Digital Services

Here at Advanced Media, we wouldn’t truly earn the right to call ourselves a media company if we didn’t offer complete digital file services. In today’s ever evolving information age, the options are far wider than simply converting and storing media on DVD. Today you can choose between optical (DVD, Blu-ray), tape (analog and digital) and digital files (physical and virtual).

While some disadvantages exist, it is beyond doubt that digital files offer an extremely quick, accessible and effective solution to your various media needs, whether you are an individual, enterprise, educational institution or a government agency.

We offer a comprehensive solution of digital file services, including digitizing, encoding, trans-coding, upload/download, internet file sharing, fast internet file delivery, digital signage and many other options to choose from. We service all file formats, including H.264, MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, WMV, Quick Time, Uncompressed, ProRes and can accommodate many applications and platforms – YouTube, Vimeo, FTP, Facebook, Final Cut Pro, Avid, iMovie and others.

We can go from any source to any file type and vice versa. We also provide editorial services. Please read more in our editorial services section to learn of our capabilities.

Here at Advanced Media we want to empower you to share and benefit from your content, whether for personal use, educational value or commercial gain. Here are some of the benefits and uses of having your content available on digital file media:

• Quick and easy access to editing, modifying and enhancements (using video editing system)

• Ability to quickly and easily share files and content

• As future proof storage. Digital files are very likely to be accessible for the foreseeable future

• For organizations – the ability to share content among multiple administrators, editors and end users.

Tell me about some of the advantages and benefits of Digital File storage.
Well, the starting point is that there are essentially two types of digital file storage solutions – physical and virtual. Even though the overall concept of digital files is that they are intangible, by physical we refer to the individual or organization actually holding on to the files on a tangible storing device, be it a hard drive, DVD or similar physical media.

That means that you know where your assets are and you can plug in and access them at any time. The other solution is virtual, meaning that the files are being stored somewhere in the world on a chosen company server. We will cover some of the most obvious advantages and disadvantages or both options.

This list is by no means comprehensive. Please contact us, Advanced Media, or another trusted company for advice about the storage solution that is right for you.
Let’s begin by exploring the physical solution.

Advantages:

• Complete control and privacy – you have complete control and access to the media and are 100% in charge. No one else can review, access or modify your content.

• Ease of use – it is readily available to you and anyone else you wish to share it with.

• One time fee – once you have completed the digitizing and conversion process, whether by yourself or through a reputable company, you no longer need to pay any subsequent fees.

Disadvantages:

• Catastrophic loss – since here at Advance Media, we believe that your content is invaluable and irreplaceable and that “History is worth repeating”, you stand to lose all your content in the event of fire, theft, flood, security breach and other unforeseen events.

One way to mitigate a catastrophic loss scenario is to clone your media into a separate drive that could be stored at a secure location, such as storage or a dedicated media vault. If you are a commercial user, you definitely need to consider such option.

To learn more about what Advanced Media has to offer in terms of content preservation and protection, please go here. Alternatively, you may want to choose the virtual solution.

Now, let’s move on to explore the viral solution. As a side note, at the present time Advanced Media does not offer virtual media storage solution, or necessarily endorses such service or service provider. We simply write about it because it is a viable option in today’s technology, and we want our customers and clients to be informed.

The term virtual, or “cloud storage”, is really a buzz word for online space where you can upload your files to and keep them there for later use. Th real question is, “why use it for your digital file content?”. There could be advantages to using an online service that centrally stores your content. However, there are downsides to using this technology too. Let’s explore some of the benefits as well as the pitfalls of using online virtual “cloud” storage.

Advantages:

• Disaster recovery – one of the great benefits of storing your valuable digital content online is to guard against a disaster. Using remote storage isolates your invaluable content from major disasters, such as flooding, fire, theft, virus, etc. You can then recover your entire library after the event from your personal online locker.

• Access data from anywhere – Another advantage of using online services to store your files is ease of access. Rather than being locked down to a local storage device that may not even be portable, you can use the power of the Internet to access or even stream in some circumstances from any location that has an Internet connection.

• Share content – Storing your content online using some services makes it possible to legally share it with other users. Various sites now provide tools to share your media on popular social networks like Facebook etc. That said, keep in mind that you should never directly share copyright content with others over P2P networks or other forms of distribution that would infringe on copyright.

Disadvantages:

• Need Internet connection – To be able to access your online storage, you obviously need a fast Internet connection. If you find that you urgently need to access your content and don’t have an Internet connection, or if your connection is down or not fast enough, then this could lead to delays.

• Size and functionality – while the cloud could be fantastic for backing up word documents, emails and even music files, it could not be feasible for large video files. Even if your entire library is made of highly compressed, “YouTube” style files, you still would need to spend a substantial amount of time uploading and downloading, as well bandwidth issues and restrictions with you and your possible end-users.

• Security – because access to your valuable content is controlled through security credentials (username, password, etc.), your media files may be insecure if this area is weak. Always use strong security pass phrases when using cloud storage. In addition, in today’s mobile and smart phones world, your identity and information are much more exposed than before.

Companies like Facebook and others are notorious for mining and sharing data about you. If you have any sensitive and personal, or even commercial content, and the security is breached, it can be posted virtually forever on multiple sites and portals that operate from countries where internet policy regulations enforcement is weak to non-existent.

• Less Control – even though your files may be secure, you will have less control on how or where (server locations) it is stored. The company that hosts your files can choose how it stores the data on its virtual servers. Many US domestic companies do use “offshore servers for costs reasons and others. Worse case scenario is, “what if the company goes out of business?” or your content has been deleted because yo did not adhere to some obscure rule you signed on when agreed t contract the service.

To sum it up, we at Advanced Media, sincerely believe that in today’s age, you need to have a media strategy. Simply taking into account that since we are surrounded by media options, platforms and applications makes your content indestructible and future proof is an incorrect assumption.

It is a fact that 90% of all US silent motion pictures and 50% of all sound motion pictures done up until 1950’s are permanently lost, even though they had commercial value. While today’s preservation and archival technology is far better, your job is to understand the various options and possibilities and been able to choose what fit your needs the most. Today, we live in the information age, where information and content is more valuable than ever. Simply storing everything you have online or inadequately, could be a sure recipe for disaster.

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