I only noticed this because there is a particular .mp4 file that I use all the time when demonstrating MediaCloud which was one of those that stopped working on my iPhone and iPad after the upgrade. It is a trailer for the Summit Entertainment movie, “A Better Life”, which was encoded by 2G Digital Media specifically for a MediaCloud presentation at  Sundance 2012. It took some investigation to figure out why this was happening, and we uncovered some major differences in iOS device specifications when streaming compared to local playback. Streaming media plays back up to 1.6 Mbps versus up to 4 Mbps when playing back a file locally, as in progressive download. This is a pretty big difference, with the potential to affect the maximum quality (e.g. resolution and frame rate) of the playback. Note that this is a limitation of iOS; the file still plays perfectly in browsers on Macs or PCs. We found that to encode a single file to play anywhere including iOS devices, using an H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Level of 3.0 or 3.1 does the trick.

We’re now asking interesting questions about MediaCloud functionality and tradeoffs. Ideally we would like to have all the usability benefits of streaming without sacrificing quality or simplicity. One of our design principles is to keep MediaCloud simple so that it can be used in any workflow. We leave choices about encoding to the judgement of our members, who for the most part are sophisticated professionals. But we also have a strong desire for another kind of simplicity – that MediaCloud should “just work.”

What would you prefer? Should streaming from MediaCloud to iOS devices just work? We could do this by automatically creating an iOS-friendly proxy encoding every time you upload a file (much like Vimeo does). Or would you prefer that we leave you in charge of your own encoding (like we do now). Opening an even bigger can of worms…if we’re going to do encoding in the cloud, what other types of transcodes would be valuable to you? Please comment on this blog so we can get a conversation going.

These days practically everyone on the internet is trying to build a social network. The holy grail of every social network is to build “community” and to foster “conversations.” A friend of mine defines a community this way in his email signature: “An audience will watch you fail; a community will help you succeed.” On the TIG, requests for help and advice are responded to by a community of over 2,000 members. I’ve seen extensive conversations grow both from simple questions and from complex technical queries. By adhering to their own principles, TIG members keep the community positive.

Facebook, Twitter and the latest glitzy mobile-social apps may get all the press attention and hundreds of millions of users. By comparison, the TIGs mailing list and wiki may look pedestrian. But the quality of the community and conversations on the TIG, and the commitment to quality of TIG members is what matters. Attend is proud to support the TIG and those ideals.

The biggest thing to me is that we’ve got hundreds of members doing real projects on MediaCloud from feature films and documentaries to you name it. If by any chance you’re going to be at HPA, please drop by table 408. If you’re a MediaCloud member, please let me buy you a drink.

Cheers, Chuck

CEOCFO: Mr. Stormon, would you tell us the vision at Attend?

Mr. Stormon: The Entertainment, Advertising and Education industries are being transformed by digital video technology. The equipment needed to produce high quality content is so much less expensive than even five years ago that today millions of people participate in video content creation. Attend’s vision is to support today’s content creators through the power of cloud computing. Creating high quality video to tell a story is an inherently collaborative process that involves the creation of many huge digital files. Attend has developed MediaCloud.cc so that collaborators can share these huge files easily, securely and quickly via the cloud.

Designed to simplify collaboration for filmmakers, MediaCloud offers accelerated upload, download and streaming with secure cloud storage and file management so users can store and share video, sound, stills and other data with confidence and ease. MediaCloud is unique in accelerating downloads and uploads for files of unlimited size. Our members include independent filmmakers, videographers, post production firms, major studios and agencies.

CEOCFO: What are some of the challenges in the cloud for the type of storage that you are looking at and what have you figured out at Attend that allows you to address those challenges?

Mr. Stormon: There are three requirements for content creators. First is the system has to be easy and convenient to use for non-technical creative people. To that end, we have developed our Content Ingest Network, proprietary technology that accelerates uploads and downloads of very large files without requiring the user to know anything other than how to use a website. Secondly, content creators want their work to be secured. They do not want it to be stolen or downloaded before it is ready by anybody unauthorized. MediaCloud utilizes best in class security similar to what banks and the military use. Thirdly, with tight deadlines, content creators need to know that their work is available and that MediaCloud will be reliable. With MediaCloud, we’ve built a hybrid private cloud so that we can employ multiple redundant systems with backups to ensure the availability and reliability of our service.

CEOCFO: Are your potential customers embracing the cloud or are they still a bit leery?

Mr. Stormon: I would say we are at the very beginning of the development of this market. The people that are embracing MediaCloud are classic early adopters who have an understanding of technology and are not afraid to innovate. These companies actually want change and they are looking for a new solution. The mainstream has not yet adopted cloud, although at least one of the major studios is using already MediaCloud to make feature films. All of the other studios and the rest of the players in the industry are experimenting with how best to use the cloud as a viable and safe part of the production and post-production infrastructure.  We are now a year or two away from massive adoption.

CEOCFO: Where is Attend in developing and commercializing your product?

Mr. Stormon: We have announced general availability of Media Cloud for production use. Prior to that we conducted two extensive beta tests. The first beta test was launched in April at the National Association of Broadcaster Show in Las Vegas. We had about 115 companies test Media Cloud and all of its features and functions. We learned a great deal and made the product easier to use. We then ran a second beta test to make sure we had the feature set just about right. That second beta ran from June until the end of October during which we had about 160 companies trying out MediaCloud. At this point, we are confident that we have it close to launch and the customer feedback so far has been strongly positive.

CEOCFO: You announced that it is ready; how do you reach potential customers?

Mr. Stormon: Of course we will issue press releases, attend trade shows and pursue other normal marketing channels. However, one of the most interesting modes of growth that is open to us is the inherently viral nature of MediaCloud. Every time anyone uses it, they are sharing files with colleagues with whom they are collaborating on a project. Each of those collaborators has a tendency to say that it is a nice tool and ask how they can get their own. There is a very easy sign-up process of about eight seconds to get their own MediaCloud membership. This internet-enabled version of word-of-mouth may be the most efficient means to reach potential members.

CEOCFO: Is there much or any competition of which you are aware?

Mr. Stormon: We are early in the cycle but there is always competition. The number-one competition for a new technology is the way that people solve the problem today. It’s our job to show how MediaCloud is superior to the methods that are used today. The number-one method for sharing large files is to have everyone involved in the project present in the same facility sharing files around the same local area network. The second most popular method, if the talent and clients aren’t all in the same location, is to ship physical media like a hard disk drive or solid state drive by courier service. As primitive as that might seem to us when we imagine a fully internet connected world, where everything can be done easily in the cloud, today these are actually very viable things to do. One joke that I like to tell is, “you should never underestimate the bandwidth of a taxicab with a trunk full of hard disk drives.” Google is offering a one gigabit per second fiber optic connection to every person in Kansas City and Verizon is rolling out FIOS service nationwide. Given an adequate internet connection, MediaCloud eliminates the time, risk and cost of shipping media (or talent) from place to place. As more and more bandwidth becomes available at reasonable prices, MediaCloud becomes an attractive means to eliminate time and distance as barriers to collaboration.

CEOCFO: You personally have a considerable history in business, what are one or two of the most salient concepts you have learned over time that you are able to bring to Attend that will make a difference?

Mr. Stormon: I’ve spent much of my career in telecommunications and internet businesses, so my understanding of the network, strengths and limitations is certainly the key. I have also spent the last four years working with filmmakers, studios, broadcasters, and ad agencies to help them build out their infrastructures. I have had the opportunity to learn what is needed and to see what solutions are practical at this time. I’ve also had considerable startup success and learned many lessons over the years. I’ve published a book called, StartFast! on what I’ve learned, so I had better practice what I preach as we drive this company through the next stages of its development.

CEOCFO: Development and commercialization are expensive; does Attend LLC have the funding to move ahead through the needed steps?

Mr. Stormon: Yes we do. I am fortunate enough to have had enough success in the past to finance the early stages of the business. We have key industry partnerships that provide additional financial capability in addition to a number of significant venture capital and investment banking relationships I have developed over the years.

CEOCFO: Are there any features that you would like add which you think would be beneficial for the next steps?

Mr. Stormon: We have a very detailed product roadmap worked out in collaboration with our customers. MediaCloud is available worldwide, but it has the highest performance in the northeast US. We will expand our Content Ingest Network™ as customer demand drives us. We are taking it a step at a time, carefully making sure that we are supporting our customers’ needs. As far as the  user interface, we have a long list of requests for features, prioritizing the requests that make MediaCloud more convenient and easy to use. We are also interested in interfacing MediaCloud with other production tools to make the whole process of collaboration more seamless.

CEOCFO: Why should the business and investment community pay attention to Attend?

Mr. Stormon: We are a pure-play software as a service cloud business. Our strategy is to grow profitably within the media and entertainment vertical market and expand from there to advertising, education and other video-related markets. However, there is nothing about solution that is limited to video. There are opportunities to serve other verticals, which require the same kind of technology. These include medical imaging, product databases and other big-data problems.

Fast, simple, and secure MediaCloud.cc is accessible from any Web browser

Santa Monica, November 8 – Speaking at Cloud Computing West, Chuck Stormon, CEO of Attend LLC, a new entrant in the race to cloud-enable video production, announced that Attend’s MediaCloud.cc solution is now out of beta and available for production use.  Users can sign up for a free 30-day trial at https://www.mediacloud.cc/.  Membership in MediaCloud, with all features enabled, costs as little as $20 per month including 50 Gigabytes of storage. Customers can expand storage as needed.

Unlike online video platforms, MediaCloud is designed to do one thing extremely well – upload and deliver large video files efficiently.  “Simplicity and unlimited file size set MediaCloud apart.” noted Stormon, “Fast upload and download is another reason that MediaCloud is the preferred solution for sharing work-in-progress.”  Recipients of shared files don’t need to be MediaCloud members and receive data free of charge.

MediaCloud does not attempt to replace production tools running on workstations, laptops or SANs – it complements them. Filmmaker and MediaCloud user JD Marlow commented, “In the feature documentary world, we deal with very lengthy work-in-progress cuts that change frequently. After looking long and hard for a streamlined solution for sharing assets with other people on the project, we’ve chosen MediaCloud. MediaCloud gives us the flexibility to distribute secure links to our cuts. It’s simple and straightforward and has changed our workflow for the better.”

Stormon adds, “We’re excited at the response we’ve been getting from our hundreds of beta users, and feel that now is the time to make MediaCloud more widely available. I invite everyone to try MediaCloud and tell us what you think.” Attend currently operates MediaCloud from its secure data center in New York, giving users in the Northeast particularly fast upload/download speeds. MediaCloud is accessible from web browsers anywhere in the world.

Press inquiries:  Ilissa Miller, ilissa@imillerpr.com

Contacts: Attend LLC, PO Box 11, Cazenovia, NY 13035 USA;
Toll Free: (800) 565-4050, International: (212) 537-5915;
Twitter: @AttendMedia, www.attendllc.com, www.mediacloud.cc

Mike Bittle Advisory Board

Former Attend COO, Creator of The Bittle Code(sm) for growing Technology Businesses and Principal at M L Bittle New York, Mike Bittle has a long track record of wrangling leading edge technologies, with the grey hairs to prove it. From Aerospace/Defense R&D to Computing/Networking Mfg. to Media Creative Services, “It’s all the same math, really”, as far as Mike is concerned. The common thread Mike weaves throughout is great user experiences through human factors engineering, customer support and client-friendly business processes.

Nasir Ali Advisory Board

Executive Director of the Seed Capital Fund of Central New York and Managing Director of the StartFast Venture Accelerator, Co-founder and CEO of Upstate Venture Connect, Board member of the Upstate Venture Association of New York, Nasir Ali brings two decades of experience in corporate governance, venture capital, private equity and technology.

Sean Branagan Advisory Board

Director, Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Newhouse School, Syracuse University and CEO & eVangelist at Digital Vertical Marketing, Sean Branagan brings massive insight into the Internet managed services industry, including experience with CDN products and services, digital media, social media and marketing that spans academia, public and private corporations.

Well, it’s like your desktop.  You can resize any of the frames within the browser window by aligning the cursor over the border and click-hold-drag the borders to the desired position.  You can also hide/restore the left pane using the Left Pane button at the extreme left of the toolbar. There are function buttons on the toolbar which are duplicated by key commands of <control> or <option> (depending on your platform) to see a popup of available actions. Note there are different actions available to selections in different panes.  Some things only work on selections in the Folder pane on the left, others only work on the main pane in the center. You select/create various repositories (top level directories) with the repository drop down menu in the upper left corner (defaults to My Files). And there’s a full path navigation section below the toolbar and above the main pane for those who like noodling around the olde phasioned way.

Can I see what I have?

Of course you can. There’s an icon view for thumbnails that can be toggled by the display button on the toolbar. There are also viewers for images and video clips. When you select either a still or video image in the main pane, you’ll see the viewer/player display in the lower left pane. Oh, and if you don’t see a lower left pane, follow the instructions above for sizing panes and, voila, there it is. Let us know if you run into a file type that doesn’t display or play so we can expand the ever evolving list of supported types.

Can I upload a bunch of files at once?

Yes, there are a couple of options.  The Basic Upload is perfect for single files, or groups of files that will go in the same MediaCloud folder. You can drag and drop or use the buttons in the popup menu to prompt you through file location. Remember to keep the browser active (can be minimized) until the upload completes. Closing the browser window will kill the upload.  That’s how web apps work. What about uploading a complex nested folder structure all at one time? That’s the second option.  The Advanced Upload gives the additional functionality of uploading a complex nested file structure all at once. You’ll need to have Java enabled in the browser, and that can be an annoying bit to configure in some systems, but once you have that you follow the same drag and drop or button prompted file location process.  In addition you can pause/resume large uploads and you can observe progress and transfer speed. Oh, and don’t worry about file size, there’s no limit.

What do I have to do to take advantage of accelerated file transfer with MediaCloud?

Nothing. It’s built into the web app.  And it also works when you share files via email links to folks outside of MediaCloud. It doesn’t get max benefit when using outside ftp repositories, though. We can’t drill into other peoples systems on the fly to pull that off. Just have them join MediaCloud if you work with them a lot.

Can I share a file with someone who’s not a member of MediaCloud?

Absolutely not. ….Just kidding! Of course you can. You can share files as a stream or download.  You can set a time limit on how long the share is available. And you can assign a password. Here’s how it’s done.  First select the file in the main pane.  Then you can click the share button on the top tool bar (green icon, white interconnect image) and a popup will give you a place to set number of days until expiration (optional), password (also optional) and generates a link. You can click the letter icon and, if your mail app is accessible via the web browser, an email message template with the link prepopulated will pop up.  Edit to taste and send.  You can also create your own email, text message or tweet and paste the link there and send.

How can someone add a comment about file?

There is a Comment field for each file.  You can find it by selecting the file in the main pane and then looking a the lower left pane for Details about the file. You may have to scroll down within the pane to see the Comment field. Click on it and a popup window will present for you to type in a comment. At present it is only one field, so you if you open an existing comment, whatever you type is considered an update and will replace what’s there.

How do I find stuff I’m having trouble finding?

Easy, as long as its really there. If you look a the full path section below the toolbar and above the large pane, you’ll see an icon of a magnifying glass.  Click that and a search field presents itself that’s tied to whatever folder you have selected in the left pane. If you notice, on the right side you can select searching by filename or comments field (for example search for “approved”). Just remember to select the correct folder in the left pane or you may miss something that’s in a higher level or separate branch of the tree.

Can I move files to/from an existing ftp site?

Yes. Simply add a repository.  There’s a pull down menu on the upper left corner of the interface, under the toolbar and above the folder pane on the left side.  Selecting add repository kicks off a popup window to select ftp which in turn gives you a place to enter the ftp credentials of the site you want to connect to. By the way, let us know if there are other systems you connect to regularly. If they have an API, we can integrate them into your MediaCloud experience.

…and move/copy between repositories?

You can move or copy files between repositories using the copy and move buttons on the toolbar. Copy makes an additional copy to be placed in the new repository, move does not leave a copy on the originating side.  Just select the file in the main pane, then select the action in the toolbar.  Best practice is to move between folders that you are using for your own project organization, and copy when the destination folder is shared with others.

How do I get stuff back down once it’s up there?

The same way you got it up there…sort of.  There’s a button on the toolbar labeled….wait for it… Download. So after you select a file or group of files in the main pane, click the download button from the toolbar and you’re on your way.  If you click on a folder in the main pane and then click the download button, a zip file is created and downloaded all in a single seamless process.

I want to have a workspace available for a team member to upload and download files to/from?

MediaCloud was launched as a broad, independent, community based collaboration platform. The idea being that members could work on multiple projects with a variety/mixture of other members from a single sign-on. Team members outside the community can use the 30 day free trial to participate as well. We are looking at a Enterprise or Pro tier that would support private branding as well as a company account with employees/vendors/clients locked into a single account by company or project.  As we continue to evolve the features/pricing, we welcome any feedback in this area. Email support@attendllc.com

What if I want to do something you haven’t covered here?

Try it.  You won’t break anything.  And if you don’t get the result you expected email support@attendllc.com –  tell us what you want to do, and what happened that you didn’t expect.
And if all else fails, try:

1) refresh the browser,
2) restart the browser,
3) check to make sure all your system updates are up to date,
4) restart the system
5) try another system
anytime: email support@attendllc.com