Signiant Secures Remote File Workflows for Mango/NewEdit M&E Productions
The Setting
Mango/NewEdit provide dailies and post-production editing systems to motion picture and television productions worldwide. With customers like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney Plus+ and more, they support, on average, 12 concurrent shows. With local tax incentives luring production companies away from California, Mango/NewEdit maintains regional offices and crews, but their dailies processing takes place in Los Angeles, not on set.
The Challenge
Distance, latency, and speed challenges have impacted production schedules. Due to their high-profile clientele, Mango/NewEdit requires strict security protocols to ensure maximum content protection. 24-hour turnarounds are the norm, so speed is paramount.
The Solution
Only two options meet stringent, professional industry security requirements: Signiant and Aspera. Mango/NewEdit determined Signiant was easier to use, easier to train on, is not a bandwidth monster and provides the 24/7 customer support they need — all without a complex pricing and billing model.
The Value
Signiant provides precisely what Mango/NewEdit requires — a simple file transfer solution that is fast, secure and reliable for complex workflows. When newcomers need to use it, it takes minutes to learn how to use it. When the pressure is on, the Signiant value only increases.
Mango’s Star Hero
Lee Daniels, creator and director of the Fox hit series ‘Star’, has Mariah Carey on set in Atlanta for a 12-camera shoot. It is a crucial scene and Daniels wants a very specific look for his star. To execute Daniels’ creative vision, the colorists need the full-size, original footage to show him exactly what he is striving for as quickly as possible—but they are 2,100 miles away in Los Angeles! In the past, it would have been an expensive solution to have colorists on set to determine a look and then basically wait for hours on end. Fortunately, Mango/NewEdit uses Signiant Media Shuttle’s fast file transfer service to work remotely as if they were local, saving time and money.
Beginnings
NewEdit began in 1993 providing editorial equipment and services to hit television show productions like Melrose Place, Beverly Hills 90210, Roseanne, and Third Rock From the Sun. In 2013, they added Mango to provide on-location services wherever production needed to go. Today, their productions are mainly for streamers like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Disney+.
With regional production offices to support productions closer to their production locations, Mango/NewEdit works in a hub-and-spoke business model based on state tax incentives and remote workflows that make security paramount. As many as 33 U.S. states offer tax incentives to production companies who shoot within their borders, including Georgia, where Star is based.
Stan Cassio, President at Mango/NewEdit explains, “We have offices in all those states, and we hire local talent. We train them how to use everything, including Signiant and how to push files.”
While production locations are all over North America and as far away as Morocco, Spain, and Portugal, editorial for dailies and more takes place in Los Angeles. Signiant is a crucial to their workflow efficiency.
Signiant’s File Security and Compliance Enables M&E Business
Just as state tax incentives enable the Mango/NewEdit business model, content security is as important.
“Number one for us is security. Let’s begin there,” Cassio asserts. It’s the other element that binds with state tax incentives to make the dynamics of shooting outside of California a powerful alternative.
Because Signiant has been vetted by all the studios, a mission-critical stamp of approval, Mango/NewEdit doesn’t have to worry about content security when working with large studios.
“The good news is that because a lot of people in our industry know and use Signiant, it’s very easy for us to set up a vendor with a Media Shuttle account,” Cassio said. “It’s not very complex. We send them an email, they set it up, we transmit, they download.”
Signiant’s encryption during transport is essential and a main reason why the big studios have approved the Signiant Platform and its transfer products and allows Mango/NewEdit to work remotely in an efficient and cost-effective way.
Signiant’s Secure and Accelerated File Transfer Pipeline
While Mango/NewEdit has used Signiant on-location to quickly interact with colors remotely, they primarily use Signiant for their dailies pipeline — sending proxy footage made at their regional office to its facility in Los Angeles for camera syncing and editing preparation. It is organized in Avid Media Composer and then uploaded to a Signiant Media Shuttle portal for distribution and remote access by the creative teams.
“We grab everything from the set and process it, generate the editorial files, and transmit those files back to Los Angeles,” Cassio said. “We use Signiant to encrypt and push the files, and receive them in Los Angeles so the next morning, the editorial team can begin their process.
“Once we know that the [Avid] media and the bins are linking, we’ve already gone through the Signiant process, and everything has landed correctly. We QC it before it transmits. We use Signiant to transmit. Once it lands, we confirm everything is linking and then editorial gets their hands on it.”
On a typical production day, Mango/NewEdit receives about two terabytes of footage and converts it down to roughly 90 gigs of material. After the lower resolution proxies are sent, the original high-resolution footage from the set — 4K, 8K, 16K files — are sent via Signiant Media Shuttle to the Mango/NewEdit facility. In LA, the footage is uploaded via Signiant to the cloud and brought into grading platforms such as Da Vinci Resolve and Colorfront.
Signiant Simple Pricing Structure
A key selling point for Mango/NewEdit was Signiant’s simple pricing structure. Aspera is the other file transfer option Mango/NewEdit has the option to use, but they felt Aspera had complex pricing structures and hard-to-predict usage charges.
“Aspera, we find that they charge you for this and for that. It is very complex to gauge what your true costs are,” Cassio critiqued. “With Signiant we pay for this and that’s it, as opposed to being hit with all these different unknowns.”
Another thing that Mango/NewEdit discovered with Aspera is the lack of bandwidth management. Transfers would saturate available bandwidth and stop other mission-critical post-production tasks from running efficiently.
“With Signiant we don’t have to worry about that. One of the reasons we’ve gone with Signiant versus Aspera is because of the encryption, the ease of use, and all the different functionalities.”
Editors on Global Alert
Notifications and alerts are crucial to the Mango/NewEdit post-production workflow.
“It’s very easy to get alerts verifying that the media has been transferred. Sending those alerts for my team is essential because we don’t have to continually monitor the process. We just get alerts that say it’s complete,” Cassio said. “If there’s any questions about when it started, when it ended, we can generate reports. It’s a tool that is essential in today’s globalized workload.”
Cassio also nodded to Signiant’s Checkpoint Restart feature, “If something happens and the transmission stops in the middle of that process, we can reset it and continue from where it left off. Having that capability is definitely a plus.”
Peace of Mind
For Mango/NewEdit, the fact that Signiant is mandated by their clients, fast, easier to use, easier to train on, easier to understand the billing model, won’t overwhelm their bandwidth and provides 24/7 customer support made their choice an easy one, but in the end, what really mattered most is peace of mind.
“We started using Signiant when Mango was created 10 years ago. We’ve been a fan since then. It’s like an electronic Federal Express. Package it, FedEx it, receive it, confirm it, we’re done. We love it. There’s no question from start to finish. Signiant is definitely the tool we use. We love it.”
