Today CHESA announced we have launched Acorn Cloud, a new platform for video team collaboration. Video editors will now have the ability to collaborate remotely using our cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. It is a turnkey solution that gives editors the ability to ingest, search, find, enrich and retain their assets, all with work-in-progress functionality for Adobe Premiere.
We built this solution for teams that need agility. Many teams lack information technology (IT) support, and our solution solves that problem as it comes with full support. Creative teams can focus on collaboration and delivering on time rather than worrying about staying up and running. CHESA observed a need for a solution that could provide what most small to mid-size creative teams need, complete with turnkey support.
As a recognized leader in systems integration serving the media supply chain market,” said Lance Hukill, CHESA’s Chief Commercial Officer, “we continuously innovate to fill the needs of client challenges. Our Acorn Cloud SaaS platform adds another option in CHESA’s portfolio to meet these market demands.”
Acorn Cloud sits on CHESA’s centralized control plane called Bones, and we built it on Amazon Web Services (AWS), LucidLink, and Quantum CatDV technologies. Entertainment companies, sports teams, the federal government, ad agencies, and corporate communications departments will have a viable alternative for their remote creative workforce.
Quantum CatDV is increasingly deployed in the cloud thanks to our most recent round of cloud deployment features,” said Dave Clack, General Manager, Cloud Software and Analytics at Quantum. “CHESA has taken this a step further to build a high-touch, custom version of the platform for their customers that blends the power of the Quantum media asset management, collaboration, and orchestration platform with CHESA’s deep expertise to create this new service offering.
Acorn Cloud Built for Creatives
We solve problems and create platforms because we get it. Most of CHESA’s team of engineers and solutions architects came from the creative side of the house. Our frustrations as creative storytellers drove many of us into the world of solutions. In an ever-changing and innovative industry, the one constant is helping editors and producers to be able to tell the story as well and beautifully as possible without the tech part getting in the way of that. Working on a platform that would help teams get a solid workflow up and running in the cloud was why CHESA got to work. Video teams also get a partner that is also like an internal media IT team. Some of the features and functionality to get the job done include:
- Ingest assets in bulk
- Drag and drop ingest with camera card support *terms and conditions apply
- Live edit
- Review and edit proxies
- Scrub proxies via web user integration (UI) without opening an asset
- Log notes about each scene as virtual clips
- Create deliverables quickly for distribution platforms
- Orchestrate your workflow
- Enrich your content with extended metadata
- Search and retrieve your archived content easily to repurpose content
- Highly resilient
Our current and new clients have been looking for more solutions via SaaS to achieve faster implementation, minimized procurement and supply chain constraints, straightforward, fully managed services, and predictable cost structures,” says Jason Paquin, CEO at CHESA. “Acorn Cloud has come out of our team listening and responding to a growing need in the industry, and we are excited to bring more options to market in this space.”
Acorn Cloud is Hosted and Managed
Many of our client’s environments lack a media IT team. They need a viable workflow that delivers the capabilities they require. Ease of use, various solutions working well together, and remaining operational are top priorities. Acorn is created to be intuitive, fully hosted, and managed and includes:
- Comprehensive documentation and video library
- Intuitive user interface for rapid onboarding
- Setting up a new user is simple and easy
- Complete production asset management functionality
- Backed by industry-leading media supply chain experts
- Fully supported and monitored
- Support requests within the platform
Acorn Cloud Partners
We chose to collaborate with and integrate the best solutions in the market to create Acorn Cloud:
AWS allows this entire workflow to be in the cloud, including compute, networking, storage, and other AWS services.
It is inspiring to see CHESA fill an important gap in the media supply chain by creating a viable solution, Acorn Cloud, for AWS customers,” said Ian McPherson, Principal of WW Business Development for Media and Entertainment at AWS. “From big to small organizations, editors across the spectrum now have a scalable and usable MAM with integrated well-known AWS partners. Simplifying workflows and empowering creatives while also removing the heavy lifting of operating and maintaining a MAM is what many organizations need right now.
LucidLink enables Acorn Cloud to support rapid hi-res footage ingests for immediate access anywhere. With LucidLink as part of our platform, video and audio post-production can immediately access, edit, and collaborate directly in the cloud in real-time.
LucidLink is a standard in the Media industry enabling real-time, remote collaboration on large files by users and applications from anywhere worldwide. Running on any Amazon S3-compatible object storage makes LucidLink a natural fit for Chesa’s Acorn offering,” said Scott Miller, Director of Global Alliances & Channels. “We are excited to be a part of this unique and powerful solution for the companies that want a turn-key service managed by an SI that knows how to make all the technologies work well together.
Quantum CatDV enables Acorn Cloud to be a powerful media asset management and workflow orchestration platform that provides automation and collaboration tools for large volumes of digital media. Acorn customizes CatDV for features creative teams need.
We are pleased to partner with a market leader like CHESA to develop a solution that combines the best technology for creative teams that need to collaborate quickly and efficiently in a remote environment,” said James Mundle, Channel Chief at Quantum. “Quantum is happy to support CHESA under our first managed services agreement as we look to offer additional software assets under an MSP model.
CHESA – Thirty Years Serving Creatives
We’ve been at this a while – supporting creatives. We ensure technology doesn’t get in the way of video editors and project teams telling the story. Cinema, news broadcast, professional sports, the federal government, education, corporate, etc. – all need to create content. Most do not have media IT support or someone to help build workflows and infrastructure tailored around what editors need to collaborate, edit, and deliver. With the move to remote, creating a Cloud SaaS solution that our clients want was not so much bold but obvious.
