It was such a high level of red tape to get help with other providers. With MASV, it was easy to communicate with customer service, and we always got an immediate response. It felt like I was actually talking to human beings when I was speaking with MASV.
Nuha Elahem
Print Traffic & Digital Asset Manager, Windsor International Film Festival
Challenges:
⭕️ An easy-to-use transfer solution, with easy-to-reach customer service, that helps WIFF present itself in a professional manner.
⭕️ Getting content from the transfer platform into WIFF’s Synology NAS and cloud storage.
⭕️ File ingest that reliably handles growing digital cinema package (DCP) file sizes.
⭕️ Clear, easy-to-understand pricing that accounts for WIFF’s seasonal needs.
MASV Solutions:
✅ Brandable MASV Portals drag-and-drop file uploaders for clients and collaborators, and responsive customer service.
✅ Client-centric custom development, a no-code cloud integration with Wasabi, and Synology NAS integration.
✅ Proprietary transfer technology and an accelerated network that can send and receive file packages of unlimited size.
✅ A range of straightforward pricing options, from pay-per-use to pre-buys and subscriptions.
Who Is the Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF)
WIFF is one of the largest film festivals in Canada, and showcases a wide range of Canadian and international filmmakers. The 2024 edition – the festival’s 20th anniversary – screened more than 200 feature films from 42 countries, including Sophie Deraspe’s Shepherds, Nabil Ayouch’s Everybody Loves Touda, and Edward Berger’s award-winning Conclave.
Technical Director Lana Oppen discovered MASV after finding herself staring down a rapidly approaching deadline back in 2021. “I had to transfer my own film to CBC,” she explains. “They have their own internal process, and it wasn’t coming through. It was really down to the wire.
“So I frantically searched on Google and saw that MASV can transfer very large files very quickly. I sent CBC the MASV link, and they had the film in no time.”
🏆 WIFF Highlights:
- One of the largest film festivals in Canada, with more than 200 feature films screened in 2024.
- Celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2024.
- Has screened popular and award-winning films such as David Cronenberg’s Crash, Federic Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light, and Justine Triet’s Cannes 2023 Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall.
Crushing it With the Canadian Film Institute
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The Challenge: Reliably Ingesting DCPs From Film Distributors Into On-Prem and Cloud Storage
Like all film festivals, WIFF primarily worked with physical digital cinema packages (DCPs) for years. But Print Traffic & Digital Asset Manager Nuha Elalem says this workflow was significantly disrupted a couple of years ago.
“Between 2022 and 2023, the ratio of physical vs. digital media completely changed,” she explains, with the festival moving to mostly digital submissions in just a year or two. “We weren’t really prepared for that.”
Amid such rapid disruption, WIFF needed a reliable, fast, and easy-to-use digital file transfer solution it could easily integrate into existing workflows.
A brandable file transfer solution that’s easy to set up and use
No. 1 on WIFF’s list of must-haves was ease of use – both for internal WIFF staff, and for those sending content.
WIFF’s previous managed file transfer solution was anything but. The user interface was complex and confusing, and it was nearly impossible to get a hold of anyone to help.
“It immediately felt like I was in over my head. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I didn’t feel like anyone cared. It was impossible to get hold of anyone.”
WIFF, which regularly works with large distributors and studios, also needed an upload solution that presented the festival in a professional and appealing manner.
“WIFF has grown in size, profile and reputation very quickly. Professionalism in our work is paramount in being taken seriously and being trusted,” says Elalem.
Efficiently getting content into storage
As a purely volunteer-run festival, WIFF has a small team that achieves big things – including:
- Receiving hundreds of films for screening each year.
- Adding that content to the festival’s main Synology network attached storage (NAS).
- Moving content from the main NAS to individual NAS units connected to projectors at the festival’s four venues, such as the Capitol Theatre, which each year need to be converted into cinemas.
- Adding the content to its cloud storage for backups.
Elalem says WIFF needed a more efficient workflow than manually ingesting hundreds of films into its file transfer solution, then manually moving files into NAS and cloud storage.
Reliable, flexible handling of large digital DCPs
The average DCP submitted to WIFF has ballooned from around 100 GBs to more than 200 GB in just a couple of years. Oppen says the festival required a reliable solution that could handle these large file sizes without failing mid-transfer.
“Digital transfers became cumbersome” using other solutions, she says. “I don’t think a single DCP download from Dropbox has ever worked the first time.”
WIFF also needed the flexibility to be able to quickly receive new content at the very last minute, a regular occurrence in the world of film festivals.
Easy-to-understand, reasonable pricing
Like most film festivals, WIFF deals with seasonal variability in its file transfer needs: While the months leading up to the festival are jam-packed, other times of year require no transfers at all.
That means WIFF needed a solution with flexible, easy-to-comprehend pricing. Oppen says that wasn’t easy to find before MASV.
“It was just so complicated with other companies,” she says. “I remember always being lost. It wasn’t straightforward at all.”
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The Solution: Easy-To-Use, Reliable File Transfer Integrated With Synology
Virtually all of WIFF’s file transfer challenges evaporated as soon as it integrated MASV into its workflows.
“MASV has completely changed the way we run the film festival,” explains Elalem. “It has saved us a lot of stress.”
Easy to use, brandable MASV Portals and responsive customer service
WIFF now sends partners a link to its MASV Portal. Partners then drag-and-drop file packages into the Portal, providing a positive upload experience for everyone involved.
Elalem says the ability to customize its Portal with WIFF colors and branding is just as impactful. “That, combined with MASV’s ease of use and reliability, really helps us present ourselves in a very professional manner,” she says. “We want to be recognizable when we send an upload Portal.”
MASV’s responsive customer service was just the icing on a very delicious file transfer cake – especially after enduring unhelpful client services from other providers.
“It was such a high level of red tape and phone numbers to get help with other providers. With MASV, it was easy to communicate with customer service, and we always got an immediate response. It felt like I was actually talking to human beings when I was speaking with MASV.”
Custom development and storage integrations
WIFF needed an easier way to get content from file transfer to its Synology NAS. So MASV provided a custom integration that automatically sends content from the festival’s MASV Portal to its main Synology, with no manual intervention.
This kind of custom development, for no extra cost, was huge for WIFF. “If we needed to customize something, MASV was able to provide that for us,” Oppen says.
💡 Note: MASV now provides a publicly available, ready-to-implement integration with Synology NAS.
This custom integration was combined with an already-available cloud integration with Wasabi cloud storage to facilitate a MASV-to-many workflow that automatically sends content from a Portal to two storage destinations.
This automated, integrated workflow “made my job so much easier,” Elalem says, “because of the option to send an upload Portal and have the content go to two different places.”
An ultra-reliable transfer platform that handles massive files with ease
Large DCPs aren’t an issue for MASV, which can transfer file packages of unlimited size at high speeds and the utmost reliability thanks to our global accelerated transfer network and store-and-forward transfer methodology.
- Under a store-and-forward system, transfers don’t fail if there’s an outage on the recipient side.
- Checkpoint restart and checksum verification means that if there is an outage, transfers automatically pick up where they left off.
“If we ever got disconnected during a transfer, I was relieved to know that the content was still up in the cloud so that once it got fixed, MASV automatically just funnels it where it’s supposed to go.”
The flexibility of MASV Portals allows WIFF to easily make quick switches to its content lineup, even mid-festival.
“There are times when our programming changes and we never know which assets need to be moved around and where,” says Elalem. “Those are pressure points where before, we would need significant time to receive that film. But we can now say to our executives, ‘go for it.’”
Flexible, easy-to-understand pricing
Oppen says MASV’s easy-to-understand, flexible pricing that includes pay-as-you-go, prebuys, and subscription options has been a godsend for WIFF.
“It was so easy to understand the pricing with MASV,” she says, adding that MASV’s pay-per-use and transfer credit options are perfect for a film festival’s seasonal schedule.
The Result: ‘After We Brought In MASV, I Was Always Relaxed’
Elalem says MASV has helped WIFF put its best foot forward when interfacing with partners thanks to the polished look of its upload Portal, ease of use, top-notch reliability, and straightforward pricing.
But of all the benefits MASV provided WIFF – from reliable, fast transfer to easy-to-use Portals – the organization says our custom development combined with super-responsive customer service stood out.
“The communication between us and MASV was: ‘We need this, but we don’t know how to achieve it,’” explains Oppen. “MASV was able to say, ‘we can help you,’ and get us what we needed. And that was hugely important to us.”
That has helped make both their jobs much easier – especially Elalem’s during the run-up to a packed festival schedule.
“The difference between the way I’d sometimes be in a panic back in 2023 versus last year was huge,” she says. “Because after we brought in MASV, I was always relaxed.”
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