The Economic Benefits of Smart Workflow Design
One of Vantage’s biggest strengths is how easy it is to build workflows that automate complex media processing tasks.
The downside? Many technicians tasked with creating these workflows may not have a deep background in systems engineering or much knowledge of the IT infrastructure that powers Vantage. They focus on getting the job done: build the workflow, confirm it works, move on to the next challenge.
That’s fine—until the day your business grows, multiple jobs hit Vantage at once, and everything slows to a crawl. A quick glance at Machine Metrics in Vantage Management Console shows high CPU usage.
The knee-jerk reaction? Ask IT to upgrade the server, increase CPU cores, resize the ECS instance, or even consider adding another processing node.
But here’s the question: is more hardware really the answer?
How often does anyone step back to ask why CPU utilization is high in the first place?
With a deeper understanding of what’s happening “under the hood,” you can design smarter workflows that get more done with less hardware.
A Practical Example
Let’s say you need to add V-Chip data and a 15-second rating bug at the start of a 5-minute XDCAM-HD MXF clip—a common requirement for broadcast prep.
We tested two approaches:
Generic workflow – Using Flip64 to apply an image overlay to the source.
Smart workflow – Still using Flip64, but designed to optimize the processing for speed and resource usage.
We ran both on the same basic CPU-only Vantage node, with no other jobs running.
Here’s what Workflow Designer reported:
It shows the Smart workflow job completed over twice as fast, but thats not the whole story. We monitored CPU Utilization throughout the duration of the jobs to get a better understanding of what CPU resources were being consumed.
Workflow | Source Duration | COMPUTE TIME | ELAPSED TIME | CPU UTILIZATION FACTOR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Generic | 05:00 | 05:25 | 05:32 | 89.5 % |
Smart | 05:00 | 02:24 | 02:42 | 29.1 % |
Why This Matters
The smart workflow job not only finished in less than half the time, but it also used only 29% of CPU capacity. This means the system could easily run three of these jobs at once without strain. And since each job takes half the time, this means you can run 6x as many jobs per hour with the smart workflow.
By contrast, trying to run more than one job at once with the generic workflow would max out the CPU and slow everything down.
The Bigger Picture
On a busy day, this kind of optimization could prevent major slowdowns—and eliminate the need for costly hardware upgrades.
A little extra time spent on workflow design can pay off in reduced processing time, lower infrastructure costs, and a smoother operation overall.
The ROI of Workflow Optimization in Vantage
By taking time to design workflows that are resource optimized, you can:
Reduce job completion times
Run more simultaneous jobs
Increase system throughput
Avoid costly hardware or cloud upgrades
Extend the life of your existing infrastructure
Ready to Optimize Your Telestream Vantage Workflows?
If your media processing environment is slowing down, smarter Vantage workflow design may be the most cost-effective upgrade you can make.
We specialize in optimizing media workflows to get more done with less hardware.
Let’s talk. We can help you:
Analyze current workflows for inefficiencies
Redesign jobs for maximum throughput
Improve resource utilization
Contact us today and start getting the most out of your Vantage system.
Phone or Text: +1 404 857 4113