OceanX is a New York-based nonprofit with a mission to explore the ocean and bring it back to the world. While OceanX is a science-first organization, capturing media and making content is also at the forefront of its storytelling strategy. The scientific team aboard its former vessel, M/V Alucia and current R/V OceanXplorer, has been featured on Blue Planet II, One Strange Rock, and National Geographic’s limited series, OceanXplorer.
OceanX has a vast and ever-growing media library and has struggled with managing, archiving, and sharing that evergreen content worldwide. Since they capture rare and high-quality deep-sea oceanic footage, the content retains value long after its initial use. Large file sizes exacerbate OceanX’s distribution with external media partners, as do dropped transfers and short turn-around times.
Signiant Media Shuttle has significantly improved OceanX’s workflows by ensuring fast, reliable transfers of large media files with a large network of partners and scientists. The media team no longer faces challenges with timed-out transfers, failed uploads, or needing to physically ship hard drives to global partners.
OceanX takes remote work to a whole new level. With missions in some of the most remote locations in the world, often hundreds of thousands of meters below the surface. Their operations include a research vessel, OceanXplorer, which travels globally, capturing extensive scientific and documentary footage for both research and public media projects. OceanX operates with a small media team on board, producing footage for in-house and external projects.
Their expeditions were part of many firsts, including the first to explore the deep sea of Antarctica, the first to tag a deep-sea shark from a submersible, and the first to film a giant squid in U.S. waters, only the second time ever in the wild. Today, OceanX leverages the R/V OceanXplorer, the titular vessel of National Geographics’ limited series, OceanXplorers. OceanXplorer is the most advanced scientific research and media vessel in the world.
The New York-based OceanX Media team uses Media Shuttle to deliver original camera footage to media partners or stakeholders, in addition to the researchers who come on board. Most of the over 2 petabytes of content stored in New York is evergreen, making it highly valuable for resale. “Everything we shoot, especially the deep-sea [footage], has value forever because it’s rare, it’s not easy to capture,” says Carly Tarricone, OceanX’s video editor & technical supervisor. “We’re always looking for creative ways to utilize that outside of the context of the mission.”
However, servicing their distribution and resale business proved difficult, frustrating, and time-consuming. After trying various online file-sharing solutions, none seemed to work for their requirements, and keeping up with all the different types was a mess.
“When you get into hundreds of gigabytes or even terabytes of content, web-based providers will time out — or your internet will disconnect, and it cancels the transfer,” Tarricone said. “You’ll leave something running all weekend, and then you come in, and you’re not sure what happened, but it didn’t work. If we are going to try a web-based transfer, the time of uploading is so long, or if there is an outage for one minute, it cancels your 2.5 terabyte transfer, and then everything’s corrupted, and you can’t just pick up where it left off.”
Often the team found themselves having to ship hard drives worldwide, costing thousands of dollars, days of travel and in some cases long customs holdups. These delays and costs were unsustainable for OceanX’s growing operations. Something had to change.
That change came when an OceanX media partner temporarily stepped in and let OceanX use their Signiant Media Shuttle account. “When we started using Signiant, I was like, ‘How come this is easy?’ And meanwhile, it’s taking us weeks to get a file downloaded on another site.”
With Media Shuttle, built on the Signiant Platform, OceanX has eliminated many of the challenges that previously complicated their large-scale footage transfers. Signiant’s proprietary acceleration technology now enables OceanX to maximize available bandwidth, eliminating the impact of latency and ensuring their large media transfers are delivered with speed and efficiency.
One of the most critical advantages has been with Signiant’s Checkpoint Restart feature. In traditional transfer methods, a single momentary disruption — whether a network drop or brief loss in connectivity — could terminate the transfer process entirely. Worse, interruptions frequently resulted in partial, corrupted files that had to be scrapped, wasting time and resources. Signiant’s Checkpoint Restart, however, automatically resumes any interrupted transfer from the point of failure, ensuring that data remains intact and usable.
For OceanX, this reliability has eliminated the last-minute panic of discovering corrupted, unusable files after long transfer times, something that was a frequent risk in their former processes. Now, they can confidently send large, missioncritical files with full assurance of data integrity, no matter the file size or distance.
OceanX has also moved away from costly, slow, and inconvenient physical hard drive shipments. Instead of paying for each transfer or shipping expensive drives worldwide, OceanX now benefits from a straightforward annual subscription with no hidden fees.
Beyond logistical improvements, Signiant adds value to OceanX’s business by enabling faster, self-service media access for partners, freeing up OceanX’s resources for other tasks.
After using Media Shuttle as an end user, OceanX also realized there were additional functionalities they could use with their own account for control, visibility, and reporting. Now, OceanX has far better control and visibility, including delegating user access and granular permissions, inspecting file history and events, configuring storage and security parameters, and even revoking transfers. Operationally, OceanX can view all transfer and user activity for portals — understanding the health of the deployment, real-time feedback on the state of active transfers, and view chain-of-custody history.
Harbor Tour
Circle Line, the only cruise company dedicated to sightseeing in the New York Harbor was established in 1945 and has hosted over 80 million passengers. Today, Circle Line has the most modern fleet in the industry; their state-of-the-art boats showcase the city’s most wellknown landmarks, including the Hudson Yards, One World Trade Center, Brooklyn Bridge, Yankee Stadium, Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island.
New Jersey-based Audio Video Solutions NJ LLC (AVS) was selected to engineer and integrate the audiovisual technology aboard Circle Line. “The project began as a test case,” said David Slavitt, president of AVS. “Circle Line did not have any prior form of distributed audio or video to enhance their passenger experience. They wanted to integrate audiovisual technology for digital signage that promotes their brand and provides entertainment while passengers are on the boat.”
“On the first deck, we integrated four monitors on the ship’s walls,” Slavitt continues. “We added a single 86-inch monitor on the second deck. Each of the displays has multiple sources, including two PCs, which are connected to Visionary’s PacketAV Matrix Series. One of the PCs is dedicated to the onboard CCTV cameras. Specifically, the cameras can broadcast the sightseeing destinations and views from outside. This is particularly useful if there’s inclement weather and the passengers are sitting inside the ship. Additionally, we integrated HDMI inputs for entertainment, advertising, or any other additional information they want to share. The system is incredibly flexible with the content that can be distributed and shared.”
AVS implemented Visionary’s PacketAV Matrix Series, including seven decoders, four encoders, and one wall plate encoder on each ship. The system is designed to control various video sources, live camera views, and digital signage for the multitude of displays. The PacketAV Wall Plate Encoder provides Bluetooth connectivity for audio distribution.
“The goal was to enhance the passenger experience significantly,” noted Slavitt. “Circle Line wanted to engage with tourists beyond speaking to them throughout the tour. Simultaneously, they wanted to create a simple and seamless audiovisual solution for the crew to interact with the passengers. Through the control system, we’ve created a complete audiovisual system. It’s simple to use, yet impactful for the passengers.”
