Media Production Company Consolidating Lucid Link and Frame IO

The company operates within the media production industry, managing a team of approximately 30 individuals. Their workflow involves handling large volumes of media files, currently storing close to 250 terabytes of data with monthly growth of around 5 to 10 terabytes. The team includes a mix of internal employees and contractors, with file access carefully controlled and time-limited to optimize collaboration and security.

The company primarily uses Lucid Link for media storage and sharing, having transitioned from Frame IO as their needs outgrew the latter’s capabilities. Their process begins with ingesting media, which is then uploaded into a centralized Lucid Link file space. Managers grant temporary access to contractors for processing tasks, usually lasting about a week. Afterward, files are moved to cold storage and rarely accessed again. The team also uses proprietary tagging tools for media metadata management. Additionally, their marketing team still utilizes Frame IO for certain content workflows, though there is openness to consolidating platforms.

While Lucid Link offers the critical advantage of cloud-based file access without downloads—an essential feature for their “taggers” who pull images and edit in the cloud—the company finds its user interface clunky and file sharing cumbersome. Frame IO, on the other hand, provided superior file sharing and quick review capabilities but lacked the scale and cloud editing features needed as the team grew. This split workflow creates inefficiencies and fragmentation, complicating collaboration and file management.

Shade proposes to streamline the company’s media operations by combining the robust cloud storage capabilities similar to Lucid Link with a highly intuitive and feature-rich user interface that addresses the current pain points. Shade provides scrubbable previews, playback for multiple media types, timestamped commenting, and annotation features—all integrated into a single platform. It supports flexible file sharing with customizable permission links and collection creation akin to Frame IO. Shade can mount drives as local volumes on user devices, improving accessibility and user experience. Moreover, Shade offers AI-driven semantic search and metadata management options that can complement or enhance the company’s proprietary tagging system, enabling faster content discovery and review.