University for the Creative Arts students store and share digital assets with Sony Ci Media Cloud
The University for the Creative Arts (UCA) is a specialist university in the south of England, offering a range of undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses in the creative arts, business and technology.
Working with Sony, UCA has been conducting a successful Proof of Concept to evaluate the capabilities of Sony’s Ci Media Cloud asset management platform. Developed by Sony Pictures, Ci is a totally cloud-based system that allows content creators to share, transfer, edit, transcode, manage, catalogue and archive media files in a highly secure collaborative environment.
More efficient media management for every digital artist
As a passionate advocate for creative education and research, UCA has provided an ideal test environment to demonstrate how Ci Media Cloud can be used by today’s emerging digital artists, including filmmakers and other content creators.
Today, most artists – regardless of their chosen medium – will at some point have a need to archive and share digital assets.
Christopher Nicholson
Associate Professor at UCA
A new era of technical and artistic convergence
“UCA is 100% dedicated to the creative arts – and as such we have a wide range of students, all with differing skills and areas of practice” notes Professor Nicholson.
“We’re living in the era of technical and artistic convergence, and virtually every artist will at some point generate a digital asset. A main purpose of the test was to see if artists within UCA could share these assets quickly, securely and efficiently.”
The trial has demonstrated Ci’s ability to handle various file types from different sources, allowing immediate distribution. UCA staff also confirm that the system is both robust and secure in use. Built with security in mind, Ci Media Cloud runs on Amazon Web Services and incorporates multi-factor user authentication and powerful media encryption. Apps are also protected by further password protection and watermarking measures.
Hands-on guidance and support
The project saw Sony visit UCA and guide students on accessing and sharing digital assets in real time. “Sony has been very generous in the help and support they’ve provided UCA for the test” notes Professor Nicholson.
The ongoing proof of concept testing sees new departments being progressively introduced to Ci, allowing UCA to evaluate the platform’s viability for more extensive inter-departmental collaboration. “Our initial test has proved how Sony Ci could work for UCA” continues Professor Nicholson.
The Sony Ci system has already proved to be a remarkably adaptable, efficient and secure way of sharing a very wide range of assets via the Cloud.
Professor Nicholson
