Smart Post Atlanta Customer Story

Table of Contents

• Who is Smart Post Atlanta?
• The Challenge: A Need to Reduce Complexity and Cost
• The Solution: MASV – A Stable, Easy to Use, and Secure Solution
• The Result: MASV – Simplicity and Reliability for Enterprise

Who is Smart Post Atlanta?

Smart Post Atlanta is an audio post production facility, previously known as Crawford Media Services, in business for more than 30 years. It’s a mainstay on productions such as The Vampire Diaries, The Walking Dead, and numerous Marvel Studios feature films.

Acquired by Burbank, Calif.-based Smart Post in 2019, Smart Post Atlanta is now part of a larger organization that includes additional studios in Santa Monica and Vancouver.

A systems engineer for Smart Post (and previously Crawford) since 2015, Paul Long’s job is to ensure everything functions from a technical perspective — from phones to workstations to large file transfer solutions. “I tend to just make sure everything works.”

Naturally, he was immediately drawn to MASV’s ultra-reliable file delivery capabilities.

A Need to Reduce Complexity and Cost

Just a few years ago Crawford Media Services used a series of heavy-duty enterprise solutions for moving large files, including two on-premises Aspera servers and at least two Signiant spare servers.

But after a while the studio was unable to justify the expense of such a complex setup — especially after transitioning from full post-production (video editing, color, finishing, audio, etc.) under Crawford Media Services, to solely audio work as Smart Post.

“The cost of Aspera and Signiant is pretty high, especially when you realize we’re using about one percent of what we used to – and we’re still paying five figures.”

Smart Post wanted to:

1. Simplify its large file transfer processes
2. Facilitate reliable high-performance deliveries
3. Reduce their technical infrastructure costs

“And MASV really spoke to me because it’s just so simple,” he says. “If a client needs to send us something, it’s just so easy to send them a link to our MASV Portal. It just makes sense to everyone.”

Smart Post brought MASV into its workflows several years ago, and at this point, Long says it has become a signature tool in the company’s technical arsenal.

💡 Related: Ears Don’t Blink: The Role of a Sound Designer

MASV – A Stable, Easy to Use, and Secure Solution

Because Smart Post performs ADR work that requires playing dialogue cues for actors delivering replacement lines, the company still works with large video files on a daily basis.

Indeed, mixer and sound designer Greg Crawford says Smart Post sometimes replaces every line of dialogue in a production.

“You’d be surprised how much dialogue is replaced in films and TV,” he explains.

That means it’s up to Smart Post to make those productions sound good.

Smart Post’s Secure File Delivery Workflow

The studio regularly deals with QuickTime video files of up to 150 GBs along with separate audio files, usually around one GB. 

Smart Post has an internal network for its production workflow segmented into multiple VLANs to handle all that content.

• The input/output (I/O) VLAN downloads and uploads all the studio’s incoming and outgoing content.
• From that machine, Smart Post pushes data through an inbox/outbox system to another VLAN housing the studio’s workstations.

“It all comes to one place, which keeps things very secure for us,” Long says. 

Security is a requirement for doing business with most major film studios, which means MASV’s secure file transfer solution fits perfectly.

Smart Post has to be extra picky about the large file transfer solutions used by it and its partners. 

“Our security requirements are very stringent. As a result, we are unable to accept files through many cloud-based file sharing services. The majority of these services require individuals to log into personal accounts, which is not permitted in our I/O environment.”

MASV – Simplicity and Reliability for Enterprise

Long cites the following as MASV’s most important features for Smart Post Atlanta:

Security & Delivery Tracking

Long points to MASV’s strong file encryption, both in-flight (TLS 1.2) and at-rest (AES-256) as particularly valuable – along with MASV’s intuitive file delivery tracking.

“It’s real easy for us to track MASV downloads,” he explains, “because we immediately get an email when the recipient downloads any files.”

Ease-of-Use

Long cites MASV’s ease of use and convenience as additional draws, especially compared to complex enterprise solutions requiring time-consuming software and plugin installations, firewall tweaks, and user tutorials.

“We’ve never had a client contact us to ask what to do after sending them a MASV link. You open up the Portal and drag your file here. I mean, it really can’t be any simpler.”

MASV doesn’t even require Smart Post Atlanta’s partners to log in to send or receive a file.

“With other platforms, like Signiant and Aspera, I have to create a login for every user on every project. Just managing that took hours a week.”

MASV is also useful when employees are offsite at Smart Post Atlanta’s second location set up at Trilith Studios, home of several Marvel films. “I’ll just MASV stuff to myself” if content needs to move between locations, Long says. “It makes things so simple for us.”

Speed & Reliability

Finally, Long says MASV’s consistent fast speeds and reasonable cost are important additional benefits.

“MASV’s speeds are always extremely consistent and are always among the highest of any of the other services that we use.”

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