MediaSilo Product Update: Log in using Google, Slack, Apple, or Microsoft
You now have more ways to log into your Shift account. Enter your email address to receive a login link in your inbox, or click any of the icons below the email field to log in with your Google, Slack, Apple or Microsoft account.
Additional login options are also available when you access a Review Link. To comment on a public review link, simply click “Add Comment” on the review page and log in to start leaving feedback.
After you create a new Review Link or Spotlight Presentation link, the URL will automatically copy to your clipboard for instant sharing.
See the feature in action by right-clicking on a file in one of your projects, selecting “Share,” and picking either of the two options. Once you choose your link settings and click “Create Link,” the URL will be ready to paste elsewhere without any extra clicks.
You can now share files directly from the SHIFT GO mobile app for iOS and Android devices.
When you open a project or folder, tap the blue airplane icon in the bottom right corner.
Select the assets you want to share. A blue checkmark appears on the assets you’ve selected.
Once you’ve made your selection, tap the Share button again to view your review link settings. Enter your title and description, add your recipients, set an expiration date, and choose additional link settings.
Tap Share when you are ready to send your review link.
To simply create a review link without entering recipients, leave the “People” section blank, and tap Share. Then, tap the Share Link button to send the review link using email, text, or other apps on your device.
To download SHIFT GO, navigate to get.shift.io/mobile on your mobile device.
Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston saw shared storage and collaborative working as the future of post-production ten years ago. Today, they’re convinced that their future is in the cloud.
Massachusetts College of Art and Design – usually known simply as MassArt – is a forward-looking visual and applied arts college in Boston. Founded in 1873, it’s the nation’s oldest art school, and the only publicly funded arts college in the United States. The college first installed EditShare over ten years ago. More recently the disruption caused by COVID-19 has accelerated the school’s journey into the cloud.
MassArt combined their film and video departments in 2000 and with continued growth, the department has seventy to eighty students plus a number of graduate students in any given year.
Joe Briganti, is the Associate Director of Video in the Film/Video department at MassArt. He describes himself as an artist, video editor, and video producer: “essentially, I’m a video person”. A familiar face at the school since the early eighties, when he was a student himself, he joined the staff in 1989. Joe is tasked with developing a strategy that mimics real world production and post-production for his students. “It’s pretty intense, because we always want to be on the cutting edge.”
Joe Briganti, Associate Director of Video in the Film/Video department at MassArt
And, they have always been on the cutting edge. Their first digital editing system arrived in 1995 which was right at the start of the steep ascent of NLE editing.
Boston-based EditShare has a proud history of being involved in local arts and the editing community. Briganti was an advocate for shared storage and oversaw the arrival of the school’s first collaborative system in 2010, donated by EditShare. Until then, “sneaker net” was the default mode for data transfer. Students brought their own hard drives and often they didn’t work or wouldn’t mount.
The EditShare system also solved the significant problem that students often simply didn’t have enough storage. The new workflows made possible with the shared and collaborative storage confirmed Briganti’s own conclusion that storage itself is the key to post-production, and the fact that it was working so well over a network showed that this was not only a viable technology but a desirable one.
The new set-up, compared to the old way of doing things (essentially walking while holding a drive, which made it very hard for students to collaborate), was amazing.
Students were blown away when they saw you could start a project on one system and pick it up on another. It really changed the dynamics. It quickly became an essential part of our day to day operations.
Across the estate
The Film and Video faculty at MassArt is comparable to the scale of a large post-production house, with grading, editing, and audio suites all needing powerful computers. EditShare sits in the middle of these, connecting each of the systems.
Students can use Avid Media Composer, Premiere Pro, or their DAW (audio software) and fluidly share their project files. It’s an ideal set-up for teaching, with all the materials exactly where they’re needed so that staff can focus on teaching. And, students can concentrate on technique and craft, rather than resources.
For Briganti, the addition of shared storage with EditShare changed the whole dynamic.
“With EditShare you can put some material on the system and everybody can access it. Nobody has to wait for a presentation to load or have it hang. It’s just there. EditShare is an essential part of our operations. I couldn’t work without it now. It’s exciting for me because we’re a teaching school and a post-production house. It’s been very good with EditShare.”
EditShare FLOW arrives in 2020
The pandemic and the subsequent shutdown in March 2020 meant that many students continued their studies either in a hybrid or remote setting. At first the school turned to WeTransfer but Briganti said “it was an awful way to work with video – we needed to find a way for students to remotely access their video in our local EditShare drives.”
Students shooting in the college’s studios on campus are able to upload to EditShare locally. Utilizing the FLOW media management solution makes that same material available from the cloud so that when they’re at home, they can edit without returning to the college.
“Some of our students are shooting at very high resolutions like 4K and 6K. They definitely don’t have the storage at home for that size of file, so they upload it into our EditShare server here and as soon as they do that, it’s available to them from any location. FLOW and AirFLOW solves the two problems of storage and working remotely”, said Briganti. “And this way of working isn’t just for the pandemic: it’s going to be our standard way of working into the future”.
Moving to the cloud
Briganti liked EditShare’s approach to cloud migration. With a vast range of options, from EFSv, which is the whole system, virtualized in the cloud, to traditional local shared storage, he saw, as an educator, a huge opportunity. EditShare’s cloud technology could extend his courses to students – potentially anywhere in the world – who can’t make it into the classroom. “We’d love to connect to artists around the world: not everyone can afford to live in Boston!”.
The pandemic has altered the curriculum. Some students will not return to full-time in class learning they may do more of their work online. Some students find it easier to access the curriculum and the project-based work from home. More importantly, this applies whether you’re halfway around the world, or are a short distance away. “Thanks to FLOW, we now have the ability to bring a world class film and video education to everyone”.
An ideal workflow
Senior Ian Dumas working on his thesis project relied on EditShare’s hybrid workflow to achieve his vision. A big believer in community filmmaking, Ian collaborated with friends using a wide range of equipment to create the film. A hybrid between narrative and experiential, Ian’s film is a character study of a close friendship shot over several days and evenings. The narrative was shot in 6k and other visuals in 4k, resulting in 3 TB of content. Without access to EditShare, Ian would have had to significantly alter his project. “When you have technology at your disposal you should explore new ways to use it. So I wanted to shoot this film in 6k on a Blackmagic Cinema Pocket Camera I had access to. However, COVID threatened to significantly derail my project,” said Ian. “Without access to the shared storage, I couldn’t even open the files on my laptop. EditShare allowed me to approach the project exactly the way I wanted too. I was able to use AirFLOW to offload my high resolution media to the EFS storage at school and FLOW to create mp4 proxies for my laptop. This was huge as I was able to start storyboarding and editing at home with the high resolutions safe at school.”
Ian Dumas, Student Filmmaker, MassArt
Briganti loves this way of working, and so do the students. “Ian’s really diving into it. He’s going to see where it takes him. When he’s done with the edit, he’ll take it into a craft editor like Avid Media Composer or Premiere Pro using XML and then come into the college when it is safe to grade and conform. I think this is going to be the norm from now. It really is pretty cool!”
**This Webinar Has Passed. Please Fill Out The Form To Access The Recording.
Details
March 17 Session 1: 9:00 AM ET (duration 1 hour)
Faced with the realities of remote learning, students of Massachusetts College of Art & Design (MassArt) adopt real world, remote production techniques to complete coursework and graduation projects. Their success proves the efficacy of remote production workflows and paves a path to the cloud for tomorrow’s filmmakers. Join EditShare founder, Andy Liebman and MassArt’s associate director of video, Joe Briganti as they showcase graduating filmmaker Ian Dumas’s thesis work and the EditShare solution that made it possible.
Access The Recording
Webinar Speakers
Dan Schaffer, Director of Partner Strategy and Enablement, EditShare
Andy Liebman, Founder EditShare
Joe Briganti, Associate Director of Video, MassArt
Ian Dumas, Undergraduate Senior – Film/Video, MassArt
**This Webinar Has Passed. Please Fill Out The Form To Access The Recording.
Details
March 17 Session 2: 3:00 PM ET (duration 1 hour)
Faced with the realities of remote learning, students of Massachusetts College of Art & Design (MassArt) adopt real world, remote production techniques to complete coursework and graduation projects. Their success proves the efficacy of remote production workflows and paves a path to the cloud for tomorrow’s filmmakers. Join EditShare founder, Andy Liebman and MassArt’s associate director of video, Joe Briganti as they showcase graduating filmmaker Ian Dumas’s thesis work and the EditShare solution that made it possible.
Access The Recording
Webinar Speakers
Dan Schaffer, Director of Partner Strategy and Enablement, EditShare
Andy Liebman, EditShare Founder
Joe Briganti, Associate Director of Video, MassArt
Ian Dumas, Undergraduate Senior – Film/Video, MassArt
You can now access Spotlight video tutorials to learn more about creating playlists, customizing your template, and building your own microsite.
When you’re in the Spotlight editor, click the Help icon in your left-side navigation. Here, you’ll find links to three new videos on key Spotlight workflows.
Underneath, you can click “Roadmap and Feedback” to see what the Spotlight team is working on or to submit product feedback. Select “Knowledge Base” to access support articles and “Support” to chat with the Support team.
When you upload a video to SHIFT, the asset tile now features a progress bar and processing information, so you can keep track of your file’s progress as it is being processed. If you upload a video to a SafeStream-protected project, you can also see when the watermark is being prepared.
Producing, distributing, and sharing media assets and works-in-progress is complex during the best of times. As we collectively find our footing in the “new normal,” intuitive, flexible, and secure media management tools have become a business imperative.
Many teams struggle to manage content across disparate tool sets with different solutions for asset management, approvals, presentations, and distribution. This disconnected approach to managing media assets is not only cumbersome and inefficient, but it’s also incredibly insecure.
MediaSilo understands these challenges well, so we developed a solution that enables your team to create a branded, seamless, and secure production process all in one place.
Spotlight is a digital experience builder that is connected to all of your projects and assets in MediaSilo, whether you’re pitching your latest reel to a client, seeking buy-in for a new advertising campaign, or updating stakeholders on a project, Spotlight makes it easy to integrate, share, collaborate, and customize the experience all while staying on brand.
Here are four key ways MediaSilo is using Spotlight to reimagine media management for the new era:
1. Code-Free Customized Templates
Your MediaSilo account comes enabled with a collection of professionally designed templates ready for use. Customizing these templates to support branding is simple in Spotlight. Add your logo, brand colors, and fonts into your chosen templates, and your team has instant access to a library of templates where they can plug in company assets and publish or present custom branded reels, dailies, or microsites in minutes.
If off-the-rack templates aren’t for you, Spotlight supports a design-your-own template option for fully customized assets that are easy to deploy—no coding required.
2. Static and Dynamic Playlists
In today’s fast-paced production environments, there is no room for downtime. So, Spotlight’s powerful editor lets you build a client reel, design a brand-new microsite, or create an attention-grabbing presentation in minutes.
Using shareable playlists, you can group assets together into a reusable collection that can be inserted into any Spotlight presentation.
Playlists come in two varieties, and the type you use depends on where you are in the production process:
Dynamic playlists: Creating a playlist from a project or folder allows the playlist to be automatically updated in real time when files are added or removed in a project or folder. This means you won’t have to resend links to clients to ensure they have the most current assets.
Static playlists: These playlists house collections of assets that won’t be changed. Spotlight doesn’t update static playlists in real time, so they are primarily used for sharing finished work with clients.
3. Seamless Connection Between MediaSilo and Spotlight
You can easily pull media straight from your projects in MediaSilointo your Spotlight designs without having to download files or upload images between systems. Simply drag and drop media into the Spotlight editor, reorder as needed, and you are ready to hit play.
4. Secure Sharing with SafeStream
Whether you’re concerned about cyberattacks, intellectual property theft, or both, securing your workspace and assets is crucial. MediaSilo enabled Spotlight with high levels of security using proprietary technology and access management policies.
For example, if you need to share protected content with only a select group of team members, Spotlight provides multiple security options, such as restricting the audience that can view the asset, adding password protection, and making the content available only in the Spotlight workspace.
When you’re ready to share your finished work with the world, SafeStream watermarking will instantly secure your videos. SafeStream prevents content theft and misuse through personalized visible and forensic watermarks containing user data that can easily be traced.
Spotlight provides a secure, intuitive, all-in-one space to present, organize, and secure digital assets in MediaSilo making it easy for producers to transform their content into stunning visual experiences.
