MediaSilo x MASV: collaborate with everyone - faster

Okay. Let's get started. Thank you for joining today, everyone. My name is Michael Kammes, and today I get to proudly say I'm with EditShare, and we'll be talking today about how the MediaSilo product, which are probably familiar with, from Shift Media, now that we're with EditShare we're gonna talk about how MASV can greatly enhance your MediaSilo experience.

So joining me today is Ricky, who you'll get to meet in a few minutes who's a Senior Product Manager, over at MASV. As I said, my name is Michael Kammes, and we're gonna go over MediaSilo and how MASV can greatly enhance your experience with MediaSilo. But there's a couple things we wanna do before we jump into that. First, is that I want to make sure all of you know that Shift Media, which was a rebrand several years ago that is the parent company over MediaSilo and Screeners.com and Wiredrive, right before IBC, so about a month or so ago, a month and a half, Shift Media merged with EditShare.

And so all the products you're familiar with, MediaSilo, Screeners.com, Wiredrive, those are now under the EditShare brand.

Nothing has changed in terms of who you're talking to when you contact Shift Media. You're just contacting EditShare, but the same people are there. So you don't have to worry about any hiccups or bumps in the road. Everything has gone great so far. So just feel free to reach out. If you have any questions, But as of now, nothing has changed in terms of pricing or availability of product. We're all just one big, happy family.

So as we move along, I wanna make sure all of you are aware of what MediaSilo is. Those of you who are already using MASV and wondering what the heck is MediaSilo, let me show you that. So if you don't mind, I'm gonna exit out of this window and I'm gonna jump over to a web browser and what you're seeing right now is the web interface for MediaSilo. And MediaSilo is an on-demand review and approve platform that you can access in your web browser or via a desktop app or even on your mobile device, and it allows you to upload content.

It allows you to leave comments on that content. It allows you to look at things in a time code, accurate way, and then send links out to people. But you're probably wondering, well, okay, how do I get content up to MediaSilo? Right?

Well, what we've built is the easiest way possible, which is from my finder, or explorer if you're on windows. If I wanna get content up here, I just drag and drop. And as you can see on the right hand side there, we upload as fast as we can. We break things up into chunks and we upload as fast as humanly possible, no matter how many files you have, but there are inherent limitations.

There are some features that we just don't have inside the MediaSilo uploader that we thought internally, what can we do to make the MediaSilo upload and transfer experience better. So I'm gonna go back to my keynote, and we asked ourselves the following questions. Right? What if with MediaSilo, we could give you the users of MediaSilo greater control over transfers.

Right? What if we could give you the ability to say I wanna upload it tonight? I wanna upload it in an hour. I wanna upload it using only this amount of bandwidth and not everything.

What if we could give more people access to MediaSilo, not just people who have accounts with MediaSilo, but what about outside collaborators?

For our enterprise clients, which we have many, what if they wanted to code against our API and automate file movement with their internal DAM, MAM or PAM systems or their other cloud storage systems.

We also found that, you know, metadata is king and that all of the media you have has metadata, but how do we get that metadata to go with the media in MediaSilo. Quite often, we have to enter that manually after you'll cut and paste, and that can get pretty tedious. How can we solve that? And once we hit that fifth question, we realized, is this something we wanna try and build?

Or why don't we just talk to our clients and see what our clients are already using. And one of the things that became very apparent is that a ton of our clients are using MASV. And so we got together with MASV. We broke bread. We had some coffee and decided that an integration between the MASV technology, no pun intended, along with MediaSilo would greatly benefit our clients and also give folks who use MASV an opportunity to start using some media-centric tools.

So today, we've brought on Ricky. Ricky's a Senior Product Manager at MASV, and Ricky is going to show us just exactly how MASV can work with MediaSilo. So I'm gonna stop sharing my screen.

And, Ricky, thank you for joining us today.

Thanks, Michael. It's great to be here. Hi, everybody.

So let me just share my screen and I'll start my presentation and demo for everyone.

Outstanding.

So let me just first start with a full chart diagram here just to give a sense of where we sit, how we interact and how our customers use us. So both MASV and MediaSilo are in the cloud.

In the first block here, we have our users who want to send files, either to MediaSilo or and or also to their collaborators.

So they can send files directly to customers. They can send files through our MASV portals, which I'll show in a little bit. And, MASV is the fastest way to send big files as well as many files. So we can handle files in the terabyte range.

And we have customers who, for example, send mapping data, and they will send literally up to a million files at a time. And so we can do that quite well.

Great thing about our integration with MediaSilo is that we've done all the heavy lifting to make the integration work. So for our customers, there's no necessity to dive into the APIs.

We have a very easy, no code way to integrate. You just have to enter your credentials, set the path you want to, ingress into MediaSilo, and then we and MediaSilo take care of the rest.

I've mentioned with portals, a benefit of portals is that your collaborators who want to send files into MediaSilo don't necessarily have to have an account. And so that you can have people working from anywhere in remote locations all around the world.

Who can then send their media directly into MediaSilo.

Ricky, just something I wanna make sure that the lead doesn't get buried. What's fantastic about that is, traditionally with MediaSilo, the users that are on MediaSilo have permissions. And those permissions allow you to view content, upload, download content, etcetera.

This allows MediaSilo users to send a link to someone who is utilizing MASV, and then anyone can upload if they have that permission, and they don't have to have an account with MediaSilo. So this could be, external stakeholders, this could be maybe subcontracted creatives. It could also be end users who say, look, you know what? I want the video to look more like this. Here's an example, or here's a PDF on our brand guidelines. It allows just everyone to get content into MediaSilo without having to have a paid account.

Exactly. But all the permissions that are set inside MediaSilo are still recognized, of course. And so, there's still the security aspect of the media once it's inside MediaSilo.

Excellent.

So just to give an example of how our customers in the production world work. So this is an example of a workflow that is part of an article that we've posted at this site here. As you can see, we have a post production workflow article that dives into the roles and the workflows in more detail, but you can see where these are all sorts of areas where people in different roles and different processes and stages of the post production can utilize MASV. And, for example, here, you can deliver daily through MASV into the MediaSilo portal, for example. If you have VFX pulls, then you can send the files to whomever after having had reviewed the media and the shot so you know which takes to deliver. So, again, that's where a MediaSilo is used for the reviewing of the shots, and then you can send the camera originals to your vendors, for example.

So here are some examples, sort of, sample folder structures that our customers use. If you're sending dailies, then you'll break it down into different shows. And then you'll have folders for each day and all the different components and all the different elements that you are shooting every day and then sending through.

If you're doing a VFX pull, you already have all your shots saved, and then you can, again, decide to send the folders or files that you need to for your vendors.

Ricky, something else I wanted to point out, this is over the past couple of years, we've obviously seen the rise of camera to cloud, you know, getting content directly from the camera up to the cloud to use. But, a majority of folks are still doing the let me take the camera cards and I have a DID on set or, you know, a runner is taking it back to the post facility or even the office the next day and uploading from there. And the beauty of what MASV is doing is that you're retaining the folder structure and the file structure. So any organization will translate to the web, but also if you're uploading the original camera negatives, the original camera content directly through MASV to MediaSilo, we are retaining that high-res content in its folder hierarchy and also generating proxies.

So you still have access to the high-res to pull down later if you wanna go out to another facility or finishing house but you also have the proxies generated as soon as you upload. So you kinda get the best of both worlds, right? You get the content in the cloud with the folder structure you've created but with using MASV to get that content uploaded through a web page or even a dedicated app.

Exactly. And even some of our customers, they wanna enforce the full instructor, older vendors and collaborators. So sometimes, even before the footage and the media is ready to be sent, they'll just send over this entire folder structure so that it's already ready at the other end.

And when we were talking prior to us doing the webinar, you had mentioned that, you know, one of the things that MediaSilo is not currently utilizing, unless it's been configured elsewhere, is something like multi connect. Right? So if you are in a remote location where you may not have broadband, can MASV actually use the other tier of transfer mechanisms?

Exactly. Yeah. We can bond internet connections on your computer. So If you have multiple ethernet ports or if you have multiple wifi dongles, you can combine them all. We can, use all of that aggregated bandwidth to send your files as fast as possible because you may be in a remote location that just has poor landline internet, perhaps, maybe maybe you have 5G or whatever, but, just combine all the internet you can, to send files out of the usually remote locations.

Excellent. Thanks. Thank you for that.

Yeah. You bet. So I'll just start with going to our web app. So, MASV allows you to access us through a web browser using our web app. We also have a, native desktop app as well that runs natively on Macs, PCs, as well as Linux machines. We also have an API that you can use, and you can run headlessly as well, either using our API or we have a Docker container as well so that you can install that onto any server in the cloud, for example. You can install the Docker image in, an access of Synology or QNAP or TrueNAS.

And, so wherever you have your files, we can access them and send them and receive them.

So typically, in our web interface, we have some administrative tools, as well as the ability to still send files directly through the web app in the drag and drop format.

But the desktop app is more powerful. We recommend our users use the desktop app wherever possible, because it provides more resiliency. It provides some bandwidth controls that Michael had alluded to earlier, which I'll show when we get to the desktop app.

But all the project administration, user administration, all those management tools as well as cloud integrations are set up within our web app. So for example, we already have a MediaSilo integration set up here. I'll just quickly show how we set that up. I would have the credentials for the MediaSilo account. I can choose a project within MediaSilo if I wish to. I can also set a target directly within the MediaSilo folder structure, if I wish to. And then an interesting thing about our connection with MediaSilo is that if we have or if we are capturing metadata, we can send that metadata into MediaSilo as well so that all that important metadata is in the database of MediaSilo and searchable and viewable within MediaSilo.

And just to make sure we don't gloss over that, a lot of time spent when it comes to review and approve is copying and pasting descriptions, information from one platform to another. So being able to sync metadata from one location to another that travels with the media just takes one less stressful step out of media migration, out of your workflow, and it makes your life that much easier not to have to cut and paste and manually type in info time after time.

Exactly. So let me show you a portal, for example.

This has been optionally set with a password so that even if somebody has access to the URL and they shouldn't have had, they wouldn't be able to access the portal itself.

And you can skin this. Right? So it looks just like your organization.

Exactly. So this is a custom branding for monkey games, for example. This is our standard branding for MASV, but as you can see, you can customize the logo, the colors, the background as it fits your organization or your project.

So here, also we have the drop zone, for dropping your files and folders. You can enter information.

Typically, our portal has only three fields. The uploader enters the email, they can give a package name if they wish and send a message so that the recipient can see what this package is all about.

But with this portal, I've configured it to have my own custom fields. So, for example, if I'm working with someone who's working on my show, if I've got a bunch of shows, going on right now, I can select these preset options so that I can easily enter the metadata that's required by the production company, using custom metadata fields can ensure that there's no error in entering information. If you're simply sucking from dropdowns, and it just makes the whole process more efficient as well.

We have lists of all the files that we've been sending and receiving. So, for example, these are files that have gone through my portal. And, I can see the contents of these, and I can download them if I wish.

We've already had the integration with MediaSilo set up. So the files have also automatically been forwarded to my MediaSilo account.

So this is, interacting with our web app. But let me show you the desktop app.

So similarly, we can send files. We can receive files. We can manually send two portals. So, again, I just designate the portal that I want to use, and I drag and drop my files.

Another strength of the desktop app is that you can create automations so that you can have watch folders on your local storage so that you just have to move files into the watch folder and the transfer will happen automatically.

And, also, you can configure so that your portal will automatically download files to your on-prem storage, if you wish. This is on top of that MediaSilo integration automation where we send the clouds to the MediaSilo bucket, if you wish at the same time to also send files to your on-prem storage. This is how you would set that up.

And again, this is where our customers either want to have backups in multiple locations. So, of course, whenever you're shooting with your masters, you wanna duplicate them and back them up as quickly as possible for safety. You wanna send them to the cloud for people to review in MediaSilo. And so we enable all of that, with single automations with setting this up to the portal.

And within the desktop app, with our advanced controls, you can customize the service, so that, for example, if you have certain transfers that you know are very important, you can set priorities to the transfers, and, so that specific packages or portals can be granted more bandwidth so that they will be transferred faster than than the others. So the other transfer is really queued up afterwards.

We have a lot of speed settings as well, as I mentioned, there's multi connect. If you are, working at a facility with great on the 5-GigaBits-per-second bandwidth. There's a setting for that so that we optimize our service so that we can take full advantage of all your great speed.

Also, we can do a speed test of your local storage so that we can sort of ascertain whether you're using old-school hard disk drives if you've got SSDs, if you're running on a NAS, we can sort of figure out what the optimal right modes for handling such storage. So we do all these things just to make the transfers as fast as possible through all the various possible bottlenecks that's in your system at your facility.

And, so by default, MASV will flood your internet connection. We typically will just want to use all your internet connection, which if all you're doing is transferring files, that's fine. But if you're working at a facility with other people, if, for example, here we've got Zoom calls with our clients and our vendors at the same time that we wanna transfer files and backgrounds, then we have to behave nicely. So we can set speed limits. And you can schedule these speed limits as well so that you can still work effectively at your computer, your coworkers can work effectively, and you can still send files with MASV. And then when the speed limit ends, for example, at the end of the business day, when all your colleagues have gone home and you're no longer doing Zoom calls, then we will, again, automatically revert back to maximum speed for sending your files overnight, for example.

And, just to be clear, this is something that MediaSilo doesn't do. Right? Like I mentioned at the onset, we will flood the pipeline and we'll flood the pipe and upload as fast as possible, but there aren't any inherent controls to throttle or accelerate, or to postpone.

Some of that you can try and code through our API, but we don't have any of that out of the box. And that's one reason that MASV is just plug and play with your MediaSilo credentials.

Exactly. At this point, I can take a quick break to see if anyone has any questions.

Sure. A couple questions have come in during chat. And I knew this one was gonna come in. But let's, let's take it anyway.

I typically use Signiant and Aspera. What are some reasons or why should I use MASV rather than Signiant or Aspera?

Right. So our pricing model is very different from the Signiant and Aspera. We don't charge per-user seat, whereas they do. So we generally go with a pay as you go model. So, you're only, I guess, paying us for the data that you transfer. We have on our website our pricing plans.

We start off at twenty five cents per gigabyte of transfers. But if you typically are a heavy user, you may want to be a subscriber and then pay on a monthly basis, for example, and then you'll get a discounted rate. And if you're a very, very heavy user of transfer, then you can contact us. We can negotiate large volume pricing as well, down to five cents per gigabyte pricing.

And all those other features that we have in MASV, such as custom metadata, such as SSO, such as the portals, free use of portals. We typically don't charge on top of your base rate or your fees. So you pay your transfer fees and you get all of our features included in your account.

And I guess while we're talking about pricing, for you to use MASV with MediaSilo, there's no additional cost on the MediaSilo side. You can request an API secret key, which is something we do quite a bit. And then you just plug those in as Ricky showed, you enter in your credentials and it just works.

And, as Ricky mentioned as well, it adheres to the permissions that you've given those users. So there isn't any kind of security, you're not taking a hit in security by doing that. So that again, there's no cost on our side for that.

So other questions. Oh, I just. Go ahead.

Sorry, I just also wanted to mention that typically Aspera and Signiant users have high initial capital costs, because they generally have to install servers. They need IT to set up their system. They have to open ports for UDP, which is how Aspera and Singian, transfer their files with, but for us, it's much, much simpler. So again, there's no upfront costs. You only pay as you go for actual transfers.

If you're facilities policy is not to allow users to install software, or even browser extensions, then simply use our web browser, and anybody has instant access to our sites, to our service, you can sign up for a new account and within a minute, you you can get going in and start transferring files and your partners and clients can immediately receive those files as well.

Again, without the delay of setting up a contract, if necessary, with our with the competitors, I guess, and also then of setting up the hardware and allocating the hardware and so on.

Another question, can one transfer go to multiple endpoints?

Yes, for sure. So for example, with a cloud integration, I've already set up two integrations in my account.

I don't know. If you're trying to share your screen, I'm not saying it.

Oh, sorry. Sorry.

Well, the answer is yes. Okay. And let me just quickly share again. There we go.

Here's a portal with access to all my integrations that I currently have. And I can just quickly add more integrations on the fly if I want. And although this is set up to flow to MediaSilo, I can just easily set it up to flow to multiple cloud storage providers, if I wish. And also with the desktop app, if I have an automation to receive from that portal, then that means any files uploaded to that portal will go to my on-prem storage here on this computer, as well as to these two cloud storage devices as well.

With the portals, you can also set multiple recipients.

Who will either get the download links, or they can also set up their own automations as well so that, well, sorry, I guess, test accounts, but I could set up my email address, I could set up yours, Michael, and so on. And we would both be able to receive files uploaded to the portal at our own local storage devices.

Got it.

Another question, our team typically records b-roll with their phones. Is there a mobile app to upload content with MASV?

So at the moment, we don't have a mobile app, but you can access our website on your phone, such as a portal. So you can, on your browser on your phone, go to a portal that you've been given to, and add your files here. Just click add files, it will then pop up a little dialogue to access your camera's photo library, for example, and then you can send files from your phone that way.

Excellent. Well, I I think that does it. The majority of the questions I think were answered during the presentation.

So I'm gonna share my screen one last time.

I'll go back to Keynote, and there's Ricky again. We'll hit play.

We've just gone through Q and A, so, I'll leave chat open for another minute or so to see if there's any other questions.

Ricky, is there something that we haven't talked about that, you find, people will ask you maybe the second time you meet or the third time you meet. Is there something else kind of fundamental about what MASV does that you think the folks who are watching and listening may find interesting.

I think we've covered all the major points.

Okay. Well, if you check out your screen right now, you'll see different ways to get a hold of us. First off, we have EditShare. Right?

Again, Shift Media and EditShare have merged, and we're keeping the EditShare name and all products will be rolled under EditShare. So your MediaSilo, your Screeners.com, your Wiredrive, and you can learn more at EditShare.com. And of course with MASV, you can sign up for MASV and give it a shot at MASV.io. As you can see on screen, this has been recorded.

And it will be available on the MediaSilo blog.

So if you wanted to rewind it, watch something, clarify it, show it to some of your tech friends, that would be great. Ricky, thanks for joining us today. Shauna, thanks for handling this on the back end, and we'll see you on the next webinar. Thanks, everyone.

Thank you, everyone.

MediaSilo allows for easy management of your media files, seamless collaboration for critical feedback, and out-of-the-box synchronization with your timeline for efficient changes. See how MediaSilo is powering modern post-production workflows with a 14-day free trial.