Build In Public: May 2023 Update
Welcome to our new update about the CGWire company and Kitsu! In this post, you will learn all we did during the past two months.
Kitsu
1. Typed columns
Metadata columns can now be typed. We introduced checkboxes and number columns. It is now easier for you to represent data. More will come later. If you want to see a specific type, let us know!
2. Search Engine
In partnership with Monello Production, we improved significantly the search engine. You can now perform a search in names and metadata of any asset or shot of your productions. Looking for something in your library can be done in a glimpse.
3. VFX features: set thumbnail from the frame, guessed revision, and EDL import
Prior to the FMX, we made several improvements related to VFX usage. You can now import EDL files to create your shots and set their frame parameters. Then you can set the thumbnail of any entity from the selected frame of its movie preview.
4. Improved video scrubbing
We changed the way we normalize videos. Thanks to the VFXGeek and the TNZPV studios, who gave us feedback, we were able to find the right parameters to set fast scrubbing and better low-def quality for your videos.
Infrastructure
Nicolas, our Engineer in charge of the hosting, deployed our first installation in the US. If your studio is located in the United States, let us know, and we will be glad to move your installation to this new location!
We made a change. We switched our indexing technology from Whoosh to Meilisearch. It will allow better performances and more stability with your full-text searches.
Events
We had a lot of success at FMX. We didn't expect to get so much attention from the VFX world. But it seems Kitsu is performing very well in this field too. For instance, we heard that the House of Dragons TV show had 3 episodes tracked with Kitsu. We showed demos during the whole event!
The next big event for us is the Annecy MIFA, one of the biggest animation events. We will have a booth near the welcome room (A.011). We will stay the whole week, so please come here to meet us! We will be glad to share a coffee with you and give you some goodies (caps, stickers)!
Finance
As usual, we updated our finance charts, you can check them via the dedicated URL below. Our sales were a little bit shy during the past two months, but two good deals are on the way.
Communication
We are still running an ad campaign with Animation Magazine and Écran Total. We will continue soon our sponsoring of the Befores And Afters podcast in a more engaged way.
We changed the design of our website to make it look more appealing and give more information about our offer. We are proud of the illustration made by the Naolito studio. Go to our website to see them!
https://naolito.com/
Team
We hired Fabian as an intern. He is doing much research on video compressing with FFMPEG with different parameters. That way we can extend our knowledge on this aspect. It will help us in the future to provide faster video processing. Then, he will study other technologies like Qarnot performances for video compressing, IA metadata extraction for our search engine, and .hsl technology for better long video seeking.
Studios and productions
We onboarded only a single studio during this period. The previous session was crazy so it's natural to see some balancing. As we said before, two good deals are on the way and some studios are starting new productions.
Crosse The Ages - https://www.crosstheages.com/
To conclude
Thank you for reading! Feel free to ask any questions. Among the upcoming features, we will add a new team schedule to facilitate the work distribution in your studio. If you will be in Annecy, please come to see us and say hello!