The Open Mind Customer Story

Table of Contents

• Who is The Open Mind?
• The Challenge: Files That Are Too Big to Move
• The Solution: MASV – Night and Day Difference
• The Result: You Don’t Need to Turn Anywhere Else Besides MASV

What is The Open Mind?

Alexander Heffner is a journalist, author, lecturer, and host of The Open Mind, a weekly one-on-one interview show distributed as a podcast and on PBS stations across the U.S.

The show is the longest running public media series in the country, having originally aired during the Eisenhower administration in 1956 when it was hosted by broadcast pioneer and Alexander’s grandfather Richard D. Heffner. 

The show’s current incarnation covers politics, media, science, technology, the arts, and other elements of civic life while aiming to restore truth and democratic values to public discourse.

The Challenge: Files That Are Too Big To Move

For a new documentary series in production, Heffner needed to start transferring large video and audio files from various U.S. locations to his editor. 

Previously, he had used Dropbox and WeTransfer as a transfer solution but this had become a bottleneck in the post production process. This problem only got worse once the team began work on a new docuseries involving terabytes’ worth of even larger files.

“It was a failure,” he explains. “Our files were too big for WeTransfer. There was very little to no progress made on transfers, even overnight and carrying over 24 hours. They could not grasp the magnitude of the files, which were basically dead on arrival.”

Heffner says he needed to upgrade their large file transfer solution ASAP — or risk further delays.

The Solution: MASV – Night and Day Difference

After an editor suggested he give MASV a try, Heffner says it was like light and day. MASV worked; the other platforms did not. He says he immediately switched and hasn’t looked back since.

“It all worked so smoothly,“ explains Heffner, who regularly uses MASV to transfer files. “The fact that you can also pause an upload on MASV when you’re off the grid and never lose any progress is impressive and extremely helpful.” 

The new documentary series has required transferring gigantic raw files from shooting locations in Maine, North Carolina, New Mexico, and other locations to New York and South Dakota. “It works just as well transferring to multiple people,” he says.

Although he hasn’t used MASV’s more advanced features just yet — such as Portals, Automations, and some Cloud Integrations — Heffner says the most noticeable jump in performance was after he began using MASV’s Desktop app. 

“MASV’s performance blew everything else out of the water,” explains Heffner. “And I was working in a variety of different settings; some with lower upload speeds, and others with faster upload speeds. Even when there were low upload speeds, it took time to download, but it worked. It didn’t stall.”

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The Result: You Don’t Need to Turn Anywhere Else Besides MASV

Alexander Heffner and The Open Mind were able to get up and running and transfer files using MASV in just minutes, with no tutorials or training required. “It’s seamless,” he says. “And very intuitive.”

But Heffner says the most important impact MASV has made for the team is its speed and reliability.

“As soon as I discovered MASV, I could not forget WeTransfer any faster,” he says with a laugh. “MASV operates in a whole different world, really. Which means your customers can have the ultimate confidence that there’s not going to be a failure.

“For anybody who’s disheartened at the upload capacity of other platforms, this is the immediate correction course. You don’t need to turn anywhere else besides MASV.”

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