Post house Nice Shoes, New York, has introduced Nice Spots, a pay-as-you-go hosted Web-based application that allows ad agencies, postproduction facilities, broadcasters, corporations and others to exchange media and to quickly review and collaborate on rough cuts and final edits. Nearly two years in development, and based on Nice Shoes’ spot production experience and customer needs, the service includes review and approval capabilities, as well as tools for archiving and retrieval designed to eliminate the need for costly storage and couriers.
Under the direction of Nice Shoes director of new media services John DiMaggio, lead programmer Scott Treude and designer Rowland Holmes, Nice Spots could also be used for applications such as viewing and commenting on casting tapes, location scouting and dailies. Additionally users can store metadata (information about a clip), and this information is searchable.
Meanwhile, Nice Spots could archive finished masters; essentially a high–quality file is created and stored that is suitable for dubbing or broadcast, while Quicktime and Windows Media files are provided for fast viewing and download.
New York-based editorial shop Go Robot and agency Berlin Cameron & Partners, New York, served as beta sites for the application. Nice Shoes partner Dominic Pandolfino explained that users of this service do not have to be Nice Shoes clients, and in fact the company is targeting a broad range of users from agencies to advertisers, production companies and editorial house.
“There are many sets of eyes that need to view, comment and approve at all stages of production and post,” he said. “Nice Spots allows that to happen in a streamlined, efficient manner, cutting down dramatically on the cost of doing business.”
Adding that the application is easy to use and customizable, DiMaggio added,
“Agencies have years of material archived in warehouses and they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to store their masters and retrieve dubs. With Nice Spots, an agency’s material is at their fingertips, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from anywhere in the world.”
Nice Spots servers and storage live at a New York-based ‘computer hotel,’ which offers multiple layers of security, power redundancy with backup diesel generators, and scalable Internet bandwidth.
Data is stored on hardware from Network Appliances. Using Fibre Channel technology, all data resides within a fault-tolerant environment allowing for multiple failures with no data loss. The storage easily scales by simply adding more drives.
For added security, Nice Spots virus scans uploaded files. If a virus is detected, the file is deleted and a warning message will appear.
A free 30-day trial is currently offered; pricing had not been determined at press time.
