Well, welcome, everyone. We're so excited to bring, this webinar to you, everything everywhere, all in one place, and we're doing it together live from both Sofia, Bulgaria.
I'd like to introduce the VP of global video productions for MinuteMedia, Hagai Lazar.
Nice to be here.
Thank you for coming. We're really excited.
So in case you guys don't know what MinuteMedia is or what they do, we're gonna talk about that in a second. But first, we wanna show you a scissor wheel. So bear with me because I'm gonna give you a little treat.
It's incredible.
It would be something that nothing else could Some great moment.
Yes, miss Shepherd. Just thinking about it.
A lot of time in the beginning of my career, I've been given the words, like, I'm a difficult person. People were starting to say that this was make it and break it for me.
I am officially retiring from football.
What have I just seen? Thank you.
I think I was just made to play football. Always said that I'd like my voice to matter.
What a guest I have got.
Oh, legends of the game.
It's a dream. It's a dream.
Welcome along to Naughty Me. Life's a pit. Naughty Meintop.
I wanna be here for the rest of my career.
It's gonna be me when now I'm gonna get to the top.
Follow on your genes and never give it off.
Thank you.
How about that? What a treat.
We would love for anybody we're gonna take, questions if you have any in chat, not in the q and a section. But we would love it if you could just, like I always love to get a shout out from all our attendees. If you could just put in the chat where you guys are from, where you're tuning in from, that would be awesome. You can put your your job title, but you don't have to.
But we're gonna kick it off because we've got this amazing customer, with a great story and how MinuteMedia is using LucidLink in their workflow.
So first of all, I'm gonna turn it over over to Hakai so he can tell us tell you a little bit about, MinuteMedia.
Yeah. Hi, everyone. Great to be here in the Office of Syncfia.
And, yeah, MinuteMedia, as you could see, this is kind of like a demonstration of the part of the content that we do. MinuteMedia is a global technology and content company. We own a few content brands such as the Players' Tribune, Funcided, Mental Floss, ninety million, and lately, also Sport Illustrated.
And we our technology powers everything we do, the creation, distribution, and monetization of the content that we create for these brands and for other, other, companies and, and brands.
Awesome. So, well, first of all, we're thrilled to be here together.
We're just gonna jump right into it. So, Haggai, in your words, you know, what what kind of workflow were you using before doing before you started using LucidLink?
Yeah. So so, you you know, I I think you can speak about kind of, like, everything before and after COVID. We we started our video operation, like, almost ten years ago, and back then, we were small. We were using hard drives and then moved to raids and then moved to kind of, like, bigger raids. And I think in two thousand nineteen is when we started creating more more commercial content with, like, more campaigns, more files, started filling those rates. We started speaking about the possibility of, maybe, like, a cloud storage. We already had, like, a rate that we can connect remotely and work remotely.
But then COVID happened and changed everything. And first of all, COVID shut everything for us. We're we're creating mostly sport content, and there wasn't any sport. There wasn't any content to create. But when we kinda, like, went back on track, we didn't know what to do. And we found ourselves even kinda, like, filming and shipping hard drives in Ubers to different editors.
And after a few weeks like that, we realized, okay. That got to stop. This is the time to find a remote servicing solution, and we started looking. We started asking different post houses, like, what what are they doing?
We started hearing of different companies, and we even started trying some of these companies. I can name some names. Like, all of them were great just like they weren't the right solution for us. They were like Blackbird and Teradici and IPV, and we started learning this whole world.
I got a shout out here for a guy named Ori Gallis, who was kind of like my partner in this. And we met a lot of companies, and then but then we started facing the the challenges.
One one of them, you you had to kind of, like, work on a different editing suite where editors are using Adobe Premiere and Sallie. You had in order to work with this company, you had to change your edit editing software. One of them, you had to buy something in order just to try the solution. One of them wasn't good enough for IT in a matter of security and so on and so forth till till we found you guys, till we found ListLink.
So I wanna just step back for a second because I heard this story today earlier. Can like, because I think I wanna know if everybody else has experienced this. But can you tell me a little bit about the Uber drivers and the hard drives before COVID? Yeah.
It it was it was very time. You know? We we had we had footage to send to our editors, but we weren't in the same room any any anymore. We weren't working on the same space, and you couldn't even go yourself because of kind of like a lockdown.
So, we went out. We are just ordering Uber. They were the first one who can go back and and work again and needs to come out with this with the mask and everything. And kinda like the driver was very surprised that we're not nobody's entering the car.
Just told him, don't worry. Someone is gonna wait for it in the other side. It looks very, very fishy. But, yeah, this is.
Yes.
Okay. Go ahead and chime in in the chat here, but has anybody else used Uber's to ship drive? I'm I'm sure. Yeah.
Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, you know, so you were you were you told us about what was going on when you were in COVID, and then, how did you find Lucely?
So, actually, it was one of those companies that we tried after I think we tried, like, four or five of them, and it didn't work. I think one of them I don't remember which one of them, but they they they mentioned, hey. You might try this company called LucidLink. They're relatively new, but they have this server solution. Maybe they can do remote editing or something like this.
And then we start to meet meeting meeting with your people. So, again, you need to take, I think it was, maybe. But, then we started meeting with your people, and, what we saw first of all, the solution seemed very promising and different than the others. It was the first you know, while, like I mentioned, some of the others wanted, like, maybe a dongle, maybe a different thing. With you guys, it was immediately just another folder on our computer, which was already kinda, like, inviting.
And even though our editors were a bit skeptic about it, you know, like They can be.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. And and and you know what? We also like, as a former I used to be an editor for many years and suddenly, really, I'm gonna work from a cloud in real time on on big files.
Like, no. I'm not sure. But we gave it we gave it a shot. Like, we did this two weeks trial.
And after that, we saw immediately that there is something there, but it wasn't it wasn't that complete. We we needed we actually gave your guys some questions and some challenges, and we asked them to kinda like we asked a bit about the road map and what things will be improved. And and then we saw that there there is kind of like a back and forth. There we saw that there are people to speak to, very lovely people.
And and after that, we just did another trial, actually, a bigger one in real time. We involved our so we're a global company. We have we have teams in the UK, in London, and in the US, and in Brazil.
And we kinda like did a kinda like a more vast trial and more thorough trial with with the in real time. Like, we actually took a project that we're just editing Mhmm. And edited on lucid.
And after this month's trial, and a lot of the fears come, like, relived, and we went on our communal way.
How the editors feel?
Feel great.
Good. Good. Good. Good.
So so tell me, are there any systems that you got rid of or changed during this time when when Yeah.
It's it's up more systems. You know? Like, it's for it's two things. One, we used more Google Drive before because this is what everybody used, and we also use it for video even though it wasn't fit for video. Like, it's not optimal to store your video files on Google or if you need to send them away, and then it's like downloading and zipping.
So after the first year with Lucid is, we we actually changed that, and we even moved our archive to be on on, Lucid on kinda like on the basic solution that you guys have, which is more suitable for video for us. But I think the main change with LucidLink is we change the way we work in a matter of, like we're we're we're a global company, and we're still trying to do things, in the same deal. For example, if we have a project in the US, like, our US editor will mostly work on it and same for the UK. But with LucidLink now, we're we're sometimes approaching differently and, like, we're kind of, like, looking in our roster who is free to do what and when. And sometimes people will commonly work on the same project no matter in what in what gear. So it's kinda like give us more freedom to plan the way we work and decide for ourselves, like, without shipping anything. And, you know, also we're shipping less drives with it.
That's good. Yeah. Yeah.
We're still coming, you know, from a shoot with the with the hard drives. We're still backing up things. But now when we're coming from shoot, we're just uploading stuff to to Lucid, and then it's already there, and then we can decide what to do?
So I I think one thing that we we haven't touched on first of all, LucidLink is a SaaS solution, so it's all software, no hardware. But most importantly, with LucidLink, you no longer have to download or sync your data.
Yeah. Yeah. You don't we we're still doing it, but, yeah, it's not the first thing you need to do. Yeah. And and we had we had some cases that we like, you know, an editor worked on something without even having the hard drive. Like, we end up not even shipping the hard drive.
Drive. Right. Because they could do it. Yeah. So it's unlike you were having to download from Google Drive is what I'm saying.
You don't have to do that whole process.
Yeah.
It's just there.
It's just there. It's just there.
It's just there. It's just there. It's just there. It's just there. It's just there. It's just there.
It's just there. It's just there.
There, and it's something that we we anyway, we're already doing it, so you don't need to do any anything extra.
That's awesome. Yeah. So I I wanted to talk a little bit about, workflows because you work with many large brands. And, we're looking at, you know, you and I have had great conversations about a specific workflow for a specific project. Do you wanna kinda go into this?
Yeah.
Yeah. So so I think it's it's a good example. I don't know if you can play play some of it in the background, but never mind. Like Okay.
So we're working with with a lot of, brands along the year. One of them is is Kia. We we worked with Kia a long time. And, for last year during the Women World Cup, also, MinuteMedia is like, we're we're big on on women's football. We've been there from the beginning. So we're kind of like we're we're partnering with a lot of brands around women's football. And Kia, just in the last minute, actually asked us to to create two videos about the two women footballers, one in the US, one in in the UK, in a very tight timeline, both for filming and producing, but also for postproduction.
And and, yeah, we we we ended up shooting in the same day, a footballer in LA and a footballer, in Reading near London.
And and the time for editing was tight, so a guy in in New York started working on the US edit, but because he he had a he had a holiday plan in advance. When he finished his part, we had to continue it in the UK. To make things more complicated, he actually asked us to feature in this video actual footage from this World Cup that was happening at the same time in Australia.
Actually, they were ask they asked us to feature a certain a footage from certain stadium on a certain day, so that was locked in. And for that, we just looked for a cameraman in Australia, found one, introduced him to Lucid, tested that he can shoot an upload and send it to us, not to send. Again, upload.
And, yeah, on the on this day, everything was ready. So we had our guy that edit the video in the US send like, we we had it ready for us. The cameraman with the time differences, when he filmed everything in Australia, by the time we woke up in in London, he was already filming it. By the time we got to the office, he was already uploading it to Lucid.
Our editor that by this time, already went to Italy on personal matters, but he opened the project from Italy, added the the footage to the actual video, which around noontime where the US guys woke up, we could show what we did to the director in in New York.
Brilliant.
Yeah.
And then in the same afternoon to send it to Korea for approval. So you have, like, different continent, different different, gears and different people working on the same timeline, and it was a successful video.
Yeah. So I I thought this is a credible workflow just because of of, first of all, all the different locations. So the US and New York, and then into Italy and and and Australia, UK, and then Korea for final approval. But All in the same day.
Like, it wasn't in the same day.
Like, everything on the same day, which is But different time zones.
Right?
You're you're, like, everything It was it yeah.
It worked for our for our benefit at this time, but but but, yeah, we're we're we're still doing it again, kinda like deciding like I told you, we for example, we're in London. It's easier for us to work with the angel. So we so we can already decide, like, who will tackle each project.
And so you you can you can with it internally, we talked about this a little bit earlier that internally, you can easily throw someone if someone's out, you can send something or provide the LucidLink folder to other people in the in your in your on your team.
Yeah. We we had another example actually like this where we we had a shoot for Expedia. You know, there there is this popular series with Wrexham, and Expedia is Wrexham is a team from Wales, and Expedia is one of their sponsors.
And we also had a campaign around their last game of the the qualification game, which I think is now featured in the second season. I don't know. I didn't but we were on a shoot on a different shoot. The entire team were busy, and we didn't have a single person from our team to be around the filming and around the editing.
And we just literally like that. You know? Like, we open the folder ready, and our commercial guys who who were on the shoot, we told him, when you're coming back, just plug in the hard drive, just drag the footage, just copy to this folder. We had an another editor in Barcelona that we worked with for a long time.
He was already introduced to Lucid. He did some other work for us. And when it was there, we just told him, hey. Footage is there.
Just go for it. He added the whole thing. Everything was done without our, intervention, and and and, yeah, without even shipping a hard drive. We didn't At some point, we we thought maybe to send a hardware to Barcelona just to be safe, but everything was progressing already so quick and so good.
So, yeah, why not?
So have you seen it sounds like, but I want you to tell me is have you in increased the speed of of of work, or is your workflow smoother? Or how how do you see it? How do you compare it to, let me pre COVID and now?
I I don't think it's it's a matter of speed. It's more comfortable because we have the choice. We have the variety. We still work a bit differently in the US or in the UK.
You know? In the UK, we'll go and shoot all over the UK, but we're coming back to to our office when we have high, like, high Internet, like, high speed Internet, and it's easy for us to upload. So it usually will be, like if if not in the same day and the next day. In the US where it's bigger and sometimes, you know, we have a shoot in LA, and from there, they will go to to Texas.
And, like, sometimes the producer will travel a few days in a row, and he's sleeping in these motels and doesn't have, like, sufficient Internet. Sometimes we still send the hard drive, but but, again, we can we can assign the editors better, and we can plan easier.
And, yeah, we can we can have this global global thing happening. And sometimes, by the way, it's also easier for people to see the footage even if we have time for the project, but people just go in there to see the footage, to see the rushes, to create the graphics or to upload the graphics, sometimes working with external, external designers, which we also bring on to the city.
So you you bring in freelancers now?
Yeah. We're we're trying to do everything in house, and we're still doing most of the thing in house. Mhmm. But even the work with freelancers, became easier with with with Lucid.
And, again, not not to underestimate Google, but Google is not a solution for video and Right.
Lucid link is.
It wasn't built for video.
Yeah. It wasn't. That's right.
That's right.
And LucidLink We'll still we'll we'll still send, you know, like, videos to clients, and we'll still, sometimes it's Dropbox or Google. But for us, for our work, like, closely kind of, like, answering most of the things between That's great.
And and you send it to and Korea was able to view it as well?
No. For them, like, they are the clients. We send them an like, a a file. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We don't we don't bring the clients.
Yeah. That's right. That's right.
I don't know if there are any clients.
So, I wanna just stop here to see if anybody has any questions for myself and Haggai. Nothing?
This is work to do on Zoom, not face to face.
I know. I know. We wanna see everybody face to face. So we we've talked about, you know, LucidLink is a SaaS product.
You upload to LucidLink, and then once it's in the cloud, it's available everywhere. So your team could access that from from wherever they were. So, tell us a little bit about your history. Now you this is how many years have you been working with us?
So we are just starting the third year with you.
We worked with you. Yeah. We we we it took us time to discover you as I was saying, but, we started, I think, probably it's somewhere in twenty twenty one. Like Mhmm.
And, yeah, we we worked for the first year just with the remote editing solution. In the second year, we also, extended our, like, capacity and also purchased some storage space. Mhmm.
And, yeah, now we're up and running.
And That that's awesome.
And I think one other thing I wanted to touch on, you said a a commercial guy, you you you had him upload something into LucidLink. What what do you mean by that? Was Yeah.
Like like I'm saying, you know, we we are a video team, and, our guys is all all kind of, like, you know, check of all trades. We we can shoot. We, like, we we can produce. We we can edit, and you like, you might think that you need to be technical to use those features, and, we have some very technical people in in in our team.
And and this just shows the simplicity on it. You know? Like, it's like we gave very simple instruction and just we made it simple by leaving a laptop with an open open folder just to drag it over. But, again, it's that simple.
It's it's another folder on on your on your computer.
That's great. So, we we had a question here if we it wanted to see if we could, talk a little about your editing environment. It looks like platforms, number of editors, and locations.
Yeah. So so MinuteMedia is is a global company. We have, offices in Tel Aviv, Israel for, like, most of the operation and the tech side of things. We have, offices in London, in New York, and Sao Paulo when we have our sales team and our our content teams and, of course, the local operations. And we still have people all around the globe in in Asia, in Singapore, and in Japan, and, all around the US.
In a matter of the editing environment so we have small video teams. We have teams for editorial. Each brand, like I mentioned, we have few operating brands. Each one of them have, like, their editorial team that will create their own content, but we have two kind of, like, commercial branded video teams.
Three, I would say, because the Brazilian one will do both, but one in the US and one in the UK. And we mostly work with again, it's gonna be brands. It's gonna be companies. It can be teams.
We're not big teams. We have, like, in each team, we have three or four video editors. We have few producers and and project managers.
Like I said, we can we can film and direct shoots, and we're doing mostly that, but we're we're still using also the the help of freelancers. We have our go to freelancers, cameraman and sound operators.
And depends depends on the on the side of the side of the shoot. We we're doing something sometimes small interviews, documentary that will be a team of four, and we're producing sometimes TV commercial, which you have, like, a set of, like, fifty, sixty people.
I hope that answered the question.
I think that that covers it. What's the minimum, broadband speed for large files?
I I think this is a more this is a question for you for you guys, but I I think this was one of the problems for us starting working with Lucid. I'm from London, and I don't know if people know us. But in London, in some of the areas, like, it's it was a shock for me when I moved there. But in some places, you don't have Internet and you don't have the foundations for fiber, and it's really hard to work to work with.
You still need a high speed Internet in order to work with Lucid. Not in a matter of, like, to work with it, but in order to upload. We're we're cameras and and and files are are improving and changing and getting bigger. So for us, sometimes we're coming from a shoot.
We'd like if we use back in the day to come with a few gigabytes or, let's say, hundred to hundred gigabytes, we're coming now sometimes with, like, two, three terabytes or even four terabytes from Shoots. And then you need a very high speed Internet to you with, just to upload and still you leave it for, like, overnight.
But to work with the service as an editor, to work from home, if you we're creating proxies, and then our editors are working with proxies Mhmm. Editing, in real time even with, like, you know, using the cache and you you don't need a very high speed Internet for that.
Yeah. When you're editing, you don't you know, just to reiterate, you don't need a high speed Internet for that. So it's looking, like, we we I was just at the media production technology showcase conference, which just happened in London last week while we were both there. And when, the CEO of Limitless Studios said and it was really poignant, but she said, you know, our emergency services run on the Internet.
There's so many services that are running on the Internet. So she's like, it's time for the media and entertainment industry to realize that everything's running on the Internet. So as as bandwidth becomes more accessible, it's much easier. I had one customer come up to me at NAB in twenty twenty three that said he had just done a a video shoot.
He was flying to Las Vegas. He had a layover.
And during his layover Yep. For two and a half hours How was it edited?
He edited the video and sent it back to the customer on the Wi Fi at the airport.
Yeah. So so so, again, I'm I'm I'm not like, the the team member are editing and, I'm I'm I'm kinda like sometimes we look at the footage and I will look at the edits, of course. But, yeah, I found myself also looking at files at airports and even here today, you know, in in my hotel, with the hotel, not so great Wi Fi just to watch files. Yeah. It's okay.
You you have the the the settings and the cache and, again, the loosening technical paper probably. I don't know if one of them is on the check and can put in the specification even though I think it's very easy to find.
Yeah. And if you have any questions, I mean, certainly, we have a great support team that's there twenty four seven, and there's ways to set your cache to to optimize your your workflows. And, you know, people are doing it globally all the time.
Yeah. Right? Yeah. I can give good good work to your support and to your customer success.
Like, you are very available. You answer on answer every question. And not only question. Like, I I think I mentioned before, but we suggested a few things or ask if you will have those features.
Some of them and like, became a part of what you're what you're having now or enter the road map, and there is always come, like, an ear to to to any question. And, yeah, even here today speaking to our developers to tell us, like, hey. What other feature do you need? What you're missing?
Which which was a lot.
So let me just reiterate. We really, really, work with our customers hand in hand. And and we talk to customers about what they wanna see in the product, and, you know, we can't take a hundred percent of their suggestions because they could be wacky or not or impossible. But, anyways, we really do.
We don't build in a vacuum. We work with our customers. So I see another question here coming. Are you guys hosting editing project files on LucidLink or just media files?
We're we're we're keeping everything now with LucidLink, including project files, graphic, assets, you name it. Like, we're building our project. Like like, we're building it. We used to build it on our local machines. We're building it in in LucidLink, sharing project. People are working from the same footage.
Every everything is a LucidLink. Yeah. We're we're keeping local, backups, and people sometimes will, from any reason, will decide to work on things locally here and there. But alongside the project, there will always be the the updated project on LucidLink as well.
And and and, also, we started using it for our benefits. For example, an editor will work on the hero, but we still need to make cut downs. So we have the same footage and same same project, but different editors, sometimes in different deals, will will work on it. And one will edit the the full video, and the other one will start working on on the cut downs from the same footage.
So Lot lot of collaboration.
A lot of collaborations.
Other And with delays, so, again, I'm not the one editing it, but I I'm at I I'm understanding that to work from the raw files still cause some causing some lagging.
We're we're speaking on huge files, raw files, and and it's better working, with the proxies.
Sometimes this can create few problems, but, again, there are there are ways to work around it.
The raw files won't be as working, locally on your computer. That's for sure. So I think it's a better process to to work from proxies.
Yeah. That's awesome.
So it sounds like, there's a there's a lot of opportunity. You've put a lot more storage on LucidLink now, a lot more projects, and you're moving forward in third third year with us. Right?
Yeah. Seriously, it's just easier, and it's just more suitable to our needs. And you you know what? Even in a matter of the this was the the idea of our IT. Like, we we used to work for storage for Google because all of our company are storing their things, and, of course, we're still storing. But judging by again, I'm not I'm not trying to promote you, but it was a pure when when it was better for us on for from a video side of things, and it wasn't a big difference on the price. So this is where we started moving all all of our operation our video operation to listed.
Mhmm. Great. Large files. Good access.
Yeah. And and and and then, like, again, it's even storage of files that we don't need because we work from the project from from from the solution that we have. But when you're using the basic one, it's not things that we need on day to day. But when you do need things, and, actually, I think now we have one that we do, it's still easier to bring them and and use them and see what you're doing there.
That's awesome. So I wanna just do a check here to see these have been great questions to see if we are, if you guys have any more questions for us.
Haggai's been great to come here to Bulgaria. He spoke to our development team. We this is where our big office is. And, we've had a great time, and it really means a lot to have our customers come and support us and tell us, you know, how they're using the product.
Yeah. Recommend you to do it if you're there.
Yeah. Yeah. Try it out. We have a two weeks free trial.
So you can sign up on our website.
You know, try us out. We would love to hear from you.
And And don't don't hesitate to ask for more things or to ask questions or to challenge the team, seriously. Like, make make it bespoke for for what you need, for your for your needs.
Yeah. Yeah. So great. He just now our support lines are ringing. I meant that. Just kidding.
But, yeah, we see it used in in in many organizations, big and small. So you have a you've gone from four fifty to six hundred people now in your organization.
Yeah. More than six hundred. Yeah.
And we we work with all sorts of, size companies, small post production houses, freelancers, you name it. Anyone can use LucidLink. So with that, make sure you can check out LucidLink and get a two week free trial, and we're happy to help.
Well, thanks, everybody. Thank you for joining.
We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Thank you.
Thanks. Bye.
Bye.
Find out how Minute Media's video teams created bespoke branded content for the Women’s World Cup 2023 with big brands such as Kia and Expedia, among others, and with teams and creatives all over the globe.
Check out how your distributed teams can produce content quickly under tight deadlines like they are collaborating in the same room.
