We feature users stories on FCP.co that are small and large. This is a large one! Award winning adverting agency 72andSunny look after brands such as adidas, ESPN, Google, Starbucks and Samsung with Cantemo Portal and Final Cut Pro X.
The 72andSunny user story focuses on the integration of Cantemo Portal. It might be light on the images, but it is heavy on the facts:
Award-winning Advertising Agency, 72andSunny, which has made the top 10 of the Ad Agency A-list for the past couple of years, including being ranked as number one in 2013, was looking for a simple way to manage vast and growing catalogue of media assets.
The agency turned to Los-Angeles based media asset management consulting group, XPlatform Consulting, to help them find the right solution for a very specific set of challenges.
“With so much historical content and more being produced continually, we clearly need a way to make that manageable, searchable, and easy to share across our different offices.” - Casey Franks, Director of IT, 72andSunny
Evaluating the Market
72andSunny currently has more than 450,000 historical assets and more than 3 million files currently In production, ranging from editorial, print, motion graphics, sound design, and video assets. The agency needed a way to catalogue and manage those assets, making them easy to find.
At the same time, compatibility was a key concern, as the platform would need to manage assets across multiple storage platforms and geographical locations, whilst integrating seamlessly with Final Cut Pro X to ensure an efficient process.
72andSunny undertook a two-year analysis with XPlatform Consulting, evaluating all of the top Media Asset Management solutions on the market, to determine which would best fit their requirements. It was particularly important to identify a solution that was enterprise grade, based on open standards, and had a flexible API that would allow 72andSunny to integrate it with an existing internal file based workflow automation system.
Cantemo Portal was selected as it ticked all of those boxes, integrating with existing workflows, whilst providing an easy to use web based interface for easy search, and all in one solution. It also offered the best price for performance and was the easiest solution for a self-install.
“The evaluation was extremely thorough, looking at a whole host of important requirements, and Cantemo Portal shone through as the best solution to perfectly fit 72andSunny’s requirements, without the need to purchase additional equipment, such as servers.” - Nicholas Stokes, President, XPlatform Consulting.
2-Phase Integration
The project has two very distinct phases, the first of which is complete and was concerned with implementing Cantemo Portal and applying its functions to the 450,000+ historical assets.
72andSunny has 700 users worldwide, therefore the easy-to-use web interface of Cantemo Portal was vital to ensuring that the process of searching for individual assets is simple for any of those users, and accessible, regardless of geographical location.
72andSunny also have a number of files in different formats, therefore support for decoding and encoding those formats, including RED, Apple ProRes, and Avid DNxHD, was also crucial.
Of course, security is a key concern, especially for assets, which are yet to be approved. Therefore, outside of cataloguing its assets and providing search and discovery, Cantemo Portal need to provide enterprise authentication and authorization integration with Microsoft Active Directory (AD). Cantemo Portal allows controlled access to assets based on a users role of AD Group. It also provides 72andSunny’s IT administration with the ability to generate auditing reports on user access.
“The integration between Cantemo Portal and Aspera’s transfer service and file based workflow automation system allowed us to not only create a searchable catalog of all our historical assets, but also to implement automated workflow for distribution and archive.” - Casey Franks, Director of IT, 72andSunny
The second phase is still ongoing, with 72andSunny working to automate all in-progress files, of which there are more than 3million. Once complete this stage of the process will ensure that users within all offices will be able to share and review assets between themselves, as well as sharing with clients from within Cantemo Portal.
Customised Workflow
Ensuring a seamless, automated workflow was an important part of the project. 72andSunny wanted to ensure that assets could be automatically archived or distributed, making the manual process for its staff all that more simple.
Therefore, using Cantemo Portal, 72andSunny has developed its own custom workflows. It uses the file transfer service, Aspera Orchestrator, to ingest files into Cantemo Portal. Within Portal, the next stage is also automated, including cataloguing of those assets, inserting and extracting the specific metadata (for easy search), transcoding and distribution to Amazon S3 User Aspera Enterprise Server.
Integrating the production system was an important part of ensuring everything could be managed in one place. Therefore the Cantemo system has been integrated with Final Cut Pro X. The users can open a specific asset or project from within Cantemo Portal directly into the Final Cut Pro NLE software. Thanks to some clever automated import processes; annotations, rough-cut edits and metadata are all transferred along with the asset, giving users a complete overview of each individual item.
The production team are able to make any necessary edits and then save the project back into the MAM, complete with appropriate metadata and full media source tracking so they can easily find it again next time it is required.
Often it is required to deliver assets in different codecs for client review or final delivery, therefore users at 72andSunny use Portal to generate those files in different formats.
All About the Look
Naturally, for an Advertising Agency, especially one, which can count some high profile brands as customers (including Samsung, Google, Activision and Smirnoff, amongst many others), the look and feel was extremely important.
Cantemo Portal can be easily customized by the customer, which means 72andSunny has been able to create its own custom themes, which can also be tailored to each individual client where necessary.
“72andSunny delivers a great deal of high quality content for its clients, therefore automating the workflow for such a high volume of assets was extremely important, whilst ensuring they can easily find individual assets and deliver the right content to the right people at the right time. Cantemo Portal helps them do just that whilst creating their own customized look and feel in the easy-to-use web interface.“ - Parham Azimi, CEO, Cantemo
I am the Editor-in-Chief of FCP.co and have run the website since its inception ten years ago.
I have also worked as a broadcast and corporate editor for over 30 years, starting on one inch tape, working through many formats, right up to today's NLEs.
Under the name Idustrial Revolution, I have written and sold plugins for Final Cut Pro for 13 years.
I was made a Freeman of Lichfield through The Worshipful Company of Smiths (established 1601). Though I haven't yet tried to herd a flock of sheep through the city centre!
Current Editing
2020 has been busy, the beginning of the year was finishing off a new property series (cut on FCP) for Channel 4 called The Great House Giveaway. I also designed and built the majority of the graphics as Motion templates. It has been a great success and the shows grabbed more viewers in the 4pm weekday slot than any previous strand. It has been recommissioned by C4 for 60 episodes, including prime-time versions and five themed programmes. The shows have also been nominated for a 2021 BAFTA.
Although both were postponed to later in the year, I worked again on ITV's coverage of the Tour de France and La Vuelta. 2020 was my 25th year of editing the TdF and my 20th year as lead editor. The Tour was the first broadcast show to adopt FCPX working for multiple editors on shared storage.
BBC's Snooker has played a big part in my life, I've been editing tournament coverage since 1997. I'm proud to be part of a very creative team that has pioneered many new ideas and workflows that are now industry standard in sports' production. This is currently an Adobe Premiere edit.
Covid cancelled some of the regular corporate events that I edit such as trade shows & events. I was lucky however to edit, from home, on projects for Amazon Kindle, Amazon Black Friday, Mastercard and very proud to have helped local charitable trust Kendall & Wall secure lottery funding.
As for software, my weapon of choice is Final Cut Pro and Motion, but I also have a good knowledge and broadcast credits with Adobe Premiere Pro, MOGRT design and Photoshop.
Plugin Design & Development
I'm the creative force behind Idustrial Revolution, one of the oldest Final Cut Pro plugin developers. It hosts a range of commercial and free plugins on the site. One free plugin was downloaded over a thousand times within 24 hours of release.
I also take on custom work, whether it is adapting an existing plugin for a special use or designing new plugins for clients from scratch. Having a good knowledge of editing allows me to build-in flexibility and more importantly, usability.
FCP.co
Now in its 10th year and 4th redesign, running FCP.co has given me knowledge on how to run a large CMS- you are currently reading my bio from the database! Although it sounds corny, I am pretty well up on social media trends & techniques, especially in the video sector. The recent Covid restrictions has enabled live FCP.co shows online. This involves managing a Zoom Webinar through Restream.io to YouTube and Facebook.
The Future
I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, so please get in touch at editor (at) fcp.co. I've judged film competitions, presented workflow techniques to international audiences and come up with ideas for TV shows and software programs!
