An innovative Software As a Service solution
SPI is a production tracking, reviewing and data transfer service for animated tv series and long-feature films producers. Designed and conceived for producers, SPI is a secured web based application which helps producers to manage the
creation of assets (characters, backgrounds, FX, props etc.) and shots (from an episode or a sequence) and to follow their construction in a multi-sites environment.
Offered as a service, SPI is the perfect line producer’s companion, helping them delivering on time and on budget for any
size of animated productions.
A flexible and efficient coordinating tool
SPI adapts to any kind of workflow defined by the production team. The workflow editor allows producers to create directed acyclic graphs where the nodes are the different steps an asset or a shot will go through from very early stages (creation, animatic) to final stages (rendering, compositing).
Any node or step from a workflow can be assigned to a studio or a CG artist. Each time a CG artist or a studio submits a shot or an asset at a given step, the production team can visualize the deliveries and review the elements for approval. Upon approval, the next step(s) in the workflow can be submitted.
SPI also provides breakdown and reporting functionalities and advanced visualization of contents.
shot workflow for an animated long feature film
Continuity player
Versatile visualization tools
The SPI image, video and continuity players are provided for content visualization and reviews. These players can play and compare medias from different steps in various ways. For example, the director will be able to compare an animated version of a shot against its animatic version or to compare a recently corrected version of a shot against its original version.
These media players offer advanced functionalities such as the ability to incrust notes, comments and medias or to annotate videos at any given frame. The continuity player provides a visualization of the latest rough cut edit of an episode or a sequence. Each time a shot is submitted by a studio or a CG artist, the new rough cut edit of the episode or the sequence this shot belongs to is recomputed. The production team always sees the most recently published materials. The latest rough cut edits can also be sent to the line producer on demand on a daily basis.
Side by side comparison between compositing and animatic.
An efficient production tracker
This is a very important feature: With SPI, the production team knows at any time where its project is at. Production reports containing quantitative measures such as the retake ratio per episode per step or the number of days taken to review a given step can be simply edited and exported in Excel or pdf format.
Daily production reports can also be emailed to the different partners. Warnings can be sent to the line producer when SPI has detected that the number of days to fully review an episode or a sequence at a given step will exceed the limit given by the production team.
Report editing tool: edition of a report listing all the approved scene at a given step
Global view: time taken to review steps for a tv animated serie
Episode view: Number of approval per day, retake ratio and time taken to review each step for the selected episode.
A secured and efficient way for handling data
This is a very important point: SPI guarantees data integrity : Each time an element is submitted to SPI, this element is automatically transfered to the producer's servers. All important datas are stored in the producer's servers as soon as they are submitted by studios and CG artists.
SPI also take care of ftp transfers between studios : Each time a studio submits materials at a given step, it can be automatically transfered upon approval to the studio(s) in charge of the following step(s) as per the asset or shot workflow. This data redundancy ensures the production team against data loss.
Some SPI features you may find interesting
- The economic model is a service: you know exactly how much it is going to cost you at the beginning of your project.
- You do not need any technical human ressources to configure SPI, SPILINKS can do it for you all along your project.
- There is no limitation on the number of users for a given project.
- The important data is not stored on the cloud, it is immediately transfered to your internal servers. This guarantees data integrity.
- SPI takes care of all data transfers between the studios, the independants and the producer(s).
- Production reports summarizing the activity can be sent to line producers and studio supervisors on a daily basis.
- SPI player allows reviewers to do side by side or video over comparison of shots at different takes or different steps.
- Eachtime a shot is submitted to SPI, the new rough cut edit of the episode or the sequence this shot belongs to is recomputed.
- Custom production reports can be easily built on the fly and exported in Excel or pdf format.
- Any shot at a any given step can be assigned to a specific user, only this user will be able to submit that shot.
- Retake ratio for a given step and/or for a given set of episodes/sequences can be produced on the fly.
