 |
 |
Sample Digital speeds Digital Dailies® delivery services with FileCatalyst technology
Sample Digital Holdings LLC is the world's leading provider of workflow applications to companies producing, distributing and licensing audio-visual content. Sample Digital's primary products, Digital Dailies® and DAX: The Production Workflow Accelerator, optimize business process in content production and distribution management for creative leaders such as Walt Disney Studios, DreamWorks, 20th Century Fox, New Line Cinema, Sony Pictures, Paramount, Showtime Networks, Lifetime Television, MGM, and Lionsgate.
A large part of Sample Digital's business is providing tools that streamline the distribution, review and collaboration of dailies. Dailies are the unedited film from a production company's previous day of shooting. Directors and producers view dailies to make sure the footage is acceptable before moving onto another location, while studio and television network executives need access to start building marketing and promotional campaigns. Traditionally, they view a film print of the original negative in a screening room. However, with the Digital Dailies® service, filmmakers can now view dailies video content virtually anywhere at anytime, as long as they have access to a computer and the Internet, or have a Digital Dailies® set top box – a “Tivo” like device for high resolution HD content viewing on a television monitor or in a screening room.
FileCatalyst adds Speed, Reliability and Security
With the success of Digital Dailies®, the number and size of files being transferred was starting to increase. This posed a new challenge for the Digital Dailies® team.
“As clients started to recognize the business value of terrestrial based file delivery, their appetite to improve resolution and quality followed shortly thereafter. This was a problem since a lot of the content was coming from overseas, and transfers were generally a lot slower due to poor network conditions.” explains Bhupendra Patni, Director of Software at Digital Dailies®, “By integrating Unlimi-Tech's FileCatalyst with our ingestion engine we were able to increase the reliability and performance during transfer of large media files.”
FileCatalyst uses patent pending technology to accelerate and optimize
file transfers over networks that suffer from latency and packet loss.
It enables the fastest possible transfer speed regardless of geographic
location or network impairments. For example, a file coming from Australia
, Africa , or Europe back to Hollywood can be transferred as fast as a
file from within the US . FileCatalyst also ensures that transfers are
secure, and reliable.
FileCatalyst can be integrated into any file based
workflow
“Unlimi-Tech's FileCatalyst product suite allowed us to swap out our FTP based components and completely customize a solution with bandwidth acceleration so it looked identical to the old system”, said Patni,” The only change our customers noticed was the upload speed gain”
“The integration with the Digital Dailies ® application shows how flexible FileCatalyst is,” explains Chris Bailey , CEO of Unlimi-Tech, “Our goal is to provide a seamless integration into any file based workflow with minimal development effort by our clients.”
FileCatalyst provides an extensive suite of integration
options, including a feature rich hot folder application for workflow
integration, web based components for upload and download, as well as
an API and a Web Services interface for integration into a service-oriented
architecture (SOA).
FileCatalyst provides a competitive edge, increases
ROI
"FileCatalyst helps speed the delivery of content to our customers." explains Patrick Macdonald-King , CEO of Sample Digital, "In a global industry where time to decision determines time to market - FileCatalyst is a valuable enhancement to our current offering."
Sample Digital recently merged with DAX Solutions, whose Production Workflow Acceleration product has also integrated the FileCatalyst technology into its workflow. DAX faced similar challenges to Digital Dailies® when file sizes started to grow.
“Considering how important ease of use, speed, security and reliability and are when dealing with this industry,” says Bailey, “and the fact that Sample Digital and DAX both decided on FileCatalyst, shows us that our technology has really come of age”
ABOUT SAMPLE DIGITAL HOLDINGS, LLC
Founded in March of 2000, Sample Digital Holdings, LLC is the world's leading provider or production workflow applications and digital media services. Sample Digital primary products, Digital Dailies® and DAX: The Production Workflow Accelerator, are highly secure, web-based applications designed to help film, television and advertising producers and distributors reduce costs by sharing resources, enhancing collaboration and speeding distribution in a friendly, easy-to-use and highly secure online environment. Sample's solutions employ workflow/collaboration tools and full media asset management capabilities combined with a robust content delivery network and set top box platforms already deployed at most Hollywood studios and television networks. Digital Dailies® clients include Paramount-DreamWorks, New Line, Sony, Bad Robot, MGM, Spyglass and Lakeshore. DAX: The Production Workflow Accelerator is used by such studios and networks as Walt Disney, Fox Television Studios, Lionsgate, Lifetime Television, Showtime Networks, Marvel, Miramax and Summit Entertainment.
Sample Digital also has a premier digital media encoding facility in the heart of Hollywood providing services to clients such as Disney, Sony, Universal, Paramount , Brightcove, Intel, Microsoft, Movielink, CinemaNow, ClickStar, Nero and many others. Encoding services cover the gamut from HD downloads to emerging IP-VOD offerings in SD and HD resolutions, to mobile phone and other portable media devices.
