Strada Beta Launch – Promising to Enhance Cloud-Based Workflow

Artificial Intelligence

by Mascha DeikovaJanuary 31^st, 2024

On the 1^st of February, after months of development, Strada will see the world. The new AI-enabled cloud platform for content creators promises to “reinvent” media workflow, automate manual tasks, and simplify collaborative work during all kinds of shoots. Strada founders – brothers Michael Cioni (formerly Frame.io/Adobe) and Peter Cioni (ex-Netflix) – will unveil all the features of their brainchild this Thursday, and give an official start to the early testing phase. What to expect from the launch of Strada beta, and how can you can become a tester? Let’s find out!

The first concept of Strada was announced in September 2023, and since then, developers have shared their journey publicly in the YouTube series “Building an Alpha”. Their focus was (and is) to create a cloud-based platform with integrated AI tools, which would allow filmmakers to deliver higher-quality content faster. According to the Strada creators, their automated workflow solution should be useful for every creative: from Hollywood cinematographers to Indie directors to YouTubers and all collaborators in between.

What Strada has to offer in a nutshell

Imagine, you’re shooting a scene for an ad with several cameras, dialogue, and a big crew. After each take, the director gets fully synchronized footage of a shot with lined-up multicam, audio, and even text captions on their iPad. All this is also instantaneously available to the editor, who sits somewhere else and gets access to the filmed material through the cloud in a simple browser interface. The script supervisor on set can swiftly scroll through the last take on their laptop and check the continuity. Actors watch an instant playback without leaving their marks. “Let’s go for another one!”, shouts the director.

That’s basically one of the scenarios that Strada promises to make possible. Among some features that the new platform offers are multi-cloud syncing, Multicam playback, automatic transcription and translation, transcoding, and AI-based tagging and analysis. Moreover, the developers of Strada claim it will be customizable, meaning that users will be able to design workflows for their unique postproduction needs.

Strada Beta release – how it all started

Both Michael and Peter Cioni are veterans of the Hollywood tech branch. After leaving their last workspaces as Global Senior Vice President of Innovation at Frame.io, and Director of Resource Planning at Netflix, the brothers decided to launch another startup (it’s not their first business partnership). This time around, they wanted to address workflow challenges filmmakers and video producers are all familiar with. 

I have been working in production and post my entire professional career; I know if I’m experiencing problems while making content, there are millions of others who are continually frustrated while dealing with the shortcomings of the tool sets available to us. With recent advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning, I believe there are new ways to leverage the cloud to automate and remove workflow hurdles.

Michael Cioni, CEO and co-founder of Strada

The 4 T’s concept

At the core of Strada is the so-called 4 T’s concept. According to the team of platform developers, they were able to dissect the recurring challenges faced in different workflows (not only video but also in stills and sound) and trace them back to foundational components. That allowed them to include those in their new cloud-based solution. The 4 T’s of Strada stand for:

• Transfer. At the moment, Strada is compatible with Dropbox, Google Drive, Frame.io, and Lightroom, allowing content creators to see their media within a single user interface, as well as transfer between destinations. (Strada developers also plan to include more integrations in the future);
• Transcribe. The AI-based software will be able to automatically create searchable captions in more than 100 languages;
• Tanalyze (or tag + analyze). This feature allows users to automatically tag objects, people, locations, and emotions for further search;
• Transcode, which includes exporting files with the correct metadata for editing and distribution. 

The official release of Strada beta and how to join it

Strada founders are going to present their AI-enabled media workflow platform this Thursday in Burbank, California. The event will also be streamed online, so you can join it virtually on YouTube. For that, you will need to register here beforehand. The official launch of Strada beta begins on February 1st at 9 AM (PST) / 5 PM (GMT).

Additionally, you can become a Strada Beta Tester, as creators want to gather feedback from industry creatives at the early stage of development. To do so, sign up for the app, then reach out to the Strada team at [email protected] to share details about who you are and what projects you would like to test out on the new platform.

What do you think? Would you like to see the Strada beta launch and join their testers program? How do you feel about this cloud platform development? Let’s talk in the comments below!

Feature image source: Strada