Suppliers to the UK production and post-production sector have criticised the Digital Production Partnership’s (DPP) report on file-based workflows for failing to acknowledge the role of disk-based archiving and cloud-based storage.

In a joint statement, production service Aframe and storage software company Object Matrix said last week’s Reluctant Revolution: Breaking Down the Barriers to Digital Production in Television report could be misleading.

The companies said: “It is stated as fact that ‘no one regarded uploading content to a cloud service at the point of acquisition as being of interest’.

“There is also an inference that only USB, LTO and the cloud are options for storage and, as a result, there is no reference to any alternatives, including disk-based archive options.”

The two firms said it was “unfortunate” that a report in require the public domain could be so definitive in its remarks without offering alternative viewpoints.

BBC North controller of production, and the BBC’s lead at the cross-broadcaster initiative, Mark Harrison, said that at the 15 companies surveyed, disk-based storage was “not widely used”.

“That’s not to say that nobody uses it, but it’s not our job to point towards any particular solution. Our job is to open debate and increase awareness that will hopefully enable companies to come up with a model that offers the right level of resilience and recovery at the right price point to enable independent production companies to go file-based.”

“We are hugely grateful to the DPP and to Mediasmiths for the research. However, cloud storage and disk-based archive are clearly working for many producers,” said Object Matrix and Aframe.

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