Cloud Talk - Matt Cimaglia
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Matt Cimaglia: [00:00:00] I kind of came into it more from a UI first con concept and UI UX concept. Um, and then I had to get that to the right developers to then say, okay, this is what I kind of want it to do. Translate that into code. 

Jeff DeVerter: Well, hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of cloud talk. I'm the host around these parts and I'm delighted to bring you really though the first episode of the year.

Sorry to say that it's March already. In fact, we recorded this episode. Towards the end of last year. And it's a conversation that I had with a gentleman named Matt Camaglia. Now Matt built an amazing video production company, but all the while applying technology to the craft of video storytelling and had some incredible ideas.

So after he sold that company, he pulled together some advisors, investors, and great technologists to build. A service to help companies in this [00:01:00] space do it with the latest and greatest in technology. Now, before I give too much of the story away, well, I want to let Matt tell that story all on his own. So folks, welcome back to cloud talk.

And I'm so glad that you're here and a part of this story. 

Intro: Between application and infrastructure is virtually invisible in these modern apps. The kind of thing that a global computing fabric with immense resilience and scale can deliver without even breaking a sweat. That's really what the promise of the cloud has always been.

It's all focused on the business objectives. That's where we craft the plan. In the tech world, we like to celebrate the lone genius, but I'm just going to tell you right now, they're just the convenient face as founders to focus on. Welcome to Cloud Talk. Here's your host, Jeff Deverter. 

Jeff DeVerter: But let me tell you, Let me tell you a little story, Matt.

My career started actually in, in music. It wasn't in technology at all. And I owned a recording studio in Houston, [00:02:00] Texas. I, I had started working in there as a, as an engineer and then eventually my wife and I bought it. And, and I'd grown up aware of technology. My, my father was a lifer with IBM. And, uh, and so, so I had made a conscious decision at one point, Hey, I'm not going down the technology road.

I'm going to go into music and music production. And so I spent a ton of time. I mean, we had, this is, this is the analog days. And so it's the big rooms. Think about any of the, the The liner notes, if you can, people can remember looking at liner notes or images of people in a studio, massive recording console, big performance rooms with lots of what are called isolation rooms.

There was, there was multiple studios in this facility so that we could have multiple artists in there doing their thing at a time. And to do anything, any kind of recording, even if it was just a voiceover, like what we're doing now, I mean, it's, it is expensive to do that kind of stuff. And about, I took a, uh, a screenshot at a selfie in, um, in May of this year, I was coming back from an event in Vegas.

And [00:03:00] of course I've got this little podcast that I do and I had to edit an episode. And, and Apple had just released, um, logic for the iPad and well, I had a nice fancy iPad pro. And so here I was 37, 000 feet on a Southwest flight from the exit row, editing a podcast with all of the tools and more of what I would have had in those old days.

And I just could not get over the, the, the juxtaposition of having to have all the big stuff to now being able to work in a smaller environment. That was amazing. 

Matt Cimaglia: Yeah, I mean, look, I think that the advances in technology and equally, you know, what Apple's done with the iPad and the support for being able to have these pro tools accessible really where you are, wherever you are.

Uh, it's, it's quite miraculous, especially for me. I mean, Kind of going back to my story, I think that we all sort of have these similar stories to some degree if you started out at a certain point in your life and, um, you know, I graduated when I was 20 [00:04:00] and, uh, I built a production company because that was what I wanted to do.

I knew I wanted to work in production. I knew I wanted to, um, sort of, I knew what I, what my worth was, let's just say. And, um, Through that, I also had this concept of blending storytelling with technology. And it was really critical for me to be able to use the latest, greatest, whatever technology tool or computer or, um, encoding method at that point.

And, and really built up a, a Good brand name for ourselves because of that. And through that process, I also got sort of scouted personally by NBC network. And at this time period, this was 2002, 2003, they were converting from analog to digital. So very similar, kind of what, what you were talking about with those giant tape reels that you probably used to record on, uh, versus, you know, now a memory stick.

So yeah, 

Jeff DeVerter: this massive two inch tapes. We, [00:05:00] cause we could. We could move a studio, a session from one studio to the other, but it was sneaker net, it was pick those, those things up and carry them and, and God forbid those, when we would, we would produce a session where we need to go to Nashville or LA to go capture musicians.

You're traveling with 50 pounds of tape. 

Matt Cimaglia: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And, and, and, you know, similar for, for me on these NBC days, um, very early on, in order to transport. For video anywhere, it was a satellite. So I have really cool pictures back in the day of me sitting next to flyaway kits, where an engineer would travel wherever I was and they would set up a satellite so that I could beam my video up to New York and, you know, 30 rock could take it down.

And this is also during that time period where. I was able to start editing on a laptop and, and it was so incredible. And, you know, early days, final cut pro or even avid to that degree. Uh, at, at that point it was avid express, uh, that they [00:06:00] allowed you to do this on a, um, laptop. And, and so, you know, I was witness to all of these different tool sets that we were, Cobbling it together, right?

We were trying to make it work, but now the kind of your, your example of being able to edit logic with all of your plugins on an iPad. It's so accessible and that democratization of the production industry or the creative industry as a whole, uh, has been really incredible. And, and I'm so fortunate to have been witnessed to a lot of these advances in technology over the last two decades.

Jeff DeVerter: Yeah, it's pretty amazing. And I took it one step farther, Matt. I actually, you know, when you, when you export those files mixed down as what we used to say, uh, it creates a wave file, but to, to publish that podcast, it needed to be MP3. So I convert to MP3, which makes it much smaller. I actually published it as well.

So it went out in its final form. Now it didn't go up fast, but I was on a two and a half hour flight that I didn't have anywhere to go. So I just waited for it to do its thing. So I actually [00:07:00] did the final mix down of it, all the editing and published it to the internet from that, from the airplane. But that was a pretty simple use case.

I mean, that was just, you know, I had, I had two, two audio tracks. I had my guest, I had myself, I had, well, there's a couple more and some music and a few other little things, but I'd recorded all those assets. And that was my editing process to put it all together. that gets a lot more complex in, of course, if I was going to go into multitrack, make it a record with a bunch of musicians, but, but video gets even more challenging.

I mean, the way to pull, you know, in the, let's go back to the old days. I mean, you, you would have your favorite camera operator and his gear and drag them along and he would hand you physical tapes at the end and off you go. But in these new days, you know, you've got, you've got video coming from everywhere.

And that kind of gets us to the birth of your story here, why we're here to talk today. 

Matt Cimaglia: Yeah. I mean, look, I think that pulling from two decades of experience and also not knowing what, um, wasn't working and, and being [00:08:00] crazy enough to say, Hey, let's, there's gotta be a better solution. There's gotta be a better way.

And to your point, video compared to. Any other real data source out there is much more higher in fidelity and also just size, right? Yeah, 

Jeff DeVerter: the physics of the file. They're massive by comparison. 

Matt Cimaglia: Yeah. And, and so building Alteon really to its core was It's not a concept that came together overnight. It was a concept that probably came over the last two or three decades of my life of why couldn't there be something better.

Right. 

Jeff DeVerter: Of painful moments of why can't this be better or you've cobbled something together and it's really just not. Yeah, 

Matt Cimaglia: or, or, or quite frankly, you know, when I was doing a lot of the research and I was consulting for some businesses after I exited my, my previous company, which was, which ended up being a full service agency.

Um, but having, having this sort of time period [00:09:00] to consult and work with other companies and talk about innovation, it really came to be that. Only large studios or enterprise had access to tools that were, you know, in massive racks of servers that they were putting together locally on prem in their offices, or, um, you know, they had access to engineers that could build on an AWS or an Azure or something like that.

And you're starting to see this time period five years ago where companies are starting to look more into the cloud. And how do I. Really scale my business up more. But when you look at the everyday creator, so this is anyone from a Tik TOK artist all the way up to again, a major enterprise, there wasn't a tool that was accessible to people at, at a fraction of, of the cost or, or even just the complexity of setting it up.

And when we build Alteon, that was really what we said to begin with was. There's gotta be a [00:10:00] way that we could just make this really simple and easy for people to get into our platform and just quite frankly, understand exactly what they're doing in it the day that they're on it. 

Jeff DeVerter: Yeah, and you, you bring up, you started with, you know, the fraction of the cost, but then you talked about the complexity and dealing with it.

And that's really the big cost, you know, if we were to talk about, about where the real pain points are. Look, I remember, 

Matt Cimaglia: I remember looking at one of the major cloud providers, websites on how to calculate. And it was two pages and I, I glazed over and I'm just like, I'm a fairly smart guy. I'm not a technical founder, but I can kind of understand things.

And when I was looking at this page, I was like, how could any other creative even start with that point? 

Jeff DeVerter: Right, right. And so the fact that you did solve it from a, from a cost perspective, but then also you took the, you took the complexity out, which is, which is huge. So we're, we're skirting around. You've mentioned the name Altheon a few times.

Give, give us the pitch. What is it that Altheon does? 

Matt Cimaglia: Yeah, to, to its core, you know, we've taken a [00:11:00] lot of the single purpose apps that exist out there and we've blended them all into one ecosystem. So if you're, if you're a content creator, typically you're using several Apps or programs to produce your work.

And again, as a former content creator or an editor, I knew that there, there, there was just so much friction there or contextual switching, right? I was going from one application to another, to another, to another, and all of these applications were meant to make my life simpler, but they ended up becoming, Very costly because I was now having to manage multiple subscriptions or quite frankly, it was, Hey, one, one system has been updated and it's not compatible with the next system and you have to wait until the next system is updated.

So it just became really complex. And again, as great as technology is, sometimes it's also a hindrance in terms of just the creative process. So when we set out to build Altion, we, we really wanted to have a single point for multiple different touch points that you might have. [00:12:00] In the creative process. So at its core, it's cloud storage, content management, and the ability to be able to collaborate with other people remotely and, and similar to your example, you know, before it's like you might be working with different artists all over the country.

And, um, you need a single point to bring that content in. Altion now is that resource to do that. And we've created a lot of simple tools to be able to ingest, because I think that that's the, the. Biggest friction point for a lot of people is how do I get my file from point a to point B? And, and a lot of times I kind of often joke, our biggest competitor is a lot of the shipping companies, because when, when you really get down to it, it's like, you know what, I'm going to ship a hard drive to you.

As opposed to just sending it online. Now, my sort of challenge to that, to people now with Altion is, Hey, even if it takes you 24 hours to upload, or even 48 hours to upload your entire shoot from today, [00:13:00] it's still getting to your entire team. Yeah. And you can almost guarantee it from the perspective of look how many shipments get lost on a given day or are delayed an extra 12 hours and you missed your deadline.

So now There's a 

Jeff DeVerter: snow storm in Cleveland and all of a sudden your production's held up. 

Matt Cimaglia: Exactly. Exactly. And, and then, you know, you, you had mentioned sort of you're using Logic on an iPad. Um. We brought apps to various devices. So whether you're on your iPhone or your iPad, or let's say you are on your laptop out in the field, but you need to get your content to your editor in, uh, New York or somewhere else out in the world.

You can easily do that very with our various apps. And then, and then because we have integrations with the non linear edit systems like Premiere or Final Cut Pro, um, these also give people this creative flexibility of once those files hit the cloud, it's immediately accessible inside the [00:14:00] edit suite. So again, reducing that friction of where is my content?

How do I find it? Where do I go to get it? And the way that we've built these applications is native to the UI and the UX. Of that application. So with final cut pro, for instance, we really pulled from a lot of Apple's UI kit with, with Adobe premiere pro we pulled from Adobe's UI kit because we wanted the editor to feel comfortable and feel like they were in their native habitat, as opposed to something else that was very foreign to them.

Jeff DeVerter: See, that's huge. Um, you know, if we think about the progression of what we talked about here, it's from going from the physical media to then these digital assets that people like yourselves cobbled together to create a solution that was ultimately broken from a cost and a complexity and a lack of integration.

And it sounds like, you know, you've figured out a way not only to to solve that, but then to also do that in the context and in the GUI. Uh, look and feel of, of, of the tool that the person's [00:15:00] trying to use. And for those that aren't, aren't native production type people, and they're thinking, look, folks, I can, I can, I can get a word document in an email and I can save it and I can edit it.

What, what, what's the big deal of downloading a file from your production team from Dropbox? I can already put this together in my head. Why do I need to go buy Altium? But, but the reality is, is, is we talked about this the other day. There's a lot more complexity to it and time that then starts to show up and that creates issues in the long run.

So let's talk, let's boil it down. Let's get super simple for just a second. You walk out with, with, with a great camera, you run out with a Canon of some sort and you get some great content and here it is on a, on a drive. Even it's just in a normal context, you have to bring it into the computer because you've got, and then once it's on the computer, you've got to put it in the right location.

You've got to get naming, uh, context has got to be correct. You've got to catalog that information. You've got to scrub through that information and, uh, and then ultimately put it, put it together. And challenging, but it gets [00:16:00] exponentially harder when you add people. 

Matt Cimaglia: How about, how about even better? You're shooting on a raw camera format, like a black magic raw, right?

And, and it's just an incredible quality of video, but the file sizes are absolutely massive. And I know my producer has an older laptop. And I know my producer doesn't have the ability to even view these raw files. So now me as an editor, I have to now transcode all of that footage on my desktop system or on my workspace, um, which now takes me down for potentially a day.

Yeah, with all town we've solved for that. So we transcode files in the cloud, which means that we're taking various raw formats or professional formats that people are using every day in the video industry. And we're compressing them in such a way that it's a very lightweight proxy or, or, uh, it's an H dot two, six, five MP four.

That means now that my producer, when [00:17:00] they're watching it on the web, when they click play, it's just immediately plays, even if they don't have, you know, the fastest of internet speeds. The other thing that's really incredible about that, and this is something that we launched a couple weeks ago, is the, the ability of going and taking those proxy files and editing it on my iPad.

And now I'm, I'm, I'm not taking up, you know, terabytes and terabytes of space on my iPad. I might be taking up You know, gigabytes of space on my iPad. So, so very fractional in terms of how much storage we're, we're really utilizing there, but then to take that file, whatever your edited project is, and push that to your desktop, that's really powerful because now you have your original media on your desktop, you're able to relink those files to the original.

Raw clips that you might have full fidelity will fidelity exactly. And now we, we help facilitate that whole process. And again, simplifying it all the way from the ingest point [00:18:00] to being able to generate these proxies to then go and pushing that file to your desktop, everything synced up and now you've, you've done what could have normally taken, you know, hours and hours of time, uh, and, and condensed it down into potentially minutes.

Jeff DeVerter: Amazing. Amazing. Hey, let's, uh, let's take a side journey real quick because you're clearly somebody who understands the production world. I mean, you ran, you built and ran your own production company. You, you, you've done things at the highest level of production. I mean, I mean, shoot working with, with NBC, uh, is, is pretty incredible.

But, um, but, but this is not generally the type of person I talked to who is an IT founder. Let's talk about that process a little bit. You, you, you had this idea, it could be better. You were freed up from, from the production company. How does a, how does a creative become a technology founder? 

Matt Cimaglia: Look, I think that again, I, I sort of mentioned it earlier, but starting my first company, and also I've always been interested in.

[00:19:00] technology. I've always been interested in computers. So growing up, I grew up in Boca Raton, Florida, which is where IBM invented the PC. So there was a rich culture always around me of computers and technology and how to really, um, again, blend this idea of storytelling with technology. And, um, When, when I sort of really got into the nuts and bolts of how to run my old company, one of the strategic advantages that we had over a lot of other companies is our tech or was our technology.

And I was always investing. I was always sort of looking for that next tool that would help us continue to Keep that edge and at a certain point, I, I saw more and more people having access to these tools. Um, and we weren't sort of competitive on that side anymore, but we were really great at storytelling.

We were really great at the production that we were producing, but I think going into the, the genesis of sort of Alteon and how I created Alteon, [00:20:00] look, I, I think it was, it was, Definitely over a year's period of time and having incredible advisors that understand the technology space really well. Um, and for me, it was, Hey, let me scope out a bunch of different problems and how I envisioned.

Solving those problems, and I kind of came into it more from a U. I. First concept and U. I. U. X. Concept. Um, and then I had to get that to the right developers to then say, Okay, this is what I kind of want it to do. Translate that into code. And I have just an absolute incredible team that was able to do that.

And we built this over the last, um, three and a half years. And, um, it's just such an incredible product, especially now we're really starting to push it to its limits. We're starting to get into like spatial video, for instance, you know, we're, we're, we're kind of getting into these different aspects of, um, making it so that we're [00:21:00] well ahead of the curve on what's coming.

Um, I think for me also, it's just constantly learning, constantly talking to other people in the industry. And I think this applies for any. Industry, right? I think this applies for any business that people could be running. It's always so important to learn constantly, but also have, have a real strong drive, you know, never, never just be comfortable where you're sitting and always kind of seeing what's next and always pushing yourself.

Jeff DeVerter: Well, for those who follow this type of, of stock content from me, whether it's, uh, you know, here in the podcast or on LinkedIn, you know, that, that one of my big phrases these days is in the old days, technology was a component and sometimes part of the solution and, and, uh, whether that's solving a problem or, or capturing an opportunity, but now technology is a part of everything.

Every opportunity. It's whether again, whether solving a problem or capturing the future technology is there, if not the primary driver. So those those native skills and that you honed early on obviously are coming into [00:22:00] play here. So how does somebody, um, you know, sign up? Is it, is it, is literally go to the app store?

Do they, they, they go to Alteon? And the first thing would be 

Matt Cimaglia: go to Alteon. io and, uh, it's very easy to sign up. It's, it might take you a minute. And the hardest part about that is just coming up with a strong enough password that passes our test. And then you have a two factor authentication. So this is something that we put in.

From the very beginning, because we are dealing with very sensitive files. We are dealing with potentially a product video for a company. And, um, everything is, is very much so encrypted and secure within our servers. And, um, we're fortunate enough to be, um, partnered with IBM cloud object storage for that.

And so. When we really thought about this from the beginning, security was a core component to how we're putting this together. But yeah, I mean, people, people could go very easily, go to alltown. io, sign up there, get an account. Um, I think free accounts, you get up to 10 gigs of storage space. And that, that allows you to [00:23:00] kind of kick the tires just enough.

Um, and then from there, there's 14 day trials. And after that it's 12 a month. So, um, for 250 gigs of space, it's 12 a month. And then after that, it would be, uh, 25 a month per terabyte. And then we also introduced, uh, earlier this year, the concept of archive storage, and that's 6 a month per terabyte. So now.

The way that we structured our archive, though, is very different from your, you know, incredible cloud storage or cold storage or a tape backup or something like that, where we actually allow users to see their clips and in the proxy state and view them and play them and comment on them because we have a full commenting capability or tagging for searching later on.

We're All of that stuff you're able to continue to do even if your content is in our archive for 6 a month. So that's a real value add to content creators because now you're doing things a lot quicker. [00:24:00] You're finding your, your file that you need and you can just unarchive that one file as opposed to if you're doing a tape backup or something like that.

You've got to completely restore the entire tape, uh, in order to see whatever files you wanted and then, and then it takes, you know, forever to do that. 

Jeff DeVerter: Well, again, as a reminder to everyone, you know, and you may be thinking, you know, Hey, I, I, I've got a big hard drive on my computer. I just store everything.

Why do you have to offload it? Well, again, we're gonna go back to these production files. These days are only getting larger and larger as we go from 4K, six K, eight K, 10 k, and well, they'll come 12 k. So 

Matt Cimaglia: we're, we're testing 12 K right now. 

Jeff DeVerter: Ridiculous. I mean, the amount of, of, of size for a minute of video is, is astronomical.

Kate, you touched on something there that is a, I think one of the key values to the, to the application. And that is, um, you know, when you're, when somebody is doing a shoot like this, if anybody's been in front of a camera, And then somebody clicked the red button and said, [00:25:00] go say the thing. You might have to say it a few times.

You might only get through part of it and then have to say more things. And somebody is going to have to edit that together. But before they can do that, somebody has to watch all of that and say, okay, use three seconds from here. Use 10 seconds from there. Don't use anything between five minutes and 12 minutes.

But after that is the close. Where does that go? I mean, that may go in a notepad. It may go in, you know, your Apple one or whatever. The great thing that we did. Now you've solved for that. 

Matt Cimaglia: Yeah. So, so we, we allow for commenting in our platform and, and even, even more so we allow for guest commenting as well.

So this means that people that aren't even a member of Altion or a subscriber of Altion. So your client, for instance, you're like, Hey, I want you to give me all of your comments or all of your notes. And when they're giving them to you, they're in timestamped. Locations. So it's no longer the, Hey, around this time at one minute, it's actually at the frame in which they wanted to make that comment.

So [00:26:00] being able to have a guest commenting on, on your files is absolutely streamlining the entire process. Um, but, but also all of those comments come in as markers within the editing application. So now your editor. In real time is receiving all of these markers and they're showing up on all of the clips that they have.

And it's, Hey, start this, start this, you know, clip at this point and ended at this point, or make sure you don't show this thing or, you know, change the logo here, all of those comments are really rich and it just streamlines the whole process. So now it's not a email that's being sent and, Hey, I'm waiting for that email to come through and it never comes through.

And, um, you know, it's the time codes all off and I didn't really get it right. So it's very accurate. 

Jeff DeVerter: That's pretty incredible. Well, let's, um, you, you touched on security before, but that's it, security matters to everything. We spent a lot of time here on the program talking about different ways of implementing and managing security, but how do, how do you guys help ensure aside from ridiculously strong passwords that, uh, that [00:27:00] this content does remain secure?

As you mentioned before, it could be a product video. What if it was the next iPhone? It was the stuff they had shot about that. It hadn't been released yet. You certainly don't want the world to have access to it. So I think that it, 

Matt Cimaglia: I think that it comes down to even more, you know, you're seeing a lot of home brewed solutions that production companies were coming up with just out of the necessity of, Hey, I've got more and more storage that I'm accumulating.

I need a space for that. Or I have five editors in my office. How do I share content with those five editors? So you're seeing them adopt NAS solutions or server solutions that they're buying on, you know, Amazon or something like that, and they're not securing them. Appropriately. So we had a number of people over the last couple years come to us and say, Hey, my, you know, homebrewed server, uh, got hacked by, and we have ransomware on it.

And we have content for really big companies that we work for on there. Um, you know, We need a, we need a solution. And, and, you know, just that [00:28:00] alone, I would say, um, putting your files onto a cloud based service that you're not managing, um, that certainly helps out and then, and then, you know, there's a lot of people that are smarter than I am within this company when it comes to the sort of encryption level that we're doing and, um, the way that we're doing it from the user to the cloud being encrypted, uh, and so on, you know, it's something that we take very seriously.

And, and. As we sort of expand out again, to your point, it could be a product video for something that hasn't been released yet. Um, you know, we don't want that to be, we don't want to be the source of that leak, right? And, and, and we're also looking at other methods to potentially stream those files in to a computer.

So now if you are a brand working with a freelancer or with a remote worker, instead of them ever even having the file locally, It might be streaming to that end system. 

Jeff DeVerter: Now we're talking roadmap, which gets exciting. Um, so, but before we, before we go down [00:29:00] that road, um, you know, again, I love to give context because a lot of the folks who, who, uh, are listening to this tend to not be the deepest on production side of things, which is, which is fine, of course, but let's help them understand.

I mean, I don't know if how many people saw the advertisements that went out Uh, around adjacent to the latest iPhone release. I guess it's just why it's on my brain. You know, it was a great release. It looked fantastic. If you watch the show, but, but, but all the stuff with Tim Cook, all of that was shot on an iPhone.

So if you saw those headlines that said, Hey, the whole new, the, the, the, the latest event was shot on an iPhone and you're thinking to yourself, all right, so what if there's a problem? Just break out the iPhone, go do it again. Well, it was an iPhone. I mean, it was a full scale production around there. And those Matt, you know, this better than anyone.

Those are not cheap. That shoot was an expensive shoot. 

Matt Cimaglia: Yeah, I mean, look, I think that the iPhone certainly has incredible capabilities for shooting right now, [00:30:00] but it is important to highlight that they had a full production crew and a full staff and proper lighting and, uh, you know, 100, 000 camera crane, things like that.

But what I think is more important to this discussion is the fact that you're now replacing a 50, 000 camera. With something that you have in your pocket, right? That to me is so incredible and I think that what what you will end up seeing in a lot of news gathering and More professional applications is look.

I already have this device in my pocket. I can now capture something As it's happening. I don't have to wait for the crew to show up with a big camera and hope that we get the shot. It's, hey, I'm here right now and I've got the shot. And that is really powerful because now you're, you're able to tell this story or you're able to, uh, encapsulate this moment that's happening.

And I think going back to what you were, you were saying around the [00:31:00] iPhone launch. Yeah. I mean, it's absolutely incredible to see the fact that they shot everything, um, on an iPhone. Yeah. It's, it's also incredible how far they're pushing the format. So, you know, introducing log this year, which is a more raw format.

Um, again, if you're not from the production industry, um, it's, it doesn't have that baked in look, right. It's not overly saturated or, or under saturated, or, or, you know, if you use social media, you know, those filters that get, um, applied on your, your pictures, once you apply that picture and you post it out there, it's, it's It's, it's out there for good.

It's baked in, right? But having this raw format or this log format where it's really raw, you're able to capture a lot more data on set, but you're also able to color it in such a way that you're pulling, um, certain colors out or certain blacks or white levels and things like that, that you couldn't do if everything was baked in.

Jeff DeVerter: Yeah, and the point I'm really driving towards is two things. The first is because of the capability of the phones that we have in our [00:32:00] pockets today, it's only going to accentuate the number of people who are actually shooting content that's going to go and potentially be used in your production, meaning you need to have a better way to adjust that so that it can be used in the editing process.

But the other piece is don't negate the fact that if you've got a If you don't have a solid security or backup solution, that's part of your, your process and your workflow, then, um, it's not just like whipping out an iPhone and refilming access to talent money to do all the things becomes a real challenge driving.

I think greater need for a tool like what you guys have pulled together. 

Matt Cimaglia: Um, yeah, hang, hang on one second. Sorry. 

None: No worries. We had it after the fact.

So, so go back. Let's, let's repeat 

Matt Cimaglia: that question. 

None: Uh, 

Jeff DeVerter: sorry. I 

Matt Cimaglia: apologize about that. 

Jeff DeVerter: No, no, no problem at all. It really is just around. Um, I was restating the point of, uh, [00:33:00] uh, more sources of content coming in, uh, and, uh, and needing a solid security and backup capability. For, um, for production companies, because it's not just about whipping out your iPhone and going and getting content.

It really is about a, a, a true solution and more need towards a company like yours. 

Matt Cimaglia: And look, I think that as you have more and more people capturing on iPhones or capturing on cameras and having all of these sources for a particular production, it becomes so complex really quickly. Um, where. As, as a, as a content creator that maybe is producing a TV show for a streaming channel, right?

You're not part of that network environment that you used to be. So when I grew up through the ranks at NBC network, I knew that I had an army of people supporting me every day. And we were, we were able to produce nightly news because of the entire team. And it was every single person making all of this effort to put news on the air at [00:34:00] 6 30 PM Eastern every day.

Yeah. But now you're looking at the same requirement without the arsenal and, and, and, you know, it's, Oh, well you could shoot it on an iPhone. So you should be able to do this. Just as easily, well, no, you still need that infrastructure. And that's really where Alteon comes in. It's let's give that same infrastructure as if you were a massive broadcaster, or as if you were a massive studio to somebody that might be producing content for a streaming channel or for their YouTube channel or something like that, and they don't have that budget.

There may be their whole budget might be a thousand dollars. 

Jeff DeVerter: Well, and more and more, you know, you mentioned for streaming or for network, uh, but, but video is a part of all the, all the stuff that happens, especially inside of businesses, whether it's enterprise or small business, uh, videos required. And, uh, and this is where a tool like this really comes into play, I think.

And that's helping to enable those [00:35:00] creators because oftentimes the creator's job is half their job. Uh, they, they have a day job as part of it in some of these, these organizations. Well, Matt, let's, I, I hinted at this earlier. Let's talk roadmap a little, uh, without giving away any, any trade secrets. What are some of the things that we can look for in the future?

Matt Cimaglia: It's, it's interesting. Cause I'm, I'm trying to figure out what I can and can't say. Right. Um, I always have this blend, but. Uh, I hinted at spatial video. You know, that is something that we're actively looking into right now. Um, especially because apple released their beta on the iPhone, uh, last week, actually.

So that's something that we've been really diving into and, and just seeing, you know, again, I think it's always important for us to be ahead of the curve, always ahead of, What might be coming out next. So we're talking to a couple other camera manufacturers right now on, uh, potentially, uh, what they're producing and how we can inter interweave our technology within the camera system itself.

Uh, so those are all really important things [00:36:00] that we're, we're looking at. Um, and, and, you know, I, I think that. Overall, um, As, as a whole, as a, as a company, it's, it's listening to our end client. And I think that that's really what's been driving us the most is, um, is when you think about, um, What our, our clients are now or our users are now asking us.

It's, Really driving our product roadmap because we, we all have these concepts of, Hey, I'm going to build something and hope for the best or hope that people want to use my product. And we've built a really solid foundational layer just based on my experience in the production industry or other people within the company's experience within the production industry and applying that knowledge or, or that resource requirement that we had now, as we really look into it, it's, it's.

It's a, it's a really great feeling to be able to go out there and listen to our end user and, and really kind [00:37:00] of take in the various requirements that they have and how they would shift things or, or what they would, what they would specifically want. And that's what's, that's, what's been really exciting for us to just witness that.

And the fact that people are asking more. Is always a good, is always a good problem 

Jeff DeVerter: means they're using the product and they have use cases for it in the future. That's fantastic. Matt, thank you so much for taking the time to visit with me today here. Uh, really fascinating product. I'm actually about to send the link over to our team.

I think it's something that could be a great benefit for the work that we're up to over here as well. 

Matt Cimaglia: No, I appreciate the time. And look, I think that, um, you know, I'm, it's just been such a pleasure to talk because we are also seeing other applications being used within the system. So I would really stress that, um, it's not just for the production industry, and we're seeing these really foreign concepts of people that are coming to us saying, Hey, you know, we're in the scientific community, [00:38:00] but we have a ton of video footage.

Of an experiment, or, hey, we're in a engineering, um, facility where we're capturing data to audit a machine. Um, how do we store that? And, and we're starting to see different people come to our platform. That aren't just specific to the video industry, but they had a need for a product that could solve for what they were doing and how they were pushing things.

And that's been really exciting for us. 

Intro: This has been CloudTalk. You can find CloudTalk wherever you find your favorite podcasts. And be sure to check out more content from Rackspace Solve at solve. rackspace. com.

Jeff DeVerter: Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that [00:39:00] conversation as much as I did. I love talking technology. I love talking video and production, and I got to do both all in one shot. Well, if you are not already following us live on cloud talk live every Tuesday at 8 30 AM central time, I'd love to invite you to be a part of that conversation.

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And until next time, my name is Jeff Deverter, the host here at CloudTalk for Rackspace [00:40:00] [00:41:00] [00:42:00] [00:43:00] [00:44:00] [00:45:00] [00:46:00] [00:47:00] [00:48:00] Technology.