Sony’s Ci Media Cloud media management now features a subscription Tier for small to medium businesses, a desktop file transfer app and support for video and audio files with Dolby Atmos.
Ci Media Cloud, Sony’s cloud-based media management and collaboration system, is a place where users can capture, backup, review, transform and run streamlined post-production workflows. Its features are now updated to include a plan optimised for small and medium businesses, a new desktop file transfer app called Ci Transfer, and enhanced support for Dolby Atmos audio files.
“We’re continually evolving our Ci platform to better address users’ needs and become a fundamental part of their daily workflow,” said David Rosen, Vice President of Cloud Applications and Services, Sony Electronics. “With the addition of a plan created to address the requirements and budget of small and medium businesses, a new desktop app experience, and Dolby Atmos audio for immersive, authentic sound, we’re making Ci more accessible, easy to use and effective for creatives and organisations across the industry.”
Business Plan Update
Ci is launching a new Business Plan alongside the Free, Pro and Team online plans, which complements the custom Enterprise and Enterprise+ options. Optimised for independent creators or organisations with multiple teams, this online subscription is a step up from Ci’s introductory Team subscription.
At about $249 a month (USD), businesses can create unlimited Workspaces, access 1 TB of active storage, use 4 TB of archive storage, and send 500 GB of monthly data transfers. This new Business Plan features some of the Ci’s Enterprise-tier plans’ more advanced capabilities including custom branding and usage analytics, with simplified on-boarding and a reasonable price.
Ci Transfer Desktop App and Sidecar Ingest Workflow
Ci Transfer is a desktop app that enables high-speed transfer of files and folders to and from the Ci Media Cloud platform. Available for Mac and PC devices, this new app supports multi-gig speed transfers, retries transfers after interruptions, and is optimised to handle hundreds of files. With pause and resume of transfers as well as transfer reports, urgent files can be prioritized for expedited transfers and once complete, validated in transfer logs.
For larger organisations migrating archive libraries, the Ci Transfer app can be paired with a new sidecar ingest workflow to allow customers to move media libraries without losing sidecar metadata. By uploading both JSON files with media files, Ci will automatically link the metadata to the media files. Ci Transfer is available to download for free for all Ci users. The sidecar ingest workflow is an entitlement feature for enterprise customers.
Dolby Atmos Support
Video and audio files with Dolby Atmos can now be uploaded and are playable in Ci’s player. The integration with Dolby.io enables support for ADM (Audio Definition Model) BWF (Broadcast Wave Format) Atmos audio and users can select to listen to and download binaural or stereo audio proxies directly in Ci. Users can also visually see Loudness Unit Full Scale (LUFS) and True Peak levels in Ci’s built-in media analysis tool. Creative and quality assurance (QA) teams can listen to and work with immersive content, as it was intended to be heard. www.cimediacloud.com
