On this episode of Crew Talk, we talk with Craig about the new and upcoming platform Suite Studios – a cloud based platform for easy and accessible workflows for all post production studios.
Panel:
Transcript from Crew Talk
Sarah Marince:
Hello, everyone. Happy Wednesday. Welcome to crew talk brought to you by Shoots.Video. I’m your host today, Sarah, and I’m glad to be back with you. It’s been a few weeks but I’m very excited to be here and to be with our two guests today. We have Craig and Edward. Hey guys,
Sarah Marince:
Thank you so much for being here. We have of course our list of questions today, but before we dive into any of that or introductions, I just want to let everybody who is tuning in to know if you have any questions throughout the webcast, feel free to drop them in the Q&A box. And we will definitely get to them whether we answer them personally, or we talk about them on the webcast, we will definitely get to your questions. And I guess we’ll just start with some introductions. Craig, do you spend tell us who you are, where you are and just a little snippet of what you do?
Craig Hering:
Absolutely. Sarah, thanks. So yeah, my name’s Craig herring. I’m the CEO and co-founder of a company called Suites. We’re based in Boulder, Colorado, and we’re making cloud-based workflows really easy and accessible for all post production studios.
Sarah Marince:
Awesome. Well, I’m excited to dive into that in a little bit, because it’s something I don’t know a lot about Edward. Hey,
Eduard Stinga:
Hey, thanks for having us. Yeah, I’m Edward from Hungary and I’m a YouTuber. I make tutorials about video editing and animation, and I’m a founder of a company called Videoplasty, which is basically an online marketplace for stock animation and stock gif images.
Sarah Marince:
Very cool. And from what you were saying earlier, you have a pretty nice following on YouTube for your tutorials.
Eduard Stinga:
Yeah, it’s definitely, it’s definitely growing. I mean, I never imagined myself as being a YouTuber, but I guess at this point I can, you know, say I’m not a YouTuber. It’s definitely going well.
Sarah Marince:
Awesome. Well, very cool. Well, Craig, let’s dive into your world a little bit first. Do you have sweet studios? So you kind of told us a little bit about it. Do you want to just dive in and give us like the full view of what sweet studios is?
Craig Hering:
Yeah, absolutely. So there’s basically all this technology out there that unfortunately, a lot of creatives aren’t really aware of. So for really when it comes down to is shifting the post-production process itself. So the actual editing color grading, VFX work, whatever that might be to these cloud-based workstations in to the cloud fully, rather than just using the cloud as a as that like transfer step like cloud storage, Dropbox, Google drive, actually moving that editing process to, to that cloud based location. And it really creates this new kind of world of possibilities for post-production studios, whether it’s how they’re collaborating, whether it’s the actual technical kind of, you know, CPU and performance kind of requirements that they need or whether it’s just how they’re storing their files. It really kind of opens that up. And that’s, you know, what we’re doing is really making that easy for studios who don’t have that technical know-how, who don’t have these it salaries on board to actually make that shift and do so easily. So they can benefit from the, again, the benefits that come from that type of workflow.
Sarah Marince:
So are you kind of taking out a middle step or like a middleman in the whole process? Right.
Craig Hering:
So kind of, so really, I guess what you’re taking out is most studios are very familiar with again, like when it comes time to share assets, right? They’re either shipping hard drives through the mail or they’re probably again, uploading it to, let’s say Google drive, then someone on the other end is downloading that. So really removing the need to have that transfer staff and it changes it now it becomes a, Hey, the files are on your cloud-based workstation. I don’t need to mail those to you. I don’t need to transfer those to you. You can just access that with a sign in and have whether it’s a terabyte 50 terabytes, it doesn’t really matter. You can have immediate access to all those files. And then again, removing that, that whole step for how studios are working with their team members.
Sarah Marince:
Oh, okay. Very cool. So what was holding back post-production studios from switching to cloud based workflows and like what’s
Craig Hering:
Yeah, so there’s two big ones. Definitely the biggest was even a year ago the stream quality of this basically of just when you’re accessing these workstations was just not there. So let’s look at, you know, early 2020 the stream would have latency. It wouldn’t feel as smooth as it does on local computers and when you’re creating video content animation content, that experience has to be really, really good. Right? So basically in that last, let’s call it a year and a half that’s drastically changed where now you’re looking at 4k streams, you’re looking at 60 frames per second. The color is perfect. And, and that’s really allowed this to this new shift to really start happening where now studios don’t have to compromise between having a smooth experience and also having a smooth way of sharing files between, between everyone on their team.
Craig Hering:
And the second aspect of that is really internet speed. So when you’re talking about 4k files, AK files uploading those let’s, you know, a few years ago, especially as, as internet, maybe wasn’t especially fiber, right, as available as it is now would be a challenge. So getting files up to a cloud-based workstation while the Cod workstation is great. If it takes three weeks to upload those files, it’s not a usable, right? So now with that, that kind of access, especially with 5g starting to come out it’s now almost comparable to shipping a hard drive. So if you’re in a location with a solid internet it’s probably faster than shipping a hard drive. So now you get, you can get those files to that end location quicker. And then also you get all these benefits after that. So those are kind of the two things that were holding the shift back, and now they’re kind of the fading away day by day. So
Sarah Marince:
Very cool. I guess I didn’t realize people still like shipped hard drive. Like I that’s, to me that sounds very old school to do because you don’t really mail anything anymore, but okay. So that’s, that’s neat. I didn’t know that, but Edward, what are your thoughts on this? Your take on sweet studio?
Eduard Stinga:
Yeah, actually, actually I’m really curious about how all of this works, because it sounds very interesting like from a technical point of view, I’m wondering, I mean, first of all, like what sort of software do you guys support it? I think it’s from what I’ve seen, like DaVinci resolve, maybe something from Adobe. And also from my side as, I guess not a big story, but like a smaller producer, right? Just a YouTuber with a, you know, an editor as well on the side. I’m wondering, you know, if you have, at first, if you have any plans to introduce final cut pro at some point and second, and I guess we’ll get to that later. Like I’m curious exactly how this sort of thing works, like to install like a plugin in your, you Vito editing software, or are you like literally streaming the image kind of like a Google stadia from video editing,
Craig Hering:
If that makes sense. Got it. Yeah. So, so I’m going to actually start with what the actual product is and how it actually works. So once you sign into suite, you’re presented with a dashboard to manage this cloud-based workstation, that’s yours, it’s private to you. I’m talking like starting and stopping that workstation, changing the settings of that, right? So once you actually are inside the workstation, conceptually speaking, it’s very similar to how a remote desktop works, right? So remote desktop, most people are familiar with that. And basically it’s accessing another computer from a computer in a different location. Conceptually it’s very similar. I kind of hate using this example because the performance is quite different. But basically what you’re doing is you’re streaming a full on windows machine that is cloud-based instead of streaming a desktop that’s in a room somewhere. And again, the streams like great quality and the experience is really fluid, but once they’re inside that cloud-based workstation, you have basically full capabilities to do whatever you could do on a regular PC.
Craig Hering:
So if you want to install Adobe, you can do that. If you want to install the Vinci, you can do that. If you wanted to go on YouTube and just watch YouTube videos, you totally could do that, but it’s not really what it’s designed for. Right. so yes, you can install really any software plugins, lots, again, really whatever you want, it’s your computer to use as you will. And then the reason why we currently don’t support final cut is Mac is basically windows is definitely leading the whole workstation. Let’s call it like a movement, right? So windows and PCs, there’s a lot of different ways that you can set up and configure these, unfortunately right now with apple the only comparable, if you will type computers that they’re offering in the cloud are Mac minis. So for a lot of video work, it’s not it’s just not performing enough to make that switch, which is why currently we aren’t supporting final cut that said, I’m a Mac person, myself, I’m on a Mac.
Craig Hering:
And fortunately we do have some Mac friendly kind of features here. So one of the things we can do is it’s very easy. You can toggle it yourself is like reroute all the keyboard shortcuts to be Mac friendly. So instead of control C being copy it’s command C and so forth. So once you’re actually inside Adobe, for example, it’s going to feel very much like you’re on your local computer. Most of the times when I’m on Adobe, on suite, I forget them even on this cloud-based workstation. And a big part of that is because you can like reroute everything. So it, it feels friendly. But yes, that is why we don’t currently support final cut. However, as advances are made there and we can start adding support for more powerful Mac instances. We’ll, I’m sure be making that kind of improvement in switch there.
Eduard Stinga:
Yeah, well hopefully with the new [inaudible] one max and then one pro that just came out. I mean, I’m actually literally waiting right now for an, a Mac mini with a M one chip. Apparently it’s gonna be good enough for editing and final cut pro and doing 4k vetoes and anything like that. So yeah. You know, hopefully soon enough you’re going to be able to implement something like that. So I guess then this is basically kind of like, I don’t know if you’re familiar, but I just discovered it like last year, something like Google stadia, for example, where you can kind of play videos in the cloud and like, doesn’t matter what sort of computer or laptop you’re on, because you’re basically just streaming just the image, but the whole thing runs in, you know, on Google’s cloud. Yes. And I guess what you’re doing is exactly the same thing, but just for
Craig Hering:
Yeah, exactly. And that’s why I like throwing that example out. Right. It’s spot on a lot of there was some gaming companies too that were doing this for gaming. Again, so it’s the same, same world. Same technology is just how you’re applying it. And I think the biggest difference comes down to that stream quality. So a lot of these other companies doing it for whatever, you know, different industries a lot of these other industries don’t require a like super low latency stream. And that’s where for again, creating like this visual content and videos, it’s really important to have that stream feel as close to a does as can be to your local machine. Right. so that’s something that we’ve been putting a lot of, lot of focus and effort towards is getting that to feel like, like you’re working on that local computer.
Sarah Marince:
So do you need like crazy fast internet to use this?
Craig Hering:
So, yeah, so it’s, it’s funny. So a lot of people think that a lot of people, when, when we actually like first talk to them about what we’re doing, like, oh, this is great, but there’s no way I could, you know, send red code red raw files right through my network. It’s not fast enough. But no, you actually don’t need to have blazing fast internet. So all you’re really doing again is, is streaming that workstation like a video right down to your local network or to your local computer. So what we like to tell studio simply is like, if you can stream Netflix, you can probably if workstation, right. And then to get a little more specifically, we like to place that kind of like lower barrier at around like 20, 25 megs down. So if you’re looking at a download speed of around there, you’re going to have a pretty smooth experience, anything over 40 and your experience is going to be great. So you don’t need to have like two gigs down or some crazy advanced and fast network to actually utilize this, which is, which is awesome. I actually funny story. I actually was in Jackson hole last year and we had terrible wifi at our Airbnb. I actually was able to access suite and like use one of the workstations from a hotspot on my phone. Cause the service was actually pretty good. So yeah, you don’t need to have this kind of crazy internet.
Sarah Marince:
It’s good to know. Can you kind of share an example of how a studio’s workflow would change by using suite or like if you have a specific example?
Craig Hering:
Yeah. So there’s a lot of different ways studios are using this technology. I think one of the big ones and something that impacts a lot of studios is especially now, right. We had obviously COVID-19 in COVID was, was just crazy with the industry. Every teams are now like remote and for this industry, it was for some studios, especially, it was very hard to do that. So the way it changes right, is now, you know, let’s, let’s just run through an example. So you’ve got a, a video project going on, you have this videographer somewhere shooting this project, he has all the assets, he has to get those assets to your studio. So right now, again, shipping a hard drive, maybe he’s uploading them to Google drive or something. Then after that happens, your studio is probably going to back up those assets and then you’re going to get them in the hands of an editor and assistant editor, right.
Craig Hering:
And that handoff process maybe happens three or four times, right. Audio color, and so forth. What changes with suite is now once you make that initial transfer, so going back, you have this videographer that shoots his project. He has all the assets rather than uploading them to Google drive, to be downloaded somewhere else, or rather than shipping a hard drive. He can just upload them directly to that again, that cloud-based storage location. And now it’s like, you know, Hey Sarah, all the files are exactly, you know, on the workstation where you need them. And now it’s as simple as you going in and actually signing into the workstation and you have immediate access to all those files. So if it comes time to hand them off to Edward to do the color or something on this project, you can just do that same thing and say, Hey, here’s the login or here’s access to the, to the project. He can join. And he’s going to have immediate access to that. So you take out all of those transfer steps and it really opens that door there. And that’s pretty, that’s probably the biggest and most obvious way that like studios, how it’s kind of changing how they’re working is it just makes that handoff a pretty instantaneous,
Eduard Stinga:
Sorry. So I guess then multiple people can use the exact same word.
Craig Hering:
Exactly. So right now it’s set kind of arbitrarily at four. We can change that, but yeah, right now you can have four people in a workstation at the same time. So what’s cool is especially right before COVID, when studios were maybe more locally based, you’d have a couple of edits suites and then you’d have producers and they’d go in with the editor and like watch over their shoulder and give feedback and everything. That way what’s cool is now you can have that same exact capability, but you can be across the country or in different states or wherever. And you’re both going to be looking at the exact same screen at the exact same time. And then if, if someone else wants to try something or take control rather than saying, Hey, I don’t like this and trying to walk them through it, you know, with their, with their words, they can just say, Hey, let me drive real quick, grab the mouse, take control and do what they want to do. So it becomes really instantaneous there.
Sarah Marince:
That’s pretty cool. It’s making, working from home even
Craig Hering:
Easier. Exactly. Yeah. And, and everybody
Sarah Marince:
Wants that.
Craig Hering:
Yeah. And I remember the first time you know, back when we were, were starting this, we basically got this proof of concept together and I was in Florida at the time. And my brother who’s, our CTO was in Colorado and we were actually editing B raw black magic 4k project in real time together across the country. And it was like the coolest thing, because it was again, just like so fluid and it just worked really well. So definitely like a new it was, it was the first time I’ve experienced something like that, which is really cool.
Sarah Marince:
That’s awesome. We have questioned, and I don’t understand this. So if I mess this up, sorry, but the sweet have its own N L E for editing, or are users able to install their preferred software? Got it is explain that.
Craig Hering:
All that’s really referring to right. Is like the editing software, like Adobe DaVinci, all those types of tools no suite does not have its own Annalee and Edward kind of address this, right. Is you can install basically any software you want. So yes, and that was really important. There are some cloud-based solutions out there that are doing something similar to what we’re doing. But most of them have their own kind of editing platform and an NLE, right. That they’re actually basically forcing their users to use. And as like, I I’ve been on Adobe for over 10 years now, a lot of creatives have their, their tool that they love using for XYZ parts of their projects. And that was something that we didn’t want to kind of force people to switch out of. Adobe, DaVinci, they’re all very good at what they do. So yeah, exactly. You can install an end use, whatever tools you want.
Sarah Marince:
Is this a membership type thing? Like, are there different tiers? Like how does it work on the user side?
Craig Hering:
Got it. Yeah. So basically there’s like two factors to this, so there’s a monthly subscription to the actual platform. So you get access to that dashboard and to your workstation. And then you also really, what, what that breaks down to is how much storage do you need as a, as a user. And that’s kind of, you know, decides how much that’s gonna cost for you to actually like subscribe to it’s not like a contract or anything like that, again, it’s very month to month. And then the other kind of aspect is you have this cloud-based workstation and because it’s in the cloud, you can scale your CPU resources. So this is something we haven’t actually really dove into yet, but basically you can have, Hey, I’m going to turn on my workstation and it’s going to be equivalent to like a $4,000 editing desktop, or, Hey, this project’s really, really heavy.
Craig Hering:
It’s tons of CGI, tons of VFX. I need a lot more power for this. I’m going to use a $12,000 workstation or a computer right now for this project. And it’s always going to look and feel exactly like it does or like it was right. So if all your files are going to look the same, everything’s going to be exactly as you left it, it’s just going to now have more resources attached to that. So that’s the second piece. This is basically you have the control to use whatever level you need for your projects. And then there’s just a different cost basically associated with dependent on what level workstation you’re actually using.
Eduard Stinga:
Yeah. Nobody mentioned the cost. I’m curious, like how, how does that work? I mean, you said you can like turn on a very high level, like $12,000 desktop, like, is that like for the full month or like, is it just for a day or how does pricing work for that?
Craig Hering:
Yeah, absolutely. So right now we have three kind of different options you can choose. So it’s, it’s, it’s kind of funny how he named them. It’s pretty pretty straightforward. It’s fast, faster and fastest. So basically the, the fast workstation is really good for most 4k work, especially if you’re using like an efficient codec, like brr or something like that. And it’s billed hourly. So it it’s technically built to the second, but the way we kind of relate this is, is it’s an hourly rate. So that workstation, you’re looking at $2 and 80 cents an hour. The next workstation up is really for like six K eight K type work, heavier VFX type projects that jumps up to $6 an hour. And then that next workstation up is four. We’re talking like unreal engine, cinema, 4d, really heavy VFX, 3d rendering type stuff.
Craig Hering:
And that is just over $9 an hour. So basically the way it works is you turn on these workstations, you only get charged again. It’s like per second for when those workstations are running. And then as soon as you shut that off, you, you basically stopped getting charged for that. Right. So for a typical, like one, two day 4k type project, you’re probably looking at like 30, 30 or so dollars to like use this platform which is in the grand scheme of a production budget. Generally speaking pretty, pretty small. So that’s, that’s kind of how it breaks down.
Eduard Stinga:
Okay. So I’m curious, like how does that work then on top of the, I mean, I’m looking at the website right now and I see something with like a hundred dollars a month. Is that just like a membership for like the storage, I guess like one terabyte of SSD storage and on top of that you can get turned on and off whatever sort of workstation you need.
Craig Hering:
Correct. Yeah. So that’s that monthly part I was talking about. So basically the question is, right, how much storage do you need on this workstation? And there’s a, if you will, right? Like a, a cloud-based SSD attached to that workstation. So how big do you need that to be? And that’s where that monthly kind of fee comes in. And again, it’s, it’s really flexible if you need to like adjust that scale up or down, we can like very easily do that for you. So it’s kind of those two factors.
Sarah Marince:
I had a question cause I don’t think we’ve covered this. And I was just curious, when did you guys launch?
Craig Hering:
Yeah, so we, we officially started back in let’s call it early spring of last year. And then we we basically, I was still at a production studio in Florida at that time. I moved out to Boulder, Colorado, April of this year. And at that point we switched full-time we closed a fundraising round in June of this year. And now, now we’re full-time so we’re still technically in beta. What we mean by that is studios. Can’t just go to the site and sign up, were being very very much hands-on with studios that are using the platform right now, really. So we can learn and really work with studios to kind of develop this, to be exactly what they need rather than what we think they need. So that’s something we’ve, we’ve been stressing from the beginning in early of next year. We’ll probably start looking at you know, getting into that core product. And that’s when I would really say like, we’ll be our full launch.
Sarah Marince:
Okay. So you see, you’re kind of like vetting studios who you’re working with right now. So if a studio wants to like get on with you guys and use this in your beta testing phase, what are you looking for in a studio or what should they kind of bring to you?
Craig Hering:
Yeah, absolutely. So a big thing is how the studio is currently set up. So if, if you’re a studio that has remote workers are remote, you know, whether it’s freelancers, whatever that looks like that’s, that’s normally like a big check, right? We’re really looking for these studios that are remote studios that are still shipping hard drives or using Google transfer, you know, some sort of file transfer services. If you’re, if you’re in that kind of world, there’s a very good likelihood that suite would be a great fit for you. And that’s one where, you know, those are the studios. I would say that, that we get really excited about just because they’re the ones that are experiencing the pain the most, if you will. Right. So it, it’s not to say we, we totally for lack of better words, ignore other studios.
Craig Hering:
Right. It’s more, so those are the studios that are really in that again, that like initial kind of target that we’re, that we’re looking at. And then kind of, you know, going out, out from there as studios, again, maybe, maybe you’re not fully remote, but you have projects where you’ve got remote team members, or maybe you have a really tough time with having enough CPU power to, to render out these projects and whatnot. Those are all like things that, that make something like sweet really beneficial to you as a studio. So those are kind of the studios where we’re looking for and talking to you right now.
Sarah Marince:
Okay, cool. We have a question from Vincent. Hey Vincent, thanks for tuning in today. He said, how would editors approach customization and using local peripherals like wa.com, tub, razor, keypads, mice multi-monitor workspaces and color grading decks, except,
Craig Hering:
Yeah. So the easy answer to this question is pretty much if it’s USB based like I know wacko wacko is obviously like mouses keyboards, generally speaking are it integrates very easily with suite multi display, I think was another, I’m going to go back and open this question up, like Mo yeah. Multi monitor workspaces. We support I believe right now it’s up to three monitors. Again, we could probably toggle that, but you can totally have like a full screen preview on one, your color scopes or something on another, and then the timeline on your main. So all that’s relatively straightforward right now. If it’s not USB, I’d say reach out and talk to us, there may be something that, that we could, we could do. But generally speaking, if it’s USB, you can assume it’s going to work pretty well.
Sarah Marince:
Okay, cool. So you’re relatively new and it’s going well. And, you know, we’ve kind of talked about a lot of the features of sweet studio today, but what is, or what are, is like one or multiple like of your favorite features or things that people should know when they’re using sweet studios?
Craig Hering:
Yeah. I think my, my, like my favorite thing about there, I think it’s kind of comes into two areas. One is the I think a lot of studios have tried something similar to this. Maybe it was three years ago. Maybe it was last year. Maybe it was five years ago. I don’t know. They’ve tried something similar. And at that time maybe it was a, again, the company or just the techno like limitations of technology at that time, they had a bad experience. And that’s something that was really, and is really, really critical for this type of work. So the, one of the things I love about this is I very, very frequently forget I’m on a cloud-based computer and workstation when I’m editing on suite, which is for me, like the best case scenario, right. I want it to feel like I have this beautiful Mac book in front of me.
Craig Hering:
I want it to feel like I’m on that just with better, you know, better power. So that’s, that’s a big one. And then the second thing that’s I think is, is one of the coolest aspects is really collaborating and how that changes, how you work. So being able to invite someone in, even if it’s just for review or whatever, and being able to have them get their hands on the project in a minute, rather than have to go through a shipping hard drive process or a asynchronous like, Hey, I’m going to comment on the timeline, or I’m going to send you time code notes, and then you can do all this work and send it back. And hopefully it’s what I was hoping rather than have to go through that whole guessing process. Being able to just say, you know, Hey, assistant editor, Hey producer. Here’s what, I’ve what I’ve done. Like, come check this out and, you know, do you agree with this? That’s really cool. And a totally new kind of capability for studios. So that’s, that’s probably my favorite aspect about what we’re doing.
Eduard Stinga:
Yeah. Honestly, for me as well. I mean this whole collaboration, you know, like opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Cause like I remember, you know, not until long ago, like trying to work on the exact same project with like another person, like editing and me, like coming into like do the final touches. Like we kept sharing project files back and forth. But then at some point, like we started using like a shared Dropbox folder, but even then, like, you know, I make a couple of edits for example, and you know, it’s a big project with like big you know, large file sizes for the footage. They didn’t have to wait for it to upload to Dropbox then, you know, on the other person’s computer, it’s saying, so it takes like forever to go back and forth. But I mean, with something like this, because you just stream it and it’s all like both of you get access to the exact same computer in the cloud. It’s amazing. Cause it’s literally instantaneous and I love it. Like, I mean, I, I still use final cut pro I did use Adobe for like, I don’t know, close to 10 years. And then I decided to check final cut. Just give it a couple of months and see if I like it. And then I just completely made the switch. So I would be really excited if you guys actually managed to somehow figure out the, the issue with the max and introduced that as well. Yeah,
Craig Hering:
Yeah, absolutely. And like, I mean, I was a creative director at a studio and I remember I actually have a picture of it somewhere. I think it’s on my phone, but I remember one of the things like walking into my office and seeing 70 hard drives with sticky notes on them of like, oh, this is going to this person and this is client ABC. And it’s just like, this is 2020. We have some crazy technology out there where like putting cars into space or whatever we’re doing. Right. And like, I still have sticky notes on hard drives and that’s the best way to manage this and work with teams across the country. It was just like a huge headache. So being able to remove all that and just have, have access to what you need when you need it is, is really cool.
Sarah Marince:
So what was, you said, I forget what you just said you were doing before you kind of launched this, but was your job before, like kind of what sparked the idea and like I’ve gotta figure out a better way to do this.
Craig Hering:
Yes, pretty much. I pretty much am. Or I should say I was kind of, you know, working out a studio that we’re trying to help right now. So I was a creative director at a studio in south Florida. We were doing a variety of different projects ranging from corporate docs commercials. We had a, a TV show with like Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Quaid. So we were doing some pretty, pretty quality work there. And when I, I remember like I was there for about five years and initially I was like, oh, this is this whole hard drive issue. And this whole like workflow issue is probably isolated to our studio. And then as I kind of went up the ranks of that studio and started speaking to, and, and having more responsibility one of the things I was doing with speaking to basically all these different teams and creative studios that we were using to help produce these videos.
Craig Hering:
And I very quickly learned it. Wasn’t something just isolated to our studio. It was something that a lot of studios were experiencing and something that a lot of studios were struggling with. And, you know, after she, when the first thing the videographer asks is like, Hey, where do you want me to send the drive? It, that becomes apparent pretty quickly. So, so basically what happened is it kinda came about pretty organically. My, my brother was doing some really heavy, heavy lifting with his Mac book. And I was talking to, I think we’re on the phone at the time. And I was like, Hey, how are you doing this? Cause I know your Mac book is not at all powerful enough to do this. And he’s like, oh, I’m actually using cloud computers for this. And he, at that, that was when I was introduced to this kind of technology.
Craig Hering:
And he was saying, you know, he’s just streaming this, this workstation that’s super powerful. He has all his files and everything he needs on that workstation. And that was kind of when it clicked. And it was, you know, there’s this new possibility of, okay, so all your files are there. You can access them immediately just by signing in. I can access it with you at the same time. Is there any reason you couldn’t apply this to video? Cause like here’s all the things we’re struggling with and this seems like it would work. And he was like, not really, there’s no real, I don’t, I don’t see any reasons why we couldn’t. So that was kind of the start and we just started grinding away at it again, got that proof of concept together and it worked really well. So it was kind of, you know, took it from there. And it was again, really like kind of organic how this started.
Sarah Marince:
Very cool. That’s awesome. But it seems like it’s happening kind of fast.
Craig Hering:
Yeah, no, yes. It’s been crazy. So yeah. Now we’ve got a team of, of six again, based in, in Boulder, Colorado and, and really so far just the feedback we’ve gotten from studios has been, been incredible and one of my favorite things, and I think it’ll always be one of my favorite things is when I like first talk to a studio, who’s curious about what we’re doing and like, Hey, this sounds great, but this seems impossible. And like, I love, I love that cause it’s like, you know no, it’s not impossible. It’s actually really real. And you can utilize this for your production work and it’s just a very, eye-opening kind of experience. So I, I, yeah, I’m super stoked with that. And just how things have been going so far.
Sarah Marince:
Well, congratulations. So what’s the timeline moving forward? When do you think like any studio will be able to sign up or, you know, get a subscription or membership? Like what does that look like?
Craig Hering:
Yeah. So as far as being like totally open where you’re not talking to myself or Jay who’s in charge of our customer success it’s hard to put an exact date on that that said if someone’s interested in, in kind of getting access very easy to just go to our site reach out to us and we are 100% are talking to everyone that does that. So definitely don’t hesitate. That said we do have some really cool kind of technology coming out in the very near future. So sometime in, in very early 20, 21 basically how we’re actually storing files is going to change a little bit. So right now workstations have you can think about the whole like workstation user relationship is very much like one-to-one like one user has a workstation, they’ve got their storage drive and that’s kind of how it works in again, let’s call it January or so of this upcoming year.
Craig Hering:
That’s going to change where now your team and all your cloud-based workstations are actually going to be able to connect to a cloud-based Nass. So just like how studios work now, where they have a server in their office, all their editing computers are connected to that. You’re going to have that same exact capability, but be able to have it be totally cloud-based. So you can have someone in California, someone in New York, someone in Florida, all working off of the exact same storage location, again, that server in the cloud to, to actually work. So that’s kind of what’s coming and, and super excited for that. Cause that’s one thing that, especially as studios grow in size, that server based if you will, storage is, is very important. So super excited to, to be releasing that in the upcoming months.
Sarah Marince:
Very cool. It’s exciting. Vincent is back with another question. How are teams moving the initial footage and project files to ingest into suites system Signient or a spirit? I don’t know.
Craig Hering:
So yeah, so, so basically right now I’m going to go and open that up again. The way to actually get footage into your workstation is very much up to the studios themselves. So the way it works right now is and it actually works out well, cause most studios are doing this. If you have a a CSP, a cloud storage provider for any aspect of your business, whether it’s Dropbox, Google drive, frame IO, whatever that may be basically the way it works right now is, is going to be the same as, as to you’re going to upload footage to that location. Then inside that workstation, you’re going to pull that down to your suite storage drive. And once it’s there, it’s going to be there until you delete it, just like your computer, right? You turn your computer off, you turn it back on everything’s as you left it, same exact thing with these cloud-based workstations. So Vincent it’s really up to you. That initial upload is really the only requirement. Some studios are uploading proxies first, so they can get them into the workstation very, very quickly. And then as those full Rez version or full Rez files are uploading, they, you know, basically they’re working once those complete, they just switch over to the Flores assets and keep going. It’s, you know, again, it’s really up to, up to the studio and, and how they want to do things.
Sarah Marince:
Very cool. And if anyone else has a question, feel free to definitely drop it in the question, answer box now. Edward, so after hearing all of this, I know you kind of chimed in about like final cut pro and everything, but on the production side, like where’s your head with all of this?
Eduard Stinga:
Yeah. I mean, now that I kind of understood exactly how, you know, what it does and how it works. I mean, obviously the target audience, I guess, is a little bit, you know, students that are a little bit bigger, but even for someone like me who was just making videos for YouTube and, you know, making a random small video here and there, but I still work remotely. Like my entire team has always been remote. I think this is very exciting. And it’s just, I mean, as I said earlier, like it opens up a whole new world of possibilities and, you know, in a sense it kind of feels like the future you know, how you’re going to run any sort of video, whatever it would, it’s a studio or like any sort of like video operation, like what are you, or like a YouTuber or anything like that, especially now that more and more people start working remotely it just feels like the future. And also if you just do the math, I think in terms of like how much money you would invest, you know, to get a super high quality, super performance computer to do some proper editing compared to how much this solution costs. I think it’s a no brainer. So very, very exciting.
Craig Hering:
Yeah. Edward, how are you actually I know, I know you’ve probably got a lot of different aspects to your like stock animation and, and your business there, but what is your kind of process look like with that? Are you, do you have like a centralized a team that’s like editing with these natives or is it all, you know freelancers are basically uploading their specific assets and everything to, to your site or what does that kind of look like?
Eduard Stinga:
Yeah, well, in terms of the platform with Vito plasty.com, where we sell stock animation it’s, as you kind of already hinted at earlier, it’s two parts. So we have our own in-house team you know, animators, motion, graphic artists that create those animations in Adobe, after effects. It’s a bit of a mess, obviously it’s a lot of share to the Dropbox folders and things like that, but there’ll be like one side of it. Then the other side is you know, literally other contributors from all over the world who are free to just upload and sell their own products, kind of like you would do in pretty much any other major stock footage website, like shot a stock, you know, upon five and anything like that. Got
Craig Hering:
It. Awesome.
Eduard Stinga:
But what excites me, it’s not even like this you know, cause, cause those files for there’ll be after effects are pretty small, right. So I guess, you know, even using something like Dropbox, it’s not, not a big issue, but what you know, the wheels have been spinning in my head or like for the past 40 minutes is, you know, editing even, even my YouTube videos, you know, cause you shoot in 4k shooting like pro Rez or whatever files get pretty big. And you know, I just like to like write the videos and like shoot them, but like I don’t necessarily enjoy or have the time to edit all of them. So I kinda like to pass that to someone else. And it’s just that’s where this whole thing is gonna work super nicely. Yeah. Or maybe, maybe we just have to switch to, you know, back to Adobe for, for a while.
Craig Hering:
Yeah, exactly. And yeah. And then you get these, these cool kind of, I mean, I know just from talking to studios there’s a lot of there’s this like push pull, right. Especially if you’re in more like rural areas where you can hire someone maybe down the street that’s maybe not as experienced or maybe doesn’t have the same resources that a a shopper or very specialized person or studio does. That’s maybe an LA or New York or in like a hub. But if you hire that studio that’s in New York or in LA in a hub, now you have the dilemma of, okay, how are we going to actually get files to this person? How are we going to actually work with like, it’s like, okay, I can work with someone more, maybe more experienced, but it’s going to take me twice as long to do this project because we’ve got to share files and everything like that.
Craig Hering:
And, and, you know, kind of falls in line there with freelancers and passing out projects like you were mentioning. And that’s something where again, like with, with going that cloud-based approach, there’s no longer a downside to working with someone that’s across the country in a different state or whatever. It, it really like brings, opens up that talent pool and like allows your studio to use exactly who you want and who you need for the, this project. And be able to, to do that without having to, you know, sacrifice now a bunch of extra days or weeks, just because you’ve got to transfer files or ship files or something like that.
Sarah Marince:
Awesome. Well, is there anything else that you would like to talk about or mention or promote before we wrap up everything?
Craig Hering:
I don’t have anything. I think definitely check out our website www.suitesuitestudios.io. Definitely check that out. There’s a lot of information there on basically what we’re doing. Also check out our socials it’s same thing, just sweet studios dot IO on, on all those accounts. Definitely do that. And I’m super excited to, again, to be, to be on here, talking about what we’re doing and to be helping studios improve kind of how they’re working. So thank you. Thank you again for having us.
Sarah Marince:
Yeah. I mean, it’s been so much information for me. It was learning something new, but for someone like Edward, it’s just kind of expanding on his world, like, you know, your world. And so this was very, very cool, very easy to understand as you were walking us through it. And I did check out your website before and I, I like it. It’s a very cool website, the way it’s like steps, you know, all the steps to doing. And so yeah, congratulations on how everything is going and maybe we can catch back up in a year and see what’s new and what’s coming up.
Craig Hering:
Absolutely. Yeah, that sounds awesome. Thanks so much,
Sarah Marince:
Edward, you wanna take a moment to promote yourself?
Eduard Stinga:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as I mentioned earlier, I run a YouTube channel, but I guess, you know, the, the people watching this are not already quite familiar with video editing and you know, most of our tutorials are pretty, you know, beginner oriented. So there’s that, but yeah, I would mention our website is Vito plasty.com. And it’s basically a non-line marketplace, a platform where you can ready to use pre animated assets. Basically, I, we, it kind of feels like we sort of launched a new submission, the stock assets industry, because there’s literally no other website out there selling this, but yeah, we are dealing in stock animation and stock Jif images.
Sarah Marince:
Awesome. As a YouTuber, aren’t you supposed to say like video and smash that subscribe button. It’s not like what they all say.
Eduard Stinga:
Yeah. Don’t forget to smash that like button think what’s his name who launched this? I think Graham Stephan is a famous financial YouTube where I think he has like two, maybe 3 million subscribers. Now, at least he was the first one that I remember who started saying, don’t forget to smash that like button and then all of a sudden everyone, and then the people to like kind of stand out and I think even unconsciously myself as well. And I not always people saying, don’t forget to gently tap the like button, so,
Sarah Marince:
Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, thank you both for being here with us today for having us great. Of course. And if anyone wants to connect online, I am Sarah Morin’s on Instagram and Sarah mearns.com for all your voiceover needs. And I will see you guys next time. Bye everyone,
