Dailies to go: filmmakers want dailies hot off the telecine - Technology

Post, Sept, 2003 by Claudia Kienzle

"Not only can DMOD send digital dailies to multiple parties and global locations to facilitate review and approval our users can send any type of content--visual effects, crew sheets, edited versions, whatever media they want to share--with a high quality of service. Fast, easy media sharing results in more efficient project management and operational savings," Ohanian adds. The software is impervious to the content's type, frame rate, format, compression scheme, size or resolution.

DMOD's latest solution, the DMOD WorkSpace 3.0, is available as either an enterprise software package for behind the firewall applications or as an ASP service rented on a month-to-month project basis. DMOD solutions are in use at NYC's Sterling Sound and at LA-based film/video production studio MOSSync.

"Since our system is as easy as sending email, the key to making it work is providing very sophisticated encryption on the fly and media access control features that prevent piracy, especially during production," says Ohanian. "Our open systems solutions give users the ability to assign, restrict, revoke and control access to the content, even after it's been sent. With videotapes, people can simply pick them up and walk out the door, leaving the content owner powerless to control where or how they will be used."

But, DMOD includes user-friendly tools that enable users to define any conditions to media access, even after the recipient has viewed it. After the access is no longer required, it can be revoked, causing that file to simply vanish from the recipient's in-box. The control over that media continues even after the digital file has been sent, and an audit trail remains should the sender ever want to investigate which people were given access and export rights. Because of DMOD's highly secure, password-protected access, productions are now free to send electronic press kits, trailers, audio clips, marketing elements and other promotional items to distributors and the press.

REALTIME DIGITIZED MEDIA

"Whether the content was acquired on video or film, our Select Media Software facilitates dailies, works in progress and review and approval for creative collaboration by distributing realtime digitized media (a.k.a. data)--via DVD, CD, hard disk drives, databases, the Internet and more--along with timecode, simple audio and advanced metadata," says Mark Kapczynski, CEO of MESoft Partners (www.mesoft.com) in Burbank. "We like to say that we are all-digital from the set to distribution. Since this media is now digitized data, it allows us to transform it into the form necessary for input into an Avid or Final Cut Pro editing workstation. So it keeps the digital pipeline flowing, facilitating reviews, revisions and approvals. The solution pays for itself by reducing the time-consuming, costly process of laying media off to screening cassettes and keeping track of them."

Adds Kapczynski, "The whole philosophy behind our Select software product is to be flexible and to connect people, regardless of the disparate software, hardware or media player formats they prefer to use. Select is a media-independent collaboration system that is media format and platform agnostic."