Abstract, from the company of the same name headquartered in San Francisco, offers a collaboration tool for developers and others, featuring a version controlled master file set and approval workflow.
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Frame.io
Score 9.0 out of 10
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Frame.io in New York offers a video collaboration platform, supporting the video editing process by providing creative teams with time stamped comments, annotations and hashtags, and an accelerated sharing and approval process, as well as integrations with popularly used editing tools (e.g. Final Cut Pro) to enhance the editing and collaboration process.
The best thing about frame.io (and the reason we subscribed to the service in the first place), is it is very easy for clients to give notes when reviewing videos we produce for them. It allows them -- forces them, actually -- to give frame specific notes, so there is no confusion about what shot they are talking about. The one thing that would be nice would be another area for clients to make more global, general notes, so that both the global and specific notes could all be referenced in one place. But overall, had this service for about three years and still very happy with it.
Simple UI. Its drag and drop interface makes uploading and organizing something that happens inherently. Versioning is a huge issue when reviewing videos and frame allows you to keep old versions while prioritizing updated edits on the same link.
Frame.io allows you to make accurate notes on a video down to the frame - including drawing on a frame to indicate exact details your notes refer to. This allows for your post team to know exactly what the note-maker is referring to.
Privacy settings. Frame has an easy way to manage sharing by providing a "review link" and a "presentation" - this allows you to limit whether a reviewer has access to provide notes or just to review an edit. Simple password protection is an option for any review as well as the option for allowing a file to be downloadable.
Though I love the integration with After Effects, it's a tiny bit buggy from time to time. You'll need to re-sign in once a week (at least, this is what my tests have determined) and there is an issue with timeline jumping. If you click onto a comment, the timeline takes you to the problem area, but if you move the playhead elsewhere and click onto the same comment, it will not return you to the location. You must first click onto a different comment, then back onto the original. It's silly, and to me, a bug that will be resolved eventually.
Frame.io does not provide an archiving feature, so it's a bit of sore spot to delete old videos. When running into storage problems, which you might depending on your plan, you'll need to remove old videos.
Video links play natively at 560p. I don't understand this, as 720p or 1080p should be the standard playback resolution. This means some clients might not be as technologically-savvy, and won't think to click onto the resolution button to upgrade the resolution playback. I've had clients ask why the video was "low-quality" when they needed to change the resolution. This feels like boneheaded development to me.
Abstract has a difficult learning curve. If a feature-branch workflow is new to you, then it will take some getting used to. They make a lot of updates to the interface and these feature releases get ahead of their documentation. They rely heavily on an excellent customer support team and are present on various Slack channels to help design professionals with issues.
I've used other video review systems, Frame was the only one I didn't question how they allowed you to review - I just started reviewing. It's that simple. It's easy to set up projects, invite collaborators, and then provide a final cut for download. It's naturally built for the kind of work that TV/Film & video production companies do.
Abstract by nature is complex and has to respond to whatever changes in Sketch. So there are frequent issues. Support can be slow to respond and are not always helpful, but they are quick to find and patch the bugs. Overall, it's not the best support, but it hasn't been detrimental.
I've only reached out to Frame.io a few times but they responded quickly and offered achievable solutions. The fact that I haven't had to reach out to them more is proof that the platform is easy to use, reliable, and can run on its own. The only issues we have had were related to uploading issues on our end.
Frame.io is better when being compared to the Google Drive as a platform just because of the usability. Frame.io has a more simple design format, that makes organizing projects and file structures much more readily available when doing a quick search. The ability to review and comment on the different projects is also better in Frame.io as it shows who said what and at what timecode they are referring to.
