The unique demands of the media industry have created an equally unique ecosystem. With high-resolution video constantly moving over the Internet during production, post production, and multi-device, multi-channel distribution, as well as the need for flexible storage and security at every stage — all under impossibly tight timelines — there isn’t another industry like it.

It’s not surprising then that technologies that work for some industries often don’t work the same in media, and cloud ingest is a great example. While there are plenty of tools for getting data into the cloud, professional media requirements are particular, such as:

• File sizes are enormous so fast, reliable uploads is fundamental;
• Video file specifications vary widely across the supply chain, so file validation against exact specifications is critical;
• Custom metadata entry is required to catalog and find video content.

Custom-built vs. out-of-the box software

In order to meet those needs, media companies that were early cloud adopters spent millions building highly customized ingest applications. Today, despite the large investment, many of those companies are abandoning them in favor of off-the-shelf solutions like Signiant’s Media Shuttle. With its simple, customizable user interface, built-in acceleration, metadata capture and pre-transfer file validation, Media Shuttle provides a customizable out-of-the-box cloud ingest portal that has become the choice for companies of all sizes.

Why do companies abandon a custom-built solution after investing millions? The economic benefits of off-the-shelf solutions are hard to ignore, and can cost less than maintaining and updating something that is custom built. Simply put, companies cannot afford custom solutions in today’s market, when cloud-native SaaS solutions like Media Shuttle provide major advantages.

7 advantages of SaaS cloud ingest portals

1. Multi-tenant architecture: The cost to build and maintain the solution is amortized or shared across many customers that are served via a multi-tenant cloud architecture.
2. Cloud services: With SaaS (Software as a Service), customers don’t have to worry about procuring hardware, deploying or managing software, running or monitoring servers, scaling up during peaks usage or updating software. Those services are automatically handled for you.
3. Cloud or on-premises ingest: SaaS solutions have the potential to be storage independent, allowing customers to choose storage location, whether on-premises or cloud, on a per portal basis.
4. File specifications: Media file specifications, formats and standards are central to managing professional media workflows. Features like Media Shuttle’s CloudSpex™ for pre-transfer delivery spec compliance and IMF-specific intelligence are basic needs for media professionals.
5. Metadata capture: Another basic need is the ability to easily capture metadata, which is critical for organizing and searching video file databases in cloud storage.
6. Evolving with the industry: SaaS typically contains instrumentation code that collects data on a product’s performance and usage, allowing engineers to respond to trends across the user base. In turn, customers benefit from a product that is evolving along with the industry.
7. Workflow driven: SaaS supports the ability to easily set up and take down an unlimited number of cloud ingest portals — based on teams, projects, clients and/or end-users — matching the event-driven workflows at the heart of media production and distribution.

Media Shuttle is the choice cloud ingest portal

Media Shuttle is the choice solution for media-specific cloud ingest portals, enabling companies to easily ingest content to AWS S3 and Microsoft Azure. The first SaaS solution on the market (2012) for accelerated large file transfers, Media Shuttle was developed with the media ecosystem in mind, supporting all seven of the above benefits and more. Today, Media Shuttle is used by over 400,000 professionals in over 25,000 business (large and small) in every country in the world and continues to drive the adoption of new standards and practices.