Driving Plates Customer Story

“It’s super fast and very user friendly”

– Steven Simpson, General Manager, Driving Plates.

Solutions (Via MASV)

Table of Contents

• Who is Driving Plates?
• The Challenge: A Need for Speed
• The Solution: MASV — From 0 to 60
• The Result: Smooth Sailing

Who is Driving Plates?

Driving Plates is a Los Angeles-based full-service production company and stock footage provider of driving-related scenes and plates for VFX teams.

With more than 11,000 clip sets available from around the world. It has provided driving scenes for some of media and entertainment’s most recognizable companies, including Universal, Disney, Warner Bros., Netflix, Sony, 20th Century Studios, Apple TV, ABC Signature, Hallmark, Paramount, and Amazon.

General Manager, Steven Simpson has worked in the film and television industry for more than 30 years as an assistant director, accountant, and controller at various companies.

The Challenge: A Need for Speed

When asked about the biggest transfer challenge Driving Plate has to deal with, Simpson said,

“Download and upload speeds.”

Given their client base, speed of delivery is crucial to the day-to-day operations of Driving Plates. However, large file sizes that accompany high-resolution VFX plate captures make this easier said than done.

The technology

Driving Plates produces high-quality 360-degree motion environments via a patented, adjustable camera array that can be affixed to automobiles and used as a moving background for car-related scenes.

The eight-camera rig features:

• Optical stabilization
• Eight overlapping angles
• Three upward-facing reflection angle cameras
• Front and rear stitching to produce a 360-degree 2D collage.

Each camera angle captures action simultaneously, and the company encourages its clients to utilize all camera angles to build the most depth and reflectiveness into each scene. The rig’s field of view provides a 30 percent overlap for easier stitching.

• Driving Plates provides log, linear, 1080p, and 4K footage formats but typically shoots in 10bit 4K at 23.98fps.
• Its clip sets are typically transferred as two-minute files.
• These clip sets can consist of just one angle but often include dozens of files from various angles and are sometimes used in LED projections, making for rather large file package sizes.

View a sample of Driving Plates stock footage, below. 👇

Unfortunately, the large file transfer solutions used by Driving Plates in the past didn’t provide fast enough download and upload speeds, nor the precision tracking required to confirm that files arrived on time. They were also very expensive.

All of this was enough for the Driving Plates team to find a better, fast, and more affordable file transfer solution. Enter MASV.

💡 Related: Shooting Driving Scenes on a Virtual Production Set

The Solution: MASV — From 0 to 60

Simpson says the company found MASV after researching for a better way to send large video files quickly, cost-effectively, and reliably. He says Driving Plates’ issues around cost, slow speeds, and opaque file tracking have been completely alleviated using MASV’s large file transfer service.

MASV — along with a combination of Adobe video products and Splashtop for remote desktop access — is now a permanent fixture in Driving Plate’s post-production workflow. MASV handles almost all Driving Plate’s large video file transfers — both internal and external.

MASV Desktop App

Driving Plate prefers the MASV Desktop App for its enhanced speed and performance. As well as its dashboard which provides a line-by-line view of each transfer in-progress.

Automations

Driving Plates also has the ability to create Watch Folder automations from the Desktop app, a feature they use often. With Watch Folders in place, Driving Plates can automatically send large files to an email recipient, upload them to a MASV Portal, or receive files from a MASV Portal.

Transfer History

As mentioned above, accurate file tracking is a must for Driving Plates. With Transfer History, the Driving Plates team can view a detailed ledger of their transfers, including sender information, cost, and status in one area — and export this information for billing and administration purposes.

Flexible Pricing

Thanks to MASV’s pay-as-you-go pricing plan, Driving Plate is able to budget accordingly and only pay for the data they use. This is in contrast to an expensive enterprise license that prices according to usage and seats.

The Result: Smooth Sailing

The result of using MASV has been an increase in productivity. Simpson says he’s seen a noticeable uptick in client satisfaction and an increase in the amount of data flowing.

But most importantly, there’s been a decrease in stress among staff thanks to MASV’s speed and ease of use.

“It’s super fast and very user friendly,” Simpson explains.

🚚 Driving Large Files: Why Somerville Media Stopped Shipping Hard Drives After MASV