Aframe expands cloud-based collaborative production solution
Marc Loftus
April 4, 2012

Aframe expands cloud-based collaborative production solution

BOSTON — London-based Aframe (www.aframe.com) is expanding its cloud-based video production platform with a new US headquarters in Boston, as well as with infrastructure centers in New York and Los Angeles. The company’s private cloud infrastructure allows those producing film, television or commercial content to share or review material via a simple-to-use Web browser. 

Aframe has also named Mark Overington president of its North America operations. Overington was part of the founding team at Avid Technology and served as its former head of marketing. 

Post spoke with Aframe co-founder/CEO David Peto recently about the business. Peto is a former founder of the London post production facility Unit, and says Aframe was developed as a solution to the problems his studio clients were experiencing with tapeless workflows, portable hard drives, and spread-out productions. 

Aframe eliminates the need to constantly learn new technologies, he notes. The system can provide unlimited storage and simplify collaboration, regardless of where parties are located. The difference between Aframe and other cloud-based solutions, says Peto, is that “our cloud us not running on Amazon or Microsoft. You are uploading to our private cloud. We own the server and the network. It’s purely about video and has been optimized.”

Since the data centers are in the heart of the production communities, users are not sending content long distances and are thereby experiencing quicker upload and download times. There are also redundancy features built in, where material is copied to Aframe’s different locations for security purposes if ever a failure were to occur.

Aframe’s solution has its own built-in transcoder, which can transcode video content from any format to any format. The company’s rates — which range from $99 a month to $250 a month — open the service up to small studios as well as bigger facilities. Each user can have from half a terabyte to 3TBs of storage. Aframe offers enterprise licenses and yearly contracts too.

The company will be attending NAB this month and will have demos set up in the Cloud Pavilion of the convention center.