What we learned at IBC:

[Amy]

A few folks from the Dropbox team (myself included, though only briefly) recently attended IBC in Amsterdam. It was truly inspiring to see so many media professionals and experts gathered in one place. Here are a few things we learned during our time there, and I’d love to hear your thoughts—whether you were there or not!

What we learned: 

• Our customers are passionate about not wasting time in their workflows. While this may seem obvious, it was great to hear specific use cases, like fully remote teams sharing training footage ASAP to avoid the need for retraining, or completing full feature-length film feedback loops efficiently.
• Customers don’t always identify with specific tools or features, but with the function they’re trying to achieve. This makes sense—the goal is to have completed, approved, and ready-to-ship work, and we are simply the tool that helps them get there.
• Avid presented a great discussion on remote workflows and seamless collaboration, highlighting some sensible and interesting points:
• Initially, teams solved the challenge of global dispersion by duplicating media files, but 15% of daily work was lost to wrong versions, incorrect sequences, etc.
• Remotely accessing office systems mitigated some of these issues but still had limitations.
• The hidden costs of remote work became apparent when some editors were on-site and others remote—editors resorted to copying files onto hard drives and couriering them. The time spent managing files increased significantly. “If I work remotely, I can spend up to 20% of my time managing or copying files.”
• Customers shared challenges, such as reporters sending audio files separately from video, which led to two teams working in real-time but on separate files. Any chance to reduce this confusion and downtime is a huge win.

TL;DR: Folks want to shoot at high quality and turn it around fast.

Whether it's shooting with a high-resolution digital cinema camera or a mobile phone, everyone wants to get that content quickly to colleagues around the world for review. For feature films, this often means execs want to see daily shots to monitor progress, while in the news industry, it’s about getting clips from the field back to the newsroom as quickly as possible. This is where Dropbox is working hard to streamline content ingestion and make it easier to bring that creative content into the tools you work with.

What we launched at IBC:

At IBC, we launched our Dropbox Replay integration with ATOMOS to help transfer video and audio materials from on-location productions directly into Dropbox. This helps remote teams share content ready for review or editing, no matter where they are.

When it comes to editing, the Dropbox and Replay teams understand the importance of aligning feedback to speed up decision-making and reduce rework. In addition to our work with DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, and Adobe Premiere Pro, we’re excited to announce new integrations with AVID products. Now, users can bring reviewer feedback directly into ProTools and AVID Media Composer, ensuring editors know exactly where changes are needed.

Across the show, the themes of speed and AI were front and center. Companies, large and small, showcased how they can deliver content quickly from anywhere while leveraging AI to automatically add metadata, like location or detailed content elements. This additional information can transform raw content into valuable libraries for future use.

I’m excited to hear your thoughts! Does this resonate with your experience? Did you learn anything new at conferences this year? Feel free to share in the comments below! 😁