#1 most frequent
United States of America
73.3%11 installations of 15
What is Xinet?
North Plains Systems in Toronto now offers and supports Xinet, a digital asset management platform with an emphasis on collaboration and sharing. The California company Xinet, the platform's original developer, was acquired by North Plains Systems in 2012.
Categories & Use Cases
Product Demos
Who Buys & Uses Xinet
#2 most frequent
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
13.3%2 installations of 15
#3 most frequent
Bermuda
6.7%1 installation of 15
Powerful work-in-progress DAM specializing in print
Pros
- Tracking rights-managed assets. Xinet provides advanced features such as watermarking and expiration notifications.
- Integration with Adobe. Xinet can be configured to access assets from right within the apps.
- Desktop integration. Xinet can be accessed by the browser but also as a mountable server volume on the desktop. Unlike Box, Dropbox, etc., the mounted volume does not require consumption of hard drive space.
Cons
- Limited video support
- Adobe integration is not as robust as other DAM systems
- Pricing is rigid and pricing increases have been unpredictable
Return on Investment
- Xinet has definitely helped us avoid costly legal infractions by helping track the usage of our rights-managed assets.
- Unpredictable price increases have made budgeting difficult.
- We have had to invest in other solutions, such as video collaboration solutions to make up for some of Xinet's shortcomings.
Usability
Xinet - Great as a starting point
Pros
- Xinet works very well with active directory, allowing us to control user account permissions by adding them to user groups.
- Using SMB via PC allows us to quickly organize and upload files without having to use a software client.
- If you have XMP tags properly filled out in your files, Xinet is able to edit and store information from the database in the files themselves, which is very helpful in tracking down origins of files after they have left the system.
Cons
- Automated triggers and actions could be a little more intelligent and could use a better interface (visual) for setting them up.
- Drag and drop file movements in the web portal would be a tremendous improvement.
- 3D file previewing for max and maya files would make the software invaluable to our teams.
Return on Investment
- Increased employee efficiency greatly by allowing local users to transfer massive files without the need to upload to an ftp or third party software. Just drag and drop to the network drive and it's instantly on the portal site.
Other Software Used
TeamViewer, Basecamp, Google Drive
Xinet for Asset Management
Pros
- We were easily able to set up security measures, that gave us control over who couls access these assets.
- Assets were easily searchable through metadata.
- We were able to control the usage of assets by assigning expiration dates.
Cons
- For my position, I didn't learn enough of Xinet to truly utilize the whole program, only one or two people in my department understood it inside and out.
- During my time at the agency, we were unable to get the annotations to work on assets. And that would have been helpful to have to streamline our process of asset quality control.
Return on Investment
- Increased employee efficiency
- Proper usage of assets
- Client management and control
Other Software Used
Adobe Photoshop, Basecamp, OneDrive
Usability
Xinet is Efficient and Easy to Use
Pros
- Organize assets by metadata.
- Grouping assets in a smart manner.
- Search capability.
Cons
- Sometimes the video function only works on certain browsers. It would be helpful if it always worked on all browsers.
Return on Investment
- Increased employee efficiency.
- Assets are found more quickly.
Other Software Used
JIRA Software, Atlassian Confluence, ownCloud