“Receiving video content from our contributors went from being the biggest, most stressful side of my job to something now which I don’t even think about.”
– Teddy Parker, Content Operations, RugbyPass
Who is RugbyPass?
RugbyPass is the premier web destination for rugby fans around the world, featuring news, analysis, podcasts—and lots and lots of video; from live streaming, to match highlights, to weekly shows and documentaries. Founded in 2015, the RugbyPass Network has grown into the largest independent English-language rugby audience network, offering fans original and high-quality shows each week such as Rugby Explorer, Beyond 80, and Exceptional Stories.
Teddy Parker helps oversee video ingestion and content management for RugbyPass, using a combination of MASV (for fast large video file transfer), Amazon S3 (storage), and ViewLift (content management). He’s a U.K.-based video professional who has played rugby since he was eight years old, and still packs down regularly for his hometown club.
Photo by James Coleman on Unsplash
Why RugbyPass Sought Out MASV
Parker is working with anywhere around a dozen recorded shows per week—each around eight or nine GBs in size.
Before making the switch to MASV, Parker says RugbyPass’ previous video ingestion and upload workflow was slow and inefficient:
- One of the organization’s several global content creators would first send Parker a Dropbox or Vimeo link to their video.
- Next, he’d manually download the video to his laptop (a process that took hours and often required several attempts due to download failures or interruptions).
- He’d then upload the video to the RugbyPass site from his local machine, which took just as long as the downloads.
“It was hell of a lot to get through and very taxing on the Wi-Fi, as you can imagine,” Parker says, adding that this weekly process of downloading and uploading multiple videos took days. His Wi-Fi bills were going through the roof. And he usually had to wait until late at night, when network traffic in his home wasn’t as busy, to get decent download and upload speeds.
“I could spend whole weekends, or whole days, trying to do one show. And it was making my work life miserable because not only could I not get the shows on the website in a timely fashion, but I couldn’t do any other work as well. I’d have to be near a router all the time. It was just part of my job—to always, always be near a strong Wi-Fi router in case a show came through.”
That was when RugbyPass Head of Product Tom Rendell recommended they give MASV a try.
RugbyPass’ New Ingest Workflow
Parker and RugbyPass found the solution to their transfer inefficiencies in the form of MASV Portals and MASV Cloud Integrations. MASV Portals are the easiest way to receive large files from multiple contributors. MASV allows users to integrate their preferred cloud storage solution and configure automatic transfers to said cloud bucket.
With this workflow in place, RugbyPass content creators around the world submit their video to a single RugbyPass-operated Portal. That Portal is automated to upload all video content to an S3 cloud storage through a MASV Cloud integration.
That means Parker no longer has to manually tackle emailed links from multiple platforms like Dropbox or Vimeo. Indeed, he doesn’t have to lift a finger to get large video files into S3. “I get an email and immediately know which show is coming through,” he explains, adding that setting up and learning the MASV platform took less than half an hour—and that his large scrum of content creators were able to start working with MASV with no problems right away.
All Parker needs to do now is log into S3, search for the show title, then paste the content’s S3 URL into ViewLift for transcoding and uploading to the RugbyPass website. It’s a process that takes just minutes, and that can be done either remotely on a laptop or from the road on a mobile device.
Additionally, since MASV Portals store packages by default for 10 days, Parker is able to download the files he wants locally and cut together clips in Premiere Pro to post on RugbyPass’ official Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube pages.
How RugbyPass Turned Hours of Effort into Minutes
The MASV-S3 workflow combined with ViewLift has dramatically improved the effectiveness of RugbyPass’ video content management in an industry where seconds count. “In media, you need to work fast because you’re competing with other outlets,” he says—precisely why MASV’s fast and reliable transfers through its dedicated global accelerated network are so valuable for the organization.
“Simultaneously uploading multiple shows on our website before was just unthinkable. But if content creators now send me three shows at the same time, I can upload all of them simultaneously and they’ll be on the website within 15 minutes or so,” he explains. “Before, that was our whole day or weekend.
“And there’s no anxiety about whether it will successfully upload, because it doesn’t rely on your local internet. And it always works.”
Parker says they’ll continue to use MASV should RugbyPass’ remote teams ever return to a more traditional office setup. For now, though, he says the move to MASV and S3 has completely changed his work life for the better—not to mention his social life, too. “Receiving video content from our contributors went from being the biggest, most stressful side of my job to something now which I don’t even think about.
“I remember once I was on a platform waiting for my train, and I got a MASV email through my phone. I just went on my laptop and started transcoding two simultaneous shows, while sitting on the platform, waiting for my train. And I thought to myself, ‘I’ve got my life back.’”