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Sony Ci: What’s Sony up to with this media cloud platform?
Take one peek at Ci’s website and it sure doesn’t look like a Sony company with its bold graphics and edgy copy. What is Sony up to with this media cloud services platform? What is a media cloud services platform? Ci (pronounced see) is a browser-based set of tools for video professionals to store massive amounts of footage, review and approve content, log shots, conform audio files, and create textless masters.
Have you noticed a shift from downloading software for each desktop to it being available to multiple users with a simple internet connection, username, and password? Most major production software companies are moving toward cloud solutions and Sony is no exception. Ci can be accessed by any authorized user around the globe. The platform is very intuitive; any user can navigate in and around the tools with little to no training. “Sony Media Cloud Services uses a multi-tiered pricing model for Ci’s base professional packages that range from $300 to $1,000 per month based on storage needed. Production teams with high storage and team requirements can have packages customized to suit use cases. Ci will offer pricing options and self-serve capabilities for individual creative professionals in the coming months. Additional mastering applications are also available using a per session or per seat per month pricing structure” says Chief Business Officer John Vickery.
“Ci MasterSuite is an innovative approach to delivering professional media applications. Sony’s cloud-based, service-oriented architecture makes it easy to integrate these tools into our workflow, and the browser-based user interface will enable our teams to access content and collaborate from anywhere on our network,” said Jeff Mayzurk, SVP, Studio Operations, NBCUniversal. Let’s take a closer look that the tools.
STORE
Media Box is bad ass storage. It can store boundless amounts of footage with no limit to the number of files and file sizes. The app supports a growing number, of the already wide range, of video, audio, and document files. In addition to storage Media Box gives the user(s) the ability to preview the footage, share it, add the clip to favorites, download it or delete it with the right permission. A cool function within the share tool is that you can email a clip within Media Box and set the URL to expire whenever you like.
• 40+ image and video export profiles supported and growing
• 91+ video, audio, image, and document formats supported
• (.MOV, .FLV, .AVI, .MP3, .WAV, .PSD, .AI, .PDF, .DOC, .XLS, .TXT, etc.)
• Professional package and video format support (in-progress)
• (.MOV, .MXF, .WAV, ProRes, J2K, H.264, .AAC)
REVIEW
The Review and Approve app allows the user(s) to do just that. The main goal is to make the communication between the producer, client, and editor seamless. Two or more people can discuss the project in detail while looking at the same screen in two different geographical locations. Just think how great is it to mark up a frame within the timeline, chat live or send a screen grab, and comment for later response all within the same software application. Can you say time saver?
LOG
Video Log marks in and out points on the timeline and categorizes them as different events. An event is a timecoded note or metadata here are some examples: editing notes, product placement, quality control, standards and practices. The metadata can be exported in several formats and then pulled into your editors NLE.
SYNC
Audio Sync uses fancy-schmancy algorithms to conform audio files. The big note here is this tool is a huge time saver.
MATCH
Frame Match is an app that searches out differences and similarities between 2 sets of video files.
Every day, creative professionals around the world spend numerous hours and resources on non-creative tasks like moving and sharing content, figuring out how and where to store it, and getting the right assets to the right places and in the right hands,” said Naomi Climer, President, Sony Media Cloud Services. “Sony understands these complex challenges, which is why we designed Ci as a functionally rich, scalable and secure, media-focused cloud platform that can enhance and streamline traditional production workflows to make it easier to collaborate more effectively and cost-efficiently.”
Ci for yourself for our camera crews can do for you and your needs.
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