Aframe
Aframe Media services Limited is a London-based software-as-a-service company that provides cloud video production storage and workflow tools. The company also has offices in Boston, Massachusetts, USA and Durham, United Kingdom.
Its namesake product is called Aframe. Aframe is a cloud video production and asset management system with capabilities in collaboration, review and approval, archive and tagging.
History
Aframe Ltd was founded in 2009 by David Peto and Stef Lewandowski.
After training as an actor, Peto became a producer involved in making TV ads and brand films. In 2005 Peto, along with co-founders Tom Bridges and Roland Woolner, established a post production facility called UNIT Post Production - www.unit.tv – the first entirely tapeless finishing facility, based on Apple Final Cut Pro editing software. Peto sold his share in Unit in 2009. By this time the business had 50 staff and a turnover of £3 million. Bridges and Woolner later established visual effects company, Neon.
He set up Aframe after seeing the issues tapeless production was causing for film and TV producers who needed to manage, archive and transfer vast amounts of data. Lewandowski joined as Chief Innovation Officer and the company raised £2.5m in start-up funding from a consortium of investors (including ex-COO of Endemol, Tom Barnicoat and founder of advertising firm Abbott Mead Vickers, David Abbott), launching a beta of the Aframe platform in November 2010.
The company was named in the 2011 Smarta100 awards
In 2012, Aframe raised a $7 million (£4.5 million) Series A round of funding led by Octopus Investments and Eden Ventures, with participation by existing investor, Northstar Ventures,.
The investment allowed Aframe to launch into North America and establish operations in Boston, Massachusetts, New York, and Los Angeles. Mark Ovington, one of the founding team at Avid Technology and its former head of marketing, was appointed as president of Aframe North America.
Lewandowski left the company in April 2012 and, after working on several projects, founded Makeshift in January 2013.
In January 2013, the company announced a partnership with Panasonic with Panasonic selling Aframe licenses in the United States and Europe through its network of Panasonic pro video resellers. The partnership also enabled the creation of proxy first workflow for users of Panasonic’s AVC-Intra codecs for P2 Card cameras: AVC-LongG and AVC-Proxy to use Aframe.
The Aframe platform
The Aframe platform is a cloud-based software as a service video production and asset management system. Users of the service can upload video assets to a cloud storage system then use a browser based interface to manage, share and work with the assets.
Aframe’s technical performance is based around a four stage workflow. The product is modular allowing users to use elements as required for their project.
Services
Aframe has a video tagging, logging and transcription service based at their Durham centre.