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Media Production Company Consolidating Dropbox and Resilio Sync
Company Situation
The company operates within the media production industry, managing large multimedia files and collaborating across multiple international teams. Their office setup includes about eight people working closely in a shared physical space, with additional collaborators in remote locations such as Brazil and Poland.
Existing Workflow
The company previously relied heavily on Dropbox, utilizing an unlimited data plan that allowed storage of up to 500 terabytes of data. After Dropbox discontinued this plan, they migrated their data to LTO tape storage for archiving. For day-to-day file synchronization, they have been using Resilio Sync, which enables peer-to-peer synchronization over a 10-gigabit LAN network, providing ultra-fast transfer speeds suitable for handling large files (e.g., 25 GB files) within the office. They also use Frame.io for review and approval workflows, as well as Google Drive for some cloud storage needs. Adobe Lightroom is used as an archive tool, leveraging included Adobe cloud storage for deliverable finals.
Issues with the Existing Workflow
Speed Limitations for LAN Transfers: The company’s primary concern is maintaining high-speed synchronization within the local network, a feature that Resilio Sync excels at but Shade currently lacks. Shade’s cloud-first architecture means files must be uploaded to and downloaded from the cloud, resulting in slower intra-office file sharing that could disrupt their workflow.
Remote Collaboration Throughput: Collaborations with international teams in Brazil and Poland suffer from suboptimal throughput speeds, impacting efficiency.
Cost Concerns: The company is highly cost-conscious, seeking solutions that are cheaper or at least comparable to their current Frame.io usage. They also express frustration with paying for cloud storage services and have interest in self-hosted or hybrid models to reduce recurring cloud expenses.
Complexity of Archiving and Search: Managing and searching vast media archives is time-consuming and inefficient, prompting interest in AI-enhanced search capabilities.
How Shade Would Change Their Workflow
Shade offers a cloud-based media management platform with advanced AI search capabilities and integrated review and approval tools similar to Frame.io. While it does not currently support LAN-based peer-to-peer synchronization, Shade provides features like referencing external NAS storage ("external sources") to reduce cloud dependency and speed up access to local data. This hybrid approach could partially mitigate LAN speed concerns. Shade’s platform includes a Mac desktop application and browser interface that allows seamless file mounting and interaction with media assets, making workflow integration straightforward.
Additionally, Shade supports self-hosting options through port forwarding and S3-compatible storage buckets, giving the company flexibility to manage costs and data sovereignty by hosting parts of their infrastructure on-premises. The AI-powered search functionality significantly reduces time spent locating assets, which is a major productivity boost over manual searching.
Benefits
- AI-powered search to dramatically reduce time spent finding media assets
- Integrated review and approval workflows similar to Frame.io for streamlined collaboration
- Hybrid storage options enabling local NAS integration to improve access speeds
- Self-hosted deployment possibilities to reduce cloud storage costs and increase control
- Mac app and browser platform providing flexible, user-friendly access to media
- Competitive pricing comparable to existing Frame.io plans
- Potential to offload archival storage to more cost-effective solutions while maintaining searchable proxies
Technologies Used
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