Signiant, the market leader in intelligent file movement software for media and entertainment, today announced that the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival, which celebrates the world’s best mountain and adventure themed films and books, has standardized on Signiant’s Media Shuttle file sharing solution for digital film submission and distribution at its annual festival and world tour. Requiring fast, reliable delivery of massive HD files with security, acceleration and tracking, the Festival selected Media Shuttle to easily upload, download and transfer large files from a shared file system, providing significant time and cost savings for festival organizers and contributors.
A flagship program of The Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada, the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival is a nine-day event that continues throughout the year as an international film tour featuring about 740 film screenings across every continent, including Antarctica. Banff will rely on Media Shuttle to receive more than 300 film entries from filmmakers worldwide, as well as promotional content from partners to be used throughout the Festival program.
Media Shuttle defines a new class of file sharing solutions tuned for the movement of large files – high-value digital assets that are tens or hundreds of gigabytes in size – and provides simple interfaces delivered from the cloud, enterprise-class security, acceleration and storage control. Media Shuttle portals can be quickly configured in one of three modes – Send, Share or Submit – to flexibly support the needs of any project, team or media enterprise in a single, multi-purpose solution. By combining the best attributes of online file sharing and accelerated file transfer software, Media Shuttle offers a viable, next-generation alternative to FTP servers.
“We have filmmakers in far-flung locales around the world submitting content on-the-fly, and we need to make the submission process as easy as possible for them. Past delivery solutions could not support the file size and transfer speeds required to deliver films of this complexity and quality,” said Woody MacPhail, Producer of the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival and World Tour at The Banff Centre. “With Media Shuttle, we’re able to transfer large files quickly in any form, access them anywhere and not limit the type of content received. We want our filmmakers focused on creating their content, and not file delivery. Media Shuttle lets them really embrace the lifestyle they are filming – last-minute deadlines, living in the instant, capturing the moment.”
Following the Festival, Media Shuttle will be used to distribute files to broadcast partners such as National Geographic, and to support the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour, which screens films in approximately 40 countries around the world. Many locations receive unique master file uploads – typically a terabyte of HD film – often with regional dialect.
“The host organization in each tour location chooses a program that reflects the interests of their local audiences and exchanging digital assets of this size, frequency and specification can be complex,” added MacPhail. “We needed a delivery solution that is reliable and effortless for our host organizations. Media Shuttle gives us the flexibility to work with a wide range of global partners regardless of those elements.”
The Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival will be held October 26 to November 3, 2013. It is accepting film submissions from May 7 through August 6, 2013.
