9 posts were split to a new topic: Power computing for video editing
A post was split to a new topic: What about something like a CDN for Steam/Epic/EA/etc?
I continued with a bit of research and tried to find more information who Storjlabs could talk to in that industry.
Letâs see, we have film studios, production companies for film and television and the distributors. Wikipedia has a list by country.
This is where cinemas basically get their movies from. But there are also service companies that offer solutions for cinemas including delivery of trailers, features and advertisement. And while delivery by HDD is still a thing, some have platforms already for delivering by satellite or broadband.
An example is Eclair Theatrical Services.
They offer various options for cinemas including a platform EclairPlay.
Or https://www.motionpicturesolutions.com/distributors/
Such companies need resilient data storage and data transfer capacity which is also secure at high availability to deliver to cinemas connected to their platforms. This sounds like the perfect target for offering Tardigrade as storage and transfer medium.
@jocelyn: Maybe to forward to your sales to help to get them going. Feedback would be appreciated as always.
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Wow @jammerdan very cool thank you! I have notified people internally. Really appreciate the suggestions. Everything we can do to let more folks know about the platform is always amazing and the suggestions from community are always extra welcome. Thaks for the links as well
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5 posts were split to a new topic: We should do a test next year on the max bandwidth tardigrade can handle sustained download
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I just read the last 50+ posts and I think that Tardigrade could be useful to film studios and production companies that edit raw footage across multiple geographic locations. It would allow all parties to have access to the files at a high speed without needing to have a local copy at every location. That means the movies could be edited in the US while special effects are made in Europe or something like that.
But I think that this can only work once Storj figures out how to scale the number of pieces according to the usage.
The marketing team could already contact studios and set them up a testing account so that they can start running some tests on the network.
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And donât forget the Chinese movie industry that is about to surpass Hollywood.
However I have no idea (yet) if and how China can be a market for Tardigrade.
I mean they have their own SAT, so why not offer them to store on Tardigrade too? lol
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@jocelyn: Here comes another huge list of potential partnerships from the content industry.
The idea was, how to get a foot in the door? The solution I came up with was to integrate with existing software that is used by media industry professionals. Either by integrating natively (similar to Filezilla integration), plugin/connectors or by becoming a storage partner.
For that it is quite interesting to look at what professionals from the industry are using and keep digging⌠
Now here are 3 software solutions that are used by absolutely professionals:
easyDCP Publisher and easyDCP Creator developed by Fraunhofer Institute is used to create DCP packages for the digital cinema. If a native Tardigrade integration or a plugin would be created, users could upload their media files seamlessly to Tardigrade for storage, sharing or distribution.
Next one is Blackmagic Designs DaVinci Resolve. It is being used in professional productions as well, as an article in the AWS Media Blog proves. The article even gives some more backgrounds how Covid-19 has also affected the media industry in the need of cloud storage and cloud collaboration solutions. I even came up with another idea after readingâŚ
The DaVinci forum shows there is the need for cloud storage solutions from their clients.
Blackmagic Design offers various SDKs for their products and a developer community. This could be an approach for a Tardigrade integration or a connector.
3rd one is Avid, offering different software solutions, some with cloud integration/readiness others ready for becoming a developer with them either for native integration or build tools for their professional users.
Now that research led me to some interesting quotes from what professionals are using. And even if this one is a bit dated, it gives an interesting insight:
For DCPs and Prores files that will be used at film festivals I work for I use Filemail, SFTP, Amazon S3 and IBM Aspera
Sounds like the kind of professional to which Storj should advertise the Tardigrade service, huh? 
But this all took me to the very interesting companies, Storj could directly contact to become a storage partner. Letâs start with IBM Aspera. According to the document OpenStack Swift (v 1.12) for IBM Cloud and Rackspace, Amazon S3, Windows Azure BLOB, Akamai NetStorage, Google Storage, and Limelight Cloud Storage are validated for usage. Wasabi claims it has been validated as well. In the document IBM claims
Aspera continually adds support for new third-party storage platforms as market demand is demonstrated
IBM Aspera can be contacted here.
Second one is Masstech with their solution Kumulate for the hybrid cloud. Storj should contact them and apply for becoming a partner.
3rd one is Lucidlink with their Cloud Nas Solution. Storj should try to become a partner and contact them.
Partnering with these companies could be really beneficial. To give an idea what massive amounts of data the IBM Aspera solution is used to deliver this article is very interesting: Itâs a game changer that will allow us to manage an estimated 250 terabytes of content.
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Your research is awesome !
I donât have anything to add but I just wanted to thank you for all the work you put in researching this stuff.
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Thanks. Honestly before looking closer into this I was not even aware of how much data that industry produces. It is unbelievable. And we are talking mostly about Hollywood. But there is also âBollywoodâ and the Chinese media industry. If Storjlabs happen to partner with some of them the usage would/could explode. And then there is also endless TV productions that need storage solutions.
While certainly Tardigrade is not suitable for every usage, I believe it could become some interesting backend storage in one way or the other. The cloud is a big thing for this industry and Tardigrade could have its fair share. Maybe it would need some more tailoring especially for this industry. But the demand seems to be huge and maybe worth it.
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I can only imagine how much data mega youtubers like Linus Tech Tips generates with keeping all of their production data. I think one of their more recent things they have something like a PetaByte of on-site storage now and theyâre still growing.
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Problem with those is probably they donât keep it in the cloud but on local hard drives. We need use cases that appreciate cloud upload, storage and download.
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I mean maybe theyâd like to offload their older stuff though? I mean thereâs a certain point where OpEX or âslot taxâ starts to outpace using cloud solutions.
Yup. But I always ask is would a potential customer be interested in paying for AWS S3? And I guess most Youtubers are not. But thats just my thoughts. I have no experience with Youtubers. Do you think they keep their stuff they have uploaded? I really have no idea.
Yes youtubers keep all there own data and use youtube as a backup because that is where all there finished edited videos are stored.
It would be far to expensive to store data on a cloud network for a youtuber because the costs are higher then if they wanted to host the data themselfs because its alot easier to pull your data on your own network to edit it then it is to upload your content and edit it on the fly from a cloud server. It doesnât make alot of sense.
I mean a few that Iâve seen that do local stuff and niche things⌠their âbackupsâ were powered off USB drives that were âon saleâ at the time with usually either a sticky note or nothing on them explaining what they contain. One of them I know was going to do a 5 year review of a project that they did a vlog about at the start and they found the drive that was suppose to have it seized up and not even spinning (near a radiator for several winters wasnât kind). So yea, I hear you on the easier and cheaper, but âthat guy that knows how to fix computers and stuffâ always nudges them to do better than black box of storage.
Mmm⌠or the people that burn CD/DVDâs and then stack them without being on a spindle or write whatâs on them.
I used to be this guy back in 1999 stacks and stacks of burned cds on spindles and cases that hold 5000 cds in plastic sleeves. Still have them btw never once have I even loaded any back up cause none of my pcs have CD Roms anymore.
But youtubers probably will never store there data on any cloud servers I worked with a few of them in Canada and I can tell you none of them have any idea about computers or even know what a NAS is and how it could make there lives so much better, I would never recommend using cloud storage for them less they have to transfer the data to someone else to edit for them but thereâs so many free ways to do this though. I honestly wish storj could convert videos on the fly though I convert so many videos on a daily basis.
i know people type LOL but I actually did laugh out loud when I saw that . Its true, thats very common. Its unfortunate that most of the people doing that really believed they were taking all reasonable precautions. I guess thats a good thing, insofar as it means people had the correct instinct. But the execution of the concept lacks finesse.
If anything, I guess this thread demonstrates that we have room for lots of different kinds of applications to be built on top of the platform.
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