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Political Consulting Company Consolidating Backblaze and Frame
Company Situation
The company operates within the political consulting and advertising industry. Their team manages a significant volume of video media assets related to campaign advertising and company footage. The team includes non-technical users who require simple, intuitive access to media for review, editing, and collaboration. The company manages a physical office environment with multiple hard drives and RAID systems to store their media.
Existing Workflow
Currently, the company backs up all media to a cloud backup service (Backblaze), but this solution lacks any media viewing or searching capabilities. To collaborate and review footage, they have been relying on a third-party cloud video review platform (Frame). Editors typically receive media drives physically overnighted to them or carried by the director of photography (DP), who transports footage for editing. Sharing footage within the team requires significant manual effort, including locating files across multiple hard drives and transferring large files. The company also uses Box and Vimeo for some sharing needs.
Issues with the Existing Workflow
The company cannot view or search backed-up media on Backblaze, limiting remote access and collaboration.
The current video review platform is becoming cost-prohibitive and appears to be discontinuing or repurposing its services.
The existing alternative (Iconik) is not user-friendly, especially for less tech-savvy staff members.
Finding and sending specific footage to editors can take half a day, creating major inefficiencies.
Physical transfer of drives to editors adds logistical delays.
Limited metadata tagging and search functionality make locating specific clips or people difficult.
Support for complex media formats (e.g., Red files and 3D footage) is limited or cumbersome.
How Shade Would Change Their Workflow
Shade offers a cloud-based media management system that combines easy navigation and playback with powerful AI-driven search capabilities. Users can upload company footage directly to Shade and instantly search using contextual queries such as identifying people, locations, or activities within the videos. Shade supports proxy and raw file downloads, enabling easy sharing via links or email without complicated transfers. Editors can access media remotely without waiting for physical drives. The platform also allows users to create custom metadata tags and facial recognition to further refine search and organization. Shade supports complex media formats, including Red files and 3D footage, improving compatibility with modern camera outputs. Additionally, Shade’s pricing model is more cost-effective than their previous provider, and the platform is launching archival tier storage for flexible active and inactive media management.
Benefits
- Significant reduction in time spent locating and sharing media assets (from half a day to minutes).
- Intuitive user interface accessible to non-technical users.
- Powerful AI-driven search that understands contextual and visual content (people, activities, geolocation).
- Easy sharing via links with options for proxy or raw file downloads.
- Support for complex media formats, including Red files and 3D footage.
- Remote editor access eliminates the need for physical media shipments.
- Cost-effective pricing compared to previous vendors.
- Flexible storage options including archival tier support.
Technologies Used
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