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Frequently Asked Questions

We've done our best to answer everything you could ever want to know about Aframe, but if there's something we've missed, get in touch!

General

Q – What is Aframe?

A – Aframe is a private-cloud based asset management solution and tagging service with capabilities in collaboration, review and approval and archive. Aframe software and websites run on Aframe-owned servers, so your data is stored on our dedicated storage arrays. Communication and transfers occur over our networks. Video streaming is a feature that enables users of our system to preview clips and sequences.

Q – Can I use Aframe to host my video streaming service?

A – Although the Aframe ingest process creates a web-ready file that can be streamed and shared, we are not intended to be a final-mile, consumption website such as YouTube or Vimeo or a transaction-based streaming platform such as Brightcove or Zixi.

Q – How much is Aframe?

A – Good question! We don't publish a price list as everyone's requirements are different. The price you pay depends on the number of users, amount of storage you need and the features you'd like to use. Get in touch and we'll do our best to help you out.

Q – Does your service back up the assets?

A – Yes, everything uploaded to the platform is automatically backed up to our two datacenters at opposite ends of the country; New York and Los Angeles in the US, London and Rainton in the UK.

Q – How long have you been in business? Who are your current customers?

A – Aframe was founded in 2009, and began service operations in 2010 within the UK. Currently we host over 24,000 hours of high-resolution footage, have over 60 commercial accounts and 5,000 discrete users of the platform. Customers range from small 2-3 person production companies, to entire departments of large broadcasters such as the BBC and MTV. In 2012, we began operations in North America. For our full list of customers we're able to talk about, visit our clients page.

Q – Can I host Aframe on my own servers within my enterprise/university?

A – At the present time, Aframe only runs on our private cloud (Aframe-owned datacenters, servers, storage, and network).

Q – How do I decide if Aframe is right for me?

A – Think carefully about the problem that you are trying to solve and the direct AND indirect costs, both from hardware and software purchases and long-term maintenance and support. Aframe's focus on asset management, collaboration, review and approval and archive performs many of the basic functions of larger, expensive on-premise solutions as an inclusive, monthly, pay-as-you-go service. Aframe also offers metadata tagging services which may be useful to free your team from this mundane task, and help make finished pieces, or highly re-usable rough or raw footage searchable and persistent.

Workflow / Usage

Q - What are the minimum system requirements needed to access Aframe?

CPU Speed: 1.6GHz
RAM: 2GB
OS: Mac OS X 10.6 or later / Windows 7, XP, Vista
Browsers: Safari 6.0.1, Firefox 16.0.1, Internet Explorer 9, Chrome 22.0.1

* To upload media into your project on Aframe, your machine must have Java installed and enabled. For more information on this, click here to go to the Support Centre.

Q – What are the video file formats you support?

A – Aframe can take in video content presented in a range of industry-standard formats. Even if your media takes the form of a complex Panasonic P2 MXF folder structure (or Canon XF compact flash card rushes, or Sony EX series SxS card format) you can upload your media into Aframe without any hassle. Simply select the top-level directory of whatever format your rushes are housed within, and upload this into your project. Our ingest app is smart enough to store the original high-res in exactly the form it is presented to us. There's also no need to transcode your rushes prior to ingest; each clip will be transcoded into an h264 mp4 file for playback on almost any browser or mobile device.

Supported File Extensions:	Supported Video Codecs:
AVI FLV M2T M4V MKV MOV MP4 MPEG MPG MTS MXF WMV	Apple ProRes AVC-Intra DNxHD DV DVCPro DVCProHD FFmpeg Video Codec #1 H.261 H.264 HDV IMX 50 MPEG-1 video MPEG-2 video MPEG-4 part 2 RealVideo 1.0 RealVideo 2.0 RealVideo 3.0 RealVideo 4.0 Uncompressed 8-bit Uncompressed 10-bit XDCam HD

Q – I have a mix of raw footage and finished videos, can I take down videos whenever I want?

A – Yes, that workflow will work. Once an asset is proxied on Aframe, the high res source material is available to be downloaded and/or share at any point, anywhere you have an internet connection.

Q – Can users choose the download formats and resolutions from within Aframe?

A – All users on your team can download. When providing a download link from Aframe, the person "sharing" has the ability to decide if the recipient is to receive only a web stream, a downloadable proxy file or the original source footage.

Q – Can we upload h.264 proxies into Aframe? Does Aframe support a proxy-based pre-production workflow?

A – Proxies can be uploaded into Aframe and considered as “source”. Whatever flavor of h.264 is uploaded, Aframe will create another proxy to Aframe's service standard – essentially “a proxy of a proxy” for use inside Aframe. We will standardize it to our format. If the original proxy is "lower", we will uprez it (which may look grainy or pixelated).

Q – When Aframe creates a proxy, what are the “specs”?

A – The proxy created inside Aframe is an H.264 at 2Mbps data rate in a 590 pixel wide resolution.

Q – When Aframe creates a proxy, what is the naming function?

A – The proxy created will retain the same name as the ingested source footage, though you may edit the file name once it is in Aframe.

Q – Can I upload non-video assets to Aframe such as .pdf, .doc, .jpg, .tiff, .mp3, .wav, .xls, .xml, etc.?

A – Yes, non-video assets can be uploaded into Aframe and preserved with the project through its lifecycle. Such documents (budgets, marketing glossies, shot lists, release forms, background music, etc.) can be uploaded using the “documents” tab in Aframe and attached to specific time-codes of your clips.

Q – Who can delete the files or project? Will there be administrator accounts and then accounts that do not have the same capabilities?

A – Currently there are two levels of user hierarchy - the project owner and team members. The project owner is the only person who can actually create or delete the project, and delete originally uploaded clips. Everyone else on the project team shares the same level of access to all features of Aframe. All active interactions (creating collections, sharing links, adding/removing team members) is tracked through the Activities tab, so such activities may be audited.

Q – Any ballpark idea on what the turnaround time is for when, say, a 350 GB project is sent to Aframe?

A – The answer here is "it depends on the internet connection speed you have”. A useful tool is located at: bandwidth.com/tools/calc.html for a basic "best case" range of times...those times assume ideal network conditions...most likely achievable using a UDP-based transfer protocol such as our built in upload tool. Speed differences may be experienced due to any number of reasons - from the number of people on the network, external construction on the wires headed to the telecommunications company, number of splices into the wire, crosstalk on the lines, etc. Speed is also dependent on your connection; fiber can be faster and more reliable. Copper connections are like electricity, not enough voltage to create heat, but still susceptible to signal attenuation, magnetic fields, and other common forms of "lossiness".

So for a transfer it depends on the following:
1. What your speed is,
2. How big your file is, and
3. What protocol you are using to transfer the file.

Q – How long does it take to tag a file using our service?

A – The first tagging project may take a slightly longer turnaround since we want to understand your specific lexicon and tagging schema, and other intricacies with the project first. The initial project may have some lag because of this, but once a relationship has been established subsequent tagging jobs happen much faster.

Q – How easy is it to add someone to a project?

A – Within the specific project, go to TEAM, scroll to the bottom of the page and "Invite someone new". If they have an account, you can add them to the project immediately by entering their email or username. They will then be immediately added to the project and receive a confirmation email. If they do yet not have an account, they will need to create one before they can join the project. If you just want someone to watch some footage (and optionally download it) use the SHARE function instead.

Q – Who can add or delete footage in the project?

A – Currently, any existing team member can add footage, but only the Project Owner can delete uploaded clips. Within Aframe, team members can organize groups of clips into “collections”. Users may delete “collections” but the clips remain untouched.

Functional / Technology

Q – What are the advantages of using Aframe over an FTP site to share raw footage? (Or DropBox, or YouSendIt, etc...)

A – Standard FTP sites are unintelligent, unsearchable, uncommentable, "dark" sites that can be hacked. They are not necessarily backed up. Ultimately, you give up control of this asset. Aframe is designed from the ground up as a web-based asset management system, collaboration platform and archive tool. Once the footage is on the system, higher-level, value-added interactions with the media can occur, including some distribution and consumption transcoding. Additionally, from a pure technology perspective, we also enable UDP-based ingests, which is a much faster way of delivering files to Aframe than FTP or HTTP.

Q – What is the difference between UDP and FTP?

A – FTP is based on the TCP communications protocol. FTP "client programs" is what has been commonly used for the past 15 years to move files between computers. Its primary drawback is that it leverages TCP's heavy network "overhead" such that transfers might take a long time especially over highly latent networks. Latency is simply "delay" which can occur from many different sources, both hardware and software, anywhere on the network upon which your data is traveling. In real world applications, the effects of latency can reduce the effective speed of your internet connection by 80%!

User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is different than TCP in that it does not have the same network overhead, and hence, is able to send files much faster - even across really bad or distant connections. This "network latency compensation" essentially allows a file transfer to take over 95% of the available internet bandwidth. There are several constraints when using any UDP-based client, including network connection saturation, which might interrupt (or delay) standard web browsing, and in extreme cases, overdrive the network and cause an outage. Because of this, many corporate networks and residential ISPs block UDP access to their networks. This is why we have built in FTP and HTTP as fail-over upload tools, all within a single uploader.

Q – Is timecode preserved inside Aframe?

A – Aframe preserves the original timecode on uploaded source footage and the proxies we create. Where present and parseable, Aframe proxies will also show the timecode as per the original. Furthermore, we are implementing new code to more accurately extract the timecode as metadata. Our Player uses a GOP structure equal in length to the frame rate with an iFrame every second.

Q – How is metadata handled?

A – Currently, customer-created metadata files are handled as an XML sidecar to each asset (not a psql export file), and uploaded as a document.

Q – What can I download from Aframe?

A – Any file you upload into Aframe, any metadata that is created, or collection proxies can be downloaded out of the system – manually/by request.

Q – How long does the media stay on Aframe before it is deleted due to lack of payment/lack of renewal?

A – We will never delete your media until you tell us to. If we cannot retrieve payment for an account we block access to the account.

Q – Where can I download the files to?

A – You could download the files to any location you wish; directly onto your hard drive or even LTO tapes. You could do this on premise, or make arrangements with an Aframe network partner to perform this service for you.