Sohonet acquires 5th Kind to create cloud workflow collaboration hub

Sohonet announced it has acquired 5th Kind, a leading cloud-based video collaboration platform for the film and TV production industry.

Over the last decade, 5th Kind has helped thousands of creatives streamline their increasingly complex workflows with a cloud-based asset management and discovery platform that enables key stakeholders to securely collaborate at global scale, across the entire content lifecycle.

Sohonet’s industry-leading, real-time remote collaboration technology and world-class media network combined with 5th Kind’s near-time dailies review functionality and powerful asset workflow platform will provide a secure, integrated and scalable collaborative experience for filmmakers. The pairing will unlock significant opportunities for productions to reduce costs and timelines, especially as more creative workflows centralize assets and workflows in the cloud.

“Content creation today is increasingly global, complex and data intensive,” said Chuck Parker, CEO of Sohonet. “As Sohonet becomes a creative-centric asset hub and workflow management platform, we are focused on connecting industry talent with the tools and resources they need, to the many places that they now work – on set, on-prem facilities, at home, private, public or hybrid cloud infrastructure locations.”

On what changes this will bring to the industry, Parker noted, “With more than 60 production facility partners supporting high-speed on-set communications for over 700 soundstages at premium locations across the globe, we believe we will soon deliver on the much-discussed efficiency and effectiveness of cloud-first workflows by enabling the near-time upload of original camera files (OCF) from the production’s video village directly to the cloud.”

Parker added, “Productions will no longer be required to spend time and energy on a bifurcated workflow where proxies created on set for editorial and full resolution video assets are sent to the post partner via hard drives. By delivering the OCF directly into public, private or hybrid cloud repositories, productions can choose to anchor their post production workflows in the cloud. This allows their post production partners and creatives from around the world to collaborate quickly and cost effectively.”

“Real-time collaboration between often geographically dispersed creative teams is a critical success factor for driving efficiency and generating commercial returns,” said Joe Zaller, founder of Devoncroft Partners, a leading market research and strategic consulting firm in the M&E Industry. “So, it makes sense that Sohonet would seek to expand its services by adding 5th Kind to its portfolio.”

Parker concludes, “As we integrate 5th Kind capabilities more deeply into Sohonet, we are excited and energized about the opportunity to provide our connected storytellers the power of asset search, identification and workflow orchestration as they navigate and mitigate the complexity of today’s content creation workflows.”