe or any other vendor. We help count and buy licences rather than reselling them at a markup.
We start with a measurement rather than a quote, because in this field the measurement often changes the quote by an order of magnitude.
We check what actually passes between the workstations and the store, and ask about codecs, how many people work at once and what hurts most. We come back with figures and a list of risks. Free, and the list stays with you whatever you decide.
We check whether a project can actually be restored from the existing copies and settle what goes into the archive at all. That is usually the first moment it becomes clear how much space is taken by things nobody will ever open.
We compare the subscription list with the actual team, recover seats from people who have left, and tidy up contractors access to project folders.
Requests, updates outside the hours spent on a campaign, restore tests and a report. Work on the file store is planned in advance, because taking it down mid-edit stops the whole studio.
Pages that come up in conversations with agencies and studios.
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Measure what passes through the network first. Four ordinary disks in an array give roughly 600 to 700 megabytes per second, while a gigabit link will pass around 120 at best. In that setup swapping disks for SSDs speeds up nothing, because the bottleneck is elsewhere. It is half an hour of measurement and the cheapest thing you can do before buying.
With ProRes 422 HQ, practically one, and with no headroom. A single stream is about 92 megabytes per second and a gigabit gives 90 to 120 in practice. A second editor or a second multicam angle will not fit, so scrubbing starts to hitch. With lighter codecs and HD material the picture is entirely different.
No. A team subscription is named: one licence is one specified person, two devices and one active session. Adobe terms expressly prohibit floating, shift and generic-account models. A licence may be reassigned to somebody else, but no more often than once every thirty days.
A separate named account with access only to that project folder and an expiry date set up front, so nobody has to remember it. Never a shared password to everything, because then there is no way to establish afterwards who downloaded what. For material under embargo we add a record of file operations.
It depends on the contract, because copyright law separates rights from carriers and transferring economic rights alone creates no duty to release open files. If such a clause is in the contract, though, you have to have those files. That is why a legal question quickly turns into a question about the archive. We leave interpreting the contract to a lawyer; we make sure the files can be found.
As a rule open files and final versions stay, while raw footage and render caches do not, unless the contract says otherwise. That decision alone can shrink an archive several times over. We set the retention period deliberately, because no regulation dictates it and keeping everything forever ends in hurried deletion once space runs out.
With large files, sending them home rarely makes sense, because a home connection will not carry what the office network carries, and material under embargo is better off not leaving company hardware. A remote desktop on a powerful machine in the office usually works out better. For lighter work and files of a few hundred megabytes, ordinary cloud working is enough.
We price from the number of workstations and the scope. In agencies one item usually comes on top of the standard retainer: care of the shared file store and the archive. Hardware and licences are separate and we show them at purchase prices, because we do not earn on resale.
The first meeting takes 30 minutes and commits you to nothing. We will tell you straight whether we can help and what we would propose.
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