MASV - The Joys of Automating Simply

In this post, I showcase a fun integration with Pro-Tools and take a look at what makes MASV a great tool for large file sending.

Meet MASV

MASV is a cloud-native Managed File Transfer service with a long list of multi-industry use-cases. The idea is, rather than trying to manage your own transfer setup, you give that responsibility to MASV who has built out the infrastructure to safely and speedily transfer your files. It's important to note, most MFT companies are not reinventing protocols, they're wrapping them with security and reliability enhancements, a job that would be a headache to do in-house. MASV's specific approach is to provide users with a store and forward model, primarily utilizing Amazon Web Services as their backbone. What this means is users have the flexibility to upload their files, and grab them whenever they want, including while they're still uploading: see MASV Express. With this model, the transfer has a middle man, that for most intents and purposes, is secure and compliant, but that's a consideration some users have to make.

A Competitive Landscape

The Managed File Transfer market is mature, growing, and dominated by a couple bigger players, which makes MASV's rise super interesting. From an initial Google search, the market seems to be about $1.4 to $2.4 billion in size, depending on who you ask. Media and Entertainment accounts for roughly 19% of that, but MASV is not alone in rooting themselves there. It would be hard, and kinda irrelevant to try find numbers for this, but I can tell you companies like Aspera and Signiant still lead in the landscape. That being said, I've seen MASV come up a ton, and for good reason...

Why I Like MASV

When looked at alongside Signiant and Aspera, MASV has an extremely approachable vibe. Trendy and fun webdesign (including self-serve onboarding) lends to their introductory pricing model - i.e start for free, which is very appealing to small vendors and freelancers. They have a pay as you go tier that only begins to charge you per GB over 15GB. By contrast, Aspera's recommended pricing tier is in the terabyte range.

MASV Portals is a useful feature of the company's store and forward model, it allows you to upload stuff to a bucket, or more meaningfully, have another party upload to a bucket, which you can then grab from later, or automate downloads from.

A look at the cool MASV portal you can customize.

Speaking of, MASV has a really cool set of offerings for automation. First, they have their no-code solution MASV Automations which gives users a UI for putting together quick things like automatically grabbing files and putting them in a specific folder. Going a level deeper, you have their MASV Agent, a CLI tool essentially built to help abstract away from their REST API. It helps developers manage file transfers to and from MASV programmatically.

Lastly, MASV has a hype train that's fun to watch and is building momentum. Great design and marketing have helped add to their accessible pricing, simple and easily implemented integrations, and in-depth documentation that make the company feel like the solution for the everyman (although this doesn't preclude MASV from having large clients too).

MASV's Challenges in this Field

When looking at MASV's drawbacks, you have to be specific about the use-case. For example, a large-scale vendor (e.g ILM, Wētā, DNEG, Framestore, SPI, etc.) might have an entirely different set of needs. In a system that involves 50–300+ artists, moving petabytes per show, with strict studio security requirements and highly automated pipelines, MASV starts to come up against some mismatches. Perhaps by design, the workflows of these companies may not be a priority.

Those main hangups (and this has been a changing landscape) are things like existing investments in on-premise systems and IT personnel, and then cost per data amount sent. The latter is a super useful approach if you're on the smaller side, and helps you get up and running if you know the data amount will be smaller. It's a bit of a killer if you have petabytes going around and you're getting slammed with egress fees for storing things in the cloud.

In addition to the practicality component, MASV's cloud-in-the-middle set up is off the table for some studio-mandated privacy rules that prohibit storing data in a third party public cloud. Though this is also changing, and MASV has put in the time to acquire a TPN Gold Shield to calm any privacy concerns.

I think of MASV as also being useful client side, for sending rough cuts and packages - this is a space I think MASV can insert themselves fearlessly, including for VFX turnovers — but again the privacy restrictions and egress concerns would apply at scale.

Another big thing is just the entrenchment of current industry players. Aspera and Signiant still thrive in this space, with the former really being the king of the hill. My guess is that it's the backing of IBM and the FASP protocol they developed that sets Aspera apart specifically.

Ultimately MASV is a great tool for sending files, it's not the backbone of a major VFX vendor’s global file movement infrastructure, but as I said, I'm not sure they're trying to be. Let's look at an example where MASV comes in super handy.

A Simple Automation for ProTools Using the MASV Agent

So I mentioned the MASV Agent, I used it here to make a small integration for Pro-Tools. The Agent let me abstract away file system interactions, token handling, transfer sessions, and retry logic so I could focus on triggering the send from within Pro Tools.

Here's the example problem I wanted to solve: "I'm an audio producer, and I want to send bounces to collaborators quickly without opening several applications." To put MASV to the test, here's a solution: A hotkey that bounces and sends your current session to your team collaborators via MASV.

The tool gives you the option to send your bounce directly to an email, or to a MASV Portal. You can also store a default portal or email in an .env file so you don't have to keep entering it over and over.

Image shows portal option for sends from ProTools.

The hardest part of putting together this integration was working with the Pro-Tools SDK. It's not super well documented and doesn't allow for things like custom menu items. There's also a lengthy license agreement that technically prevents me from sharing the SDK files with folks who haven't also agreed to the license. My workaround for the lack of menu item customization was to make an Apple shortcut that triggers the integration. Something like SoundFlow though, with its partnership with Avid, would likely be a cleaner way to surface custom actions.

Thoughts and Takeaways

MASV is great, it's a super cool tool that makes storing stuff in the cloud and sending it to folks extremely easy and cool. The customizable portals and interfaces are key for impressing clients as a small to medium sized vendor. The MASV Agent made developing something super easy — with a little python and some BASH scripting, you can put together a really solid and usable workflow. MASV isn’t trying to be an enterprise backbone, it’s trying to make file delivery simple, fast, and pleasant, and in that lane, it's kicking ass. I'm a fan.