Senior Video Editor at CBN Praises Media Shuttle

Recently, while browsing through Signiant’s LinkedIn page, we noticed a great comment on one of our posts. Michael Trauffer, Senior Video Editor & Post Production System Administrator at the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), wrote the following:

We just integrated Media Shuttle into our overseas distribution workflow, and our clients haven’t been happier. Single hour downloads compared to overnight FTP downloads; this product is indeed the fastest file transfer system we’ve experienced.

CBN is a brand new customer, so we were thrilled by this feedback. We contacted Michael to learn more about what he and his staff were doing with Media Shuttle. What follows is a summary of our conversation with Michael and his colleague Cherry Smithson, Project Coordinator responsible for international distribution.

Virginia-based CBN is one of the world’s oldest and largest providers of faith-based television programming, delivering content to roughly 200 countries throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The international department is responsible for delivering programming to all foreign CBN affiliates and subsidiaries. Programs include the 3D animation series Superbook, which is broadcast in approximately 50 languages in over 90 countries, and other CBN content, such as the international edition of The 700 Club (one of the longest-running programs in broadcast history) and Turning Point, a testimonial-oriented show.

Before Media Shuttle, Michael and his team were using FTP to deliver their mostly HD files overseas. But FTP was too slow, especially when dealing with large files, long distances, and customers’ variable bandwidths. Michael gave the example of a producer in the Philippines needing to wait overnight for an 18GB file download from the FTP server—a task that now takes less than an hour with Media Shuttle.

Another issue? Some of CBN’s clients are in countries with unreliable power. This can result in small transfer windows and frequent connectivity interruptions. For example, if a program recipient is five hours into a six-hour file download, but then the power goes out, the person will need to start the time-consuming FTP download process from the beginning when the power returns.

But with Media Shuttle’s Checkpoint Restart feature, interrupted transfers are restarted from the point where they stopped. Thanks to this and Signiant’s file acceleration technology, CBN has experienced far shorter international transfer times than ever before.

CBN originally explored using a solution from one of Signiant’s competitors since CBN was already using the product to move domestic files. While this particular solution improved speeds and solved the reliability problem resulting from frequent transfer interruptions, it also introduced new challenges.

Specifically, to quote Michael, the solution is “very cumbersome” and “user unfriendly.” Then, there was the cost associated with the solution’s bandwidth-based license. The expense to upgrade CBN’s system to support the bandwidths it needed for international distribution was significantly higher than the cost of adding Media Shuttle.

Media Shuttle offers a substantially more affordable model based on active users and with no restrictions on bandwidth or file sizes. This aligns better with CBN’s budget and its international needs. As a cloud-native SaaS, Media Shuttle is also easy to deploy and maintain. Its intuitive, user-friendly, web-based interfaces require virtually no training. Plus, Media Shuttle still allows CBN to keep its files in on-premises storage. This made Media Shuttle a far better fit for rolling out to end users at CBN’s partners and customers in far-flung locations all around the world.

To quote Michael again, “For me, Media Shuttle was very simple to figure out. It was very straightforward, and I honestly have never used a file transfer tool that is as easy and reliable as this is.”

Michael particularly enjoys Media Shuttle’s email notifications feature:

If I send a batch of files, Media Shuttle will alert me as each file is being downloaded. So it lets me know, for example, that Israel is getting their files, or have received these two and are working on a couple more. I don’t have to keep logging into the system to see what is going on, or sit there and wait for an email seven days later saying “oh, I haven’t been able to get the files, the link expired.” Instead, I can actually see the progress, which is great.

We want to thank Michael and Cherry for taking the time to speak with us and for sharing their experiences using Media Shuttle.