Sony's excellent free cloud storage service for creators gets some outstanding upgrades — support for Dolby Atmos and a snazzy desktop app to accelerate transfers
Sony has announced significant upgrades to its Ci Media Cloud platform, a cloud-based media management and collaboration service. The updates include a new plan tailored for small and medium businesses, the introduction of a desktop file transfer app, and enhanced support for Dolby Atmos audio files.
The new Ci Transfer desktop app (available to download for free for all Ci users) allows for high-speed transfer of files and folders to and from the Ci Media Cloud platform.
Available for both Mac and PC, the app supports multi-gig speed transfers, retries transfers after interruptions, and is optimized to handle hundreds of files. It also features pause and resume functions, transfer reports, and can be paired with a new sidecar ingest workflow for larger organizations migrating archive libraries.
Enhanced Dolby Atmos support
In addition to the Free, Pro, and Team online plans, there's a new Business Plan for small and medium organizations which Sony says is a step up from Ci's initial Team subscription.
Priced at approximately $249 a month, it offers unlimited Workspaces, 1TB of active storage, 4TB of archive storage, and 500GB of monthly data transfers. The plan also includes advanced features such as custom branding and usage analytics.
The platform's enhanced support for Dolby Atmos audio files allows users to upload and play video and audio files with immersive, authentic sound.
Integrated with Dolby.io, the platform supports ADM BWF Atmos audio, and users can visually see Loudness Unit Full Scale (LUFS) and True Peak levels in Ci’s built-in media analysis tool. This enables creative and quality assurance teams to work with immersive content as it was intended to be heard.
“We’re continually evolving our Ci platform to better address users’ needs and become an even more intrinsic part of their daily workflow,” said David Rosen, Vice President of Cloud Applications and Services, Sony Electronics.
“With the addition of a plan created to address the requirements and budget of small and medium businesses, a rich new desktop app experience, and Dolby Atmos audio for immersive, authentic sound, we’re making Ci even more accessible, easy to use, and powerful for creatives and organizations in every facet of the industry.”
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