Team Liquid Customer Story

Table of Contents

• Who is Team Liquid?
• The Challenge: Quest for Better File Transfer
• The Solution: MASV – An Immediate Improvement
• The Result: Team Liquid and MASV – Game On

Who is Team Liquid?

Team Liquid is a global pro esports organization with dozens of athletes and multiple championship wins in games such as Dota 2, League of Legends, CS: GO, Fortnite, and Street Fighter.

In addition to hosting a clan of competitive and decorated video gamers, Team Liquid also runs their own influencer talent agency in Liquid Media, as well as a video content production arm, 1UP Studios, a full-service production company known for gaming-based documentary filmmaking and creative commercial content.

Ian Sansavera is the Post Production Director at 1UP Studios. Sansavera manages a team of editors as they pump out shareable videos for the company’s social media channels and high-quality documentaries at global gaming competitions.

He’s also the Founder of LearnHowToEditStuff, a verified YouTube channel that provides practical video editing advice.

Team Liquid’s Quest for Better File Transfer

Sansavera says he and his video-producing colleagues had grown increasingly agitated after relying on — and being consistently disappointed with — other large file transfer solutions. “I was frustrated with everything at the time,” he says. 

“We’d gone through a couple projects where I sent 300 gigs to somebody to download, and files were failing left and right. They only ended up downloading around 100 gigs, and were missing a bunch of stuff.”

Their frustration came to a head during the early days of the pandemic, when Sansavera’s team of global editors — who regularly transfer large video files across large physical distances — were all forced to work from home. “I was in full research mode,” he reflects.

“I was thinking: ‘Do I have to go back to the days of buying hard drives and shipping hard drives?’”

Thankfully, after coming across MASV during his research, Sansavera quickly had his answer.

🎯 Read More: How Somerville Media Stopped Shipping Hard Drives Entirely After MASV

MASV – An Immediate Improvement

MASV solved Team Liquid’s large file transfer problem almost immediately.

And we do mean immediately — Sansavera says it took literally seconds for he and his team to get up and running with MASV.

Team Liquid and 1UP Studios have now deeply embedded the power of MASV’s large file transfer into a number of different workflows, including:

Receiving Footage from Content Creators

Using MASV Portals to receive ProRes files from content creators, videographers, and also players and coaches during tournaments or scrims.

“If we need somebody to send us a large video file, we just send them a Portal link and tell them to drop it in there. We’ll upload all those ProRes files into MASV and I’ll have it all downloaded within a couple hours. And all the files will make it there, and all the file sizes will be correct.”

Hybrid and Remote File Transfer

Adopting a hybrid workplace model where field employees (including at the company’s mind-blowing Alienware training facilities in L.A. and Utrecht) can use MASV to send and receive large video files from their remote colleagues.

“MASV is the thing that made work from home more enjoyable. I don’t have to buy hard drives, load them up with footage and then send them out. I don’t have to go to FedEx. I don’t have to ship things internationally. I don’t have to deal with customs. I don’t have to deal with any of that nonsense.”

Cloud Storage Delivery

Working seamlessly with other technology, such as Dropbox and an on-prem NAS server, as storage solutions alongside MASV’s ultra-fast transfer.

“We have dual redundancy backups, but MASV is the immediate action workflow solution for us.”

Onboarding New Employees

“When we trial out editors to join the team I just fire off the MASV link, and inside that link is all the footage in the project file — everything’s already set up for them. And we add people to it as necessary.”

🎯 Read More: How Jellysmack Empowers Hundreds of Video Content Creators with MASV

Team Liquid and MASV – Game On

Sansavera says the most immediate benefits of MASV have been its speed, the simplicity of the user interface, and its reliability.

Reliability & Stability

He’s now able to transfer files faster than with any of his previous solutions by orders of magnitude, turning deadline-driven file transfers from stressful all-day affairs (that often failed) into simple tasks he hardly needs to think about. 

“We tried so many different things that led to one failure or another: footage was missing, or things didn’t get where they were supposed to, or it crashed, or whatever,” he explains. “MASV was the first thing that just worked, and worked well.”

Improved Remote Workflows

The positive effects of MASV at Team Liquid have even trickled down from the production team to the athletes themselves, thanks to the company’s ability to offer a truly hybrid workplace. Team members can now spend ample time training and scrimming from home or in the company’s facilities without production crews worrying about video file transfer issues.

Simplicity

“I like to base a lot of my beliefs on: can my mother use this? And my mom can use MASV. It’s that easy,” he adds with a chuckle. “That’s just a compliment to the simplicity of how it works. For somebody like me who relies on sending stuff all over the world, it really has been an amazing tool.”

All Around Performance

“I’m the kind of person that evaluates all sorts of different data points,” Sansavera says. “And my one takeaway statement for everybody to know about MASV is that it just works. And it’s better than everything I’ve used.

🎬 More Post-Production: Why Apache Ditched Aspera in Favor of MASV