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Higher Education Company Consolidating Jellyfish Mobile and Iconik
Company Situation
This company operates as an in-house creative agency embedded within a large university environment. Their team specializes in digital imaging, video production, photography, graphic design, and print services, supporting various departments across the campus. The team includes creative directors, video producers, and video leads managing high-resolution video projects and digital assets for university communications and archival purposes.
Existing Workflow
Currently, the team relies on a hybrid workflow combining local storage and multiple cloud-based tools. They use a Jellyfish Mobile local storage device as their primary on-premise solution, paired with Iconik for proxy generation and media management, and Backblaze for cloud backup storage. Additionally, they have access to PhotoShelter, mainly for photography asset delivery, but avoid heavy video use on that platform due to high storage costs. Their workflow involves juggling between these platforms to manage ingest, proxy creation, review, delivery, and archival of video content, including 4K 10-bit MXF files with associated metadata.
Issues with the Existing Workflow
The team faces complexity in managing multiple platforms that do not seamlessly integrate, leading to inefficiencies and potential errors in asset handling.
Proxy workflows require switching between Iconik and local storage, complicating collaborative review and metadata management.
High costs and logistical challenges arise from storing large video files on platforms like PhotoShelter.
There is a desire for better integration and travel of metadata files (such as Sidecar XML) alongside video assets to streamline post-production and archival processes.
The current system lacks a unified platform that can handle ingest, proxy generation, review, delivery, and archival all in one place, forcing reliance on disparate tools.
How Shade Would Change Their Workflow
Shade offers an all-in-one platform that consolidates the functions of local storage, proxy generation, metadata management, collaborative review, and cloud delivery into a single streamlined interface. It mimics familiar file-sharing platforms like Google Drive and Dropbox in ease of use while providing advanced video-specific features such as automatic proxy creation and timeline-based feedback directly on the video content. Shade’s architecture allows drives to be organized by project, team, or department, improving asset organization and access control. The platform supports metadata integration to ensure associated files travel with their video assets, facilitating future searchable archives. By replacing multiple platforms with Shade, the team can reduce complexity, improve collaboration, and optimize costs.
Benefits
- Unified platform combining local storage, proxy generation, and cloud collaboration
- Seamless proxy workflows enabling teams to work off low-res files with easy relinking to originals
- Integrated metadata handling to support efficient post-production and archival
- Familiar, intuitive interface minimizing training and adoption hurdles
- Flexible sharing options with granular permission controls and public links
- Potential cost savings by consolidating multiple tools and reducing heavy cloud storage fees
- Enhanced collaboration through timeline-based feedback and direct asset commenting
- Scalable solution suited for ongoing campus-wide creative needs and archival projects
Technologies Used
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