Stop shipping media files. Unleash the power of cloud in production workflows from a single source of truth.
As the need for global distribution soars and audience fragmentation forces teams to create and deliver dozens of localised versions of content, the traditional file-based model is cracking under the pressure. It’s time to stop shipping massive MXF files over networks and start working at the level video actually lives: the individual frame.
In this special episode of Destination Cloud, hosts Alex Borland and Russell Fleming are joined by Peter Bruggink and James Cain from Media-Anywhere to unpack how AirFrame™ replaces traditional file-based workflows with direct, frame-level access.
Who it is for
If you’re an engineering leader looking to reduce storage and distribution cost and complexity, or a head of production managing time-consuming media workflows, this special episode gives great insight into a change that could transform how media is produced and distributed.
Inside the episode
James Cain spent 20 years at Quantel; Peter Bruggink started as a TV director and built a facility company that was sold to NEP Group in 2015. Peter explains why they co-founded Media-Anywhere: an industry struggling financially needed technology that could be spun up and down, and cost less. James sets out what is wrong with a file, a fixed form and a fixed location, and how AirFrame answers it by giving every frame its own URL, with a plugin that lets Adobe Premiere treat remote media as local.
From there the conversation covers secure remote editing, cloud cost, and a post house that sent a timeline from London to Los Angeles without moving the media. Russell Fleming compares AirFrame with TAMS, and James places both beside MXL. It ends on “recipes” and AI, and on Peter’s account of AirFrame One, the serverless portal a Merapar team built for Media-Anywhere.
Highlights
- 09:00 “We do give every frame in a particular media file its own URL.” James Cain
- 19:54 On remote editing: “You cannot open those files using another client or another software program or malware on that workstation.” Peter Bruggink
- 21:55 “The one golden rule of cloud is you don’t do what you do on-prem in the cloud.”
- 30:56 On TAMS and AirFrame: “They sit at fundamentally different levels of a technology stack.” Russell Fleming
- 46:45 “Every time we bake a file we’ve failed.”
- 47:50 “We are building the fundamental layer that supports AI.” Peter Bruggink
Key questions answered
What is wrong with file-based workflows, and what does AirFrame do instead?
A file fixes its form and its location, James Cain argues. File systems assume everyone is in one building, a moved file breaks its path, and an XDCAM file will not play in a browser without work. AirFrame names every frame and serves it from wherever it is stored, such as S3, and the URL is stable “from a millisecond behind live to years later”. James describes scrubbing ProRes 422 HQ from storage in Ohio, from Reading in the UK, as if it were local.
Is it more secure than today’s remote editing?
Peter Bruggink says the remote editing tools in use rest on virtual file systems, so however secure the data centre, the media is exposed to the operating system and can be copied to a USB stick. AirFrame passes Premiere only the frames being scrubbed or played, and at the time watermarking with the editor’s name was coming soon. James adds that every frame is authorised per asset and per user, and the local cache is encrypted.
Where do the cost savings come from?
From moving less. Only the frames an edit needs leave the cloud, and nobody needs a cloud edit station running around the clock. James recalls ESPN taking in 300 hours of sports footage a day to make a three-hour programme: a 1% shooting ratio, so egressing whole files would cost 100 times what the edit needs.
How does AirFrame compare with TAMS?
Russell Fleming, who works with TAMS, the Time Addressable Media Store, says the two are not peers. TAMS is a storage-level specification that writes media in chunks, so working off the live edge means waiting for a chunk; AirFrame sits in front of whatever storage there is. James sees TAMS as suited to near-live interchange such as news, and says TAMS could be mounted behind AirFrame’s URLs.
Speakers
- Peter Bruggink, co-founder and CEO, Media-Anywhere
- James Cain, co-founder, Media-Anywhere
- Alex Borland, VP Strategy & Business Development, Merapar (host)
- Russell Fleming, Senior Architect, Merapar (host)
