Fast, Global Media Ingest For the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Who is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) is a Christian faith founded in 1830 and headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. It counts more than 17.5 million members and employs more than 10,000 people worldwide across diverse fields such as administration, IT, education, and facilities management.

Tucker Dansie, the organization’s global asset management strategist, is a filmmaker and post-production expert who has been with the organization for two decades. “I taught myself how to edit on a non-linear editor when they first came out,” explains the alumnus of Vancouver Film School.

“I love new technology, and learning new things, and keeping up with the latest and greatest tools.”

The Challenge: Slow, Unreliable, Difficult-to-Use Uploads For Global Collaborators

The Church transfers a massive amount of video – around 200 TB annually – for viewing by members around the world. A few years ago, it changed its production process to a distributed model involving outsourced videographers in various countries.

Each of the organization’s 17 global publishing teams act as a project manager that works with local videographers who shoot video and upload it for the organization’s post-production teams at headquarters.

But the LDS Church’s legacy managed file transfer (MFT) solution wasn’t able to keep up with this new process.

“Before MASV, managing incoming media assets was one of the most time-consuming and frustrating parts of our workflow,” Dansie explains.

The organization faced several other file transfer challenges prior to using MASV:

• Badly performing uploads: “We’re getting files from West Africa, and some pretty rural areas, and speed and reliability were an issue. Uploads were slow, and sometimes a significant number of files would be missing.”
• Difficult-to-use upload solutions: “The barrier to entry (with previous solutions) was just too high. You either had a user that couldn’t install the plugin because of security policies, or they didn’t know how to do it and couldn’t get it to work.”
• Inability to integrate & automate: “As an organization we needed an enterprise solution that could automate our workflow that we know is safe, fast, and reliable.”
• A lack of file visibility & organization: “A lot of times people would send us stuff and the asset management team had no idea what it was. We needed the ability to automatically add a mandatory form to tag file uploads with metadata.”

The Solution: ‘A Game-Changer For Us’

The LDS Church was introduced to MASV at HPA Tech Retreat, a professional conference held by the Hollywood Professional Organization, in 2024.

“We were dealing with the same challenge many filmmakers were dealing with – I’m working with somebody over here, and I need lots of big files, and I need them quickly, and I need them in a really easy way,” Dansie explains.

After testing MASV, he and a colleague instantly knew they had found the right solution. “Right away we knew it was going to be a game-changer for us.”

High-performance transfers from any global location

One of the most noticeable differences was MASV’s speed and reliability – even for uploaders in remote locations with limited connectivity.

“The speed is markedly better than what we’ve had in the past,” Dansie says. “Some of these places don’t have super stable internet. But nobody complains about speed anymore.”

• MASV achieves high-speed, reliable global file transfers using a cloud-native, distributed, private AWS architecture with optimized routing, parallel streams, and intelligent file chunking.
• Files are split into chunks and transferred simultaneously across regional endpoints, adapting to network conditions while avoiding bottlenecks and ensuring secure, resumable delivery worldwide.

The reliability issues the organization had experienced prior to MASV became a thing of the past thanks to tools like relentless auto-retries and checkpoint restart.

“We don’t have files getting lost like we used to. If someone’s internet drops out, MASV just pauses until your internet reconnects and then keeps going. That was a huge deal for us.”

A browser-based, easy-to-use upload solution

Along with high performance transfers, the organization needed a solution uploaders could use in a browser without training, tutorials, software installations, or firewall reconfigurations.

MASV fit the bill perfectly.

“Prior to MASV our uploaders often tried to use tools like Dropbox or Google Drive” because they were easier to use than the organization’s legacy MFT solution, Dansie says.

“As asset managers, that’s frustrating, but MASV immediately solved this problem. The uploaders don’t really need to learn anything. That’s a big deal, because in many cases English is not their first language and explaining how to install a plugin can be difficult. The barrier to entry had to be super low. It had to be able to get people uploading files in one click.”

An easy-to-implement, automated workflow

It only took a few minutes for the organization to set up a MASV integration with its Qumulo and OpenDrives cloud and on-prem storage, enabling a hands-free and automated file ingest workflow:

1. Videographers in the field upload files to the MASV Cloud using a Portal.
2. A virtual machine with MASV Agent installed watches the MASV Cloud.
3. When a file hits the Cloud, the Agent detects it and automatically transfers files to the right area of the organization’s Qumulo or OpenDrives storage.

“The integration was super easy to do – it was built in two minutes by one of our technical people,” Dansie says.

The organization is now exploring integrating MASV with its Nuxeo media asset manager.

Multiple, free-to-create Portals and metadata forms

The LDC Church’s asset management team now keeps content organized through hundreds of MASV Portals, each assigned to a particular project or vendor. Before a project is even started, the team spins up a Portal exclusive to that project and routes it to the correct storage destination.

• Distributed production teams use the MASV Web App to set up Portals for their in-country collaborators.
• Back at headquarters, asset managers use the MASV Desktop App to set up additional Portals as needed.

“That means when our collaborators need to upload something, the Portal is already set up,” Dansie says, adding that the ability to add metadata forms to Portals has been huge for improving asset management.

Prior to MASV, the team sometimes had very little visibility into which uploaded files belonged where. Many uploaders didn’t add metadata or context to files.

MASV Custom Forms changed that. Organizations can add Custom Forms to Portals and pre-fill them with project-based metadata, or require uploaders to add metadata before they can finish uploading files.

The Result: Faster Transfers and Improved ROI for LDS Church

Dansie says MASV has solved virtually every major file transfer problem the LDS Church had, along with providing a level of customer service the organization had not experienced with previous file transfer solutions.

“One of the nice things about MASV is that it’s easy to get in touch with customer service. It’s easy to get information about the solution’s capabilities or how to do certain things.”

It has also provided a noticeable return on investment (ROI) for the organization.

“ROI to us is more around ease of use: If we don’t have as much downtime, then that’s the real benefit. Our costs are cheaper. The impact has been huge,” he says. “Rather than spending time worrying about file delivery, we can focus on managing and maximizing our assets, knowing MASV handles the heavy lifting.

“It’s just been remarkable,” he adds. “We have not had one complaint about MASV – which, in the role I’m in, is not a common thing.”

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