When someone needed a file, the question used to be: OK, do we use Dropbox? Do we use Hightail? And these days, the answer is always MASV.
Thomas Smith
Senior Video Editor, CGI Digital
Challenges:
⭕️ Getting large files promptly from remote videographers to stay on schedule.
⭕️ Keeping those files secure and uncorrupted during transit.
⭕️ Wasting time manually uploading content to Frame.io and S3 for review and backup.
⭕️ Constantly guiding clients and freelancers through intricate FTP technology.
MASV Solutions:
✅ MASV Portals: Shareable links for lightning-fast uploads.
✅ A secure, scalable network for receiving without the risk of hacks or file limitations.
✅ Automated ingest to Frame.io, S3, and other cloud destinations at the same time.
✅ A user-friendly browser interface that doesn’t require plugins or coaching.
Who Is CGI Digital?
CGI Digital is a digital marketing agency based in upstate New York that was originally founded as a design house for graphic banners for communities and municipalities. The company now prioritizes SEO, social media, video production, and other digital services for communities, municipalities, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). CGI Digital produces free community videos for these clients and sells advertising and sponsorships around them.
Senior Video Editor Thomas Smith got his start as a video editor at CNN in Atlanta, followed by a stint at ESPN in Connecticut. But when the New York state native and self-professed New York Giants fan saw an opening at CGI nearly 20 years ago, he jumped at the chance to return to his home state and help grow CGI’s video offerings.
🏆 CGI Digital Highlights:
- Founded in 1989 as CGI—”back then, ‘Digital’ wasn’t even in our name!” the company says on its website.
- Works with a team of in-house videographers as well as remote video professionals across the U.S.
- Offers professional-grade video production, web design, SEO, digital marketing, social media marketing, Google Ads, and other digital services to communities and SMEs.
- Community videos are typically targeted at people moving to a specific area who need information about local quality of life, real estate, and other matters.
MASV for Advertising & Creative Agencies
Seamless large file sharing for project managers and their creative teams; easily exchange files between clients and contractors.
The Challenge: Finding an Efficient ‘Bridge’ Between Freelancers and CGI Digital
CGI Digital discovered MASV after looking for file transfer solutions that integrate smoothly with Frame.io and are easy to implement with remote workflows. Smith says the company’s “missing piece” was an easy way of getting footage into Frame and AWS S3 storage for backups and archiving.
His search ended soon after finding MASV.
“When I came across MASV it was almost too good to be true,” he says. “I know that sounds cliche, but MASV quickly became my secret sauce.”
Challenge #1: Insecure FTP Technology
CGI Digital works with hundreds, if not thousands, of freelance videographers across the country to produce hyperlocal community- or business-centric content.
But getting footage from all those freelancers into one central location using other file-sharing technologies proved extremely challenging—especially during the pandemic.
“Once Covid hit it became a priority to work remotely,” explains Smith. “We were using FTP to get our footage around, but it wasn’t secure or efficient at all. We were getting hacked. Files would sometimes arrive corrupted, or were just flat-out missing.”
Smith needed a user-friendly solution he could use to onboard freelance and other remote videographers quickly and without a million technical questions.
Challenge #2: Forced Compression
Before using MASV, Smith’s team received footage via HDD shipments, FTP, or Dropbox and then manually uploaded those files to the company’s on-premises servers—a time-consuming task.
In CGI Digital’s case it took so much time that the company was forced to ask videographers to compress all their footage before sending to receive it in a timely manner (not ideal when working with high-resolution video).
Even then, the company often had to wait hours or even days to receive and upload all the required footage for a particular project.
“We’d have one person working off of four or five computers just trying to upload footage as it came in,” Smith says.
Challenge #3: Permissions and Administration
This manual uploading process meant CGI Digital also faced a significant risk of content deletion by any employee with access to Frame.io or the company’s S3 storage bucket.
“If I had an employee delete any of the footage in Frame.io, it was lost forever,” he says.
Accelerating Files for Client Delivery
Why Driving Plates—the top VFX plate provider for driving footage—trusts MASV to share time-critical footage with their clients.
The Solution: A Fast File Transfer Tool With Intelligent Automation
Smith says MASV has been super easy for himself and his team to set up and use.
“I’m a video editor,” he says, “not an IT specialist or a tech guy. And MASV was very simple for me to set up and use.”
An easy, secure way to receive files
After adding Frame.io to the company’s video production workflow, Smith says the “missing part” to that workflow was a simple and secure way for videographers to share files with HQ.
And that’s where he says MASV Portals—a web-based, universal file uploader that comes with enterprise-grade security and compliance features out of the box—has made a huge impact.
“I can now send one simple link to any freelancer, and they’re able to drag-and-drop their files into the Portal,” he explains. “They’ve increased our efficiency and cut down on our editing time.”
Anyone can create an unlimited amount of MASV Portals for free and customize their branding and specific cloud integrations.
Multi-cloud automation for smoother workflows
Smith says MASV’s cloud integrations with storage providers like AWS combined with automated file transfer directly to cloud storage have been the keys—combined with MASV Portals—to making CGI Digital’s video production offering scalable across the country.
Each of eight producers at CGI Digital now have their own MASV Portal they can use to send an upload link to a videographer in the field. Once content is uploaded to a Portal the data is automatically sent to two places: The producer’s specific project within Frame.io, and into the company’s S3 bucket for backup and archive.
“Anything our producers need, they just send one simple link to the videographer, and the content will go directly into the producer’s project,” he says. “And now I’m the only one that has access to the S3 bucket, so it’s nice and secure.”
Lightning-fast performance for critical file deliveries
One of the first things that stuck out to Smith and his team was the raw speed of MASV compared to other file transfer solutions when sending large file packages of hundreds of GBs.
“MASV is just stupid fast,” he says.
When combined with the integrations and automations mentioned above, Smith says MASV has sped up CGI Digital’s video workflows by orders of magnitude.
Custom forms for video metadata
Although this wasn’t one of his original pain points, Smith says he recently discovered the Custom Forms feature within MASV Portals.
This feature allows users to set up video intake forms to collect important metadata such as clip count, shoot location, or notes about any client additions or alterations during the shoot.
“I can make those questions required or not required,” he says. “The clip count we require—they can’t even upload footage unless they answer that question. I leave the other questions optional, but they do come in handy for our production assistants.”
Reduce Storage Chaos
One platform to manage all storage destination. Introducing Centralized Ingest by MASV.
The Result: A Fast and Consolidated File Transfer Workflow
Smith says MASV is now the only service CGI Digital uses when freelancers submit heavy video files. The company receives around 5 TBs of footage, along with additional images and other data, per month through MASV.
And when the CGI Digital Team brought out the stopwatch and timed a random 500 GB video package transfer through MASV, Smith says it only took around 14 minutes to complete.
“When someone needed a file, the question used to be: OK, do we use Dropbox? Do we use Hightail? And these days I’m just like, MASV. The answer is always MASV,” he says.
MASV’s browser-based file transfer and dead-simple user interface also meant that implementing the product and onboarding new users was a snap.
“I can’t say enough great things about MASV. The MASV app has been flawless. It has replaced everything—we no longer need Dropbox. We no longer need Hightail. We just use one simple MASV link, and the pricing made it awesome, too. It’s affordable.”
Build Smoother Workflows
Try MASV today for fast and reliable file sharing that just works.