We are looking for beta testers that will help us put the finishing touches on the application before the 1.0 release. If you are interested, please send an email to ipadbeta@mediasilo.com with your MediaSilo account name and contact information.

Final Cut Server On-Demand // Wednesday, June 16, 2010 1:00 PM EST

Sign up here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/410926008

• Multi-Location Source/Proxy Workflow
• Client-Selected Clip Selection and Sharing
• E-Commerce Solutions for Direct Delivery of Stock Footage

Learn how to expand Final Cut Server’s framework and XML architecture for content management and distribution in a cloud-based, on-demand workflow.  See the configuration options that will allow clients to request specific clips and receive assets in multiple file formats online, through the cloud, direct from FCS.

Audience: Production pros using or considering Final Cut Server solutions can see cost-effective solutions for cloud-based workflows.  The Final Cut Server cloud-based, on-demand system not only extends search functionality, but expands workflow and increases efficiency.  From anywhere in the world, users can review assets and add frame-accurate in and out points to create sub-clips.  Full or edited clips can be requested online and delivered in user-selected transcoded formats.  The FCS on-demand system is particularly attractive to companies looking to leverage existing assets and creating new revenue streams.

Presenters: Kai Pradel, CEO MediaSilo, Nicholas Stokes, XPlatform Consulting, Dan Green, BizDev MediaSilo

Sign up here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/410926008

First off, you can now view Activity on an asset by asset basis. Your full activity tracker is still available, but now when you right click an asset and select “View Activity” the activity pertaining to one singular asset is available. Very handy for filtering through many approval and viewing sessions.

Second, we have completely revamped our tagging system. Tags are now GLOBAL. What does this mean? It means that when you are adding, deleting, editing a tag you are able to view all tags available on your MediaSilo account. This way you no longer have to replicate tags that may exist in several workspaces. The tagging area to the left of your screen still exists but will now only display the active tags available for the particular workspace you are viewing.

Lastly, our Single Embed now comes with Options. Select a video in your workspace and click Embed to the right. Here you’ll see a familiar window that now has options for delivery, autoplay, and stretching.

If there are any questions or you are craving a MediaSilo refresher course please don’t hesitate to call us. We’ll even walk you through the revised QuickLink and Broadcast sections.

Enjoy the weather!

• Delivery Options – Choose to stream video or have it download progressively. If you work with long-form content (clips that are 10 mins or longer typically), users can now seek to random points to the timeline before the video is downloaded.
• Link Expiration – Links don’t expire by default, but you can now set an expiration date that invalidates the quicklink.
• External Emails – QuickLinks used to be reserved to users with MediaSilo accounts. Now you can enter external email addresses and share QuickLinks with anyone who has an email address.
• Require Password – If you’re concerned about Weblinks being forward, you’re now able to require passwords.
• Email Notifications – If you want to know when someone opens the WebLink you sent we now have an option for that. Just check the box and receive a notification email as soon as the WebLink gets visited.
• Download Option – A checkbox now lets you add the option to let users download the file. If you previously uploaded a custom CSS file for a branded WebLink page you can now apply your own styles to the download element.

With so much stuff going on around the iPad, NAB, and Final Cut Server workflows (more on that next week), we finally managed to push out a release with an updated Web Broadcast module. A beta has been seeded to selected accounts this morning and all users should have it by the end of the day.

What’s new:

• Simplified User Interface – We brought all channel related functionality down to a single screen. No more popup windows and a much more streamlined ui will make deploying much easier.
• Open Standard Players – We removed the MediaSilo proprietary players in favor of some open source favorites that are highly customizable. There is tons of documentation on customizing the players out there already, so no need to reinvent the wheel. We will be adding more player options in the future via presents, including the much requested HTML 5 player options.
• Support for Streaming – Switching between progressive and streaming (rtmp and rtmpt) is now as easy as selection the option from a dropdown. Especially long-form content producers will appreciate the ability to embed video clips and allow users to seek anywhere on the timeline.
• Secure Streaming Coming – Although this didn’t make it into this week’s build, it’s coming soon. Optional secure streaming adds the ability to stream via rtmpe with swf verification and MD5 hashed file names. If you don’t know what this is you probably don’t care.
• Standards Based Customization – If you know your CSS, you’ll be able to customize the new players with ease. The embed code now includes CSS that can be changed by you.
• More Control – Customize playlists to place them at the bottom, left, or right of the screen and choose dimension. We added a neat little option to have the player suggest dimensions to you based on the size of your videos and taking into account the various other elements such as the control bar or playlist.

As always, keep the feedback coming. User comments are critical in determining new features.

A couple of days ago we launched the MediaSilo iPad Web-Application (http://youraccount.mediassilo.com/dailies), and have received dozens of emails with feedback. Quite honestly, I didn’t expect the amount of excitement and positive feedback we received. The iPad has certainly struck a cord with folks in video production – and for a good reason.

As we continue to develop workflows and user experiences that leverage the iPad, I thought it’d be best to highlight a couple of things about our initial release:

• How to access the iPad App – Just add “/dailies” to your usual MediaSilo link. If your account is acme, then you would go to http://acme.mediasilo.com/dailies.
• Video Playback – If videos don’t in your workspaces don’t play back, they were most likely uploaded before we switched our encoding profiles. To have them re-encoded, just send an email to support@mediasilo.com. We’ll take care of it the same day.
• Workspaces Missing – If you don’t see all of the workspaces on the iPad, not to worry. The way mobile Safari implements scrolling lists is by requiring you to use two fingers to scroll through a list. Unfortunately, there is no visual clue to the user and we had a few folks wonder about that.
• Review and Approval – We received a few emails asking when we would add review and approval capabilities. The short answer is – soon. We are exploring the limits of HTML and are weighing which feature should be reserved for the native iPad application. That being said, if you have any feedback, please send us an email.
• Dailies as a workflow – The original idea for this application came out of a custom development project. In fact, the idea started out without the iPad in mind, which is why you can also use the dailies application with any other browser. If you are using your desktop, MediaSilo will switch you to a Flash video player. We plan on releasing more workflow-specific applications in the weeks and months to come.

If you are interested in sharing the presentation we used during our sessions, feel free to download it here (190MB).

Also, one lucky person will be getting a free 6-month Hollywood subscription from us. If that isn’t incentive enough to go, I don’t know what is!?

We implemented a fix in response to this issue and hope that Apple and the Final Cut Server team can address the issue on their end in an upcoming update.