Film distribution & delivery

A Film Delivery Portal for Festival Submissions

Branded uploads up to 300 GB per file, automatic QC on arrival, and verified projection downloads for every cinema — 300+ clients worldwide deliver through it.

Projection upload step: DCP folder uploading direct to cloud with resumable progress, subtitles received, trailer pending

Real product — the projection upload step. Film title and figures are demo data.

Film distribution & delivery

Submit Portal

300+ clients · up to 300 GB per file

Problem
Cinema packages run 40–300 GB. Consumer file-sharing chokes on them, enterprise transfer contracts cost $15–20K a year, and operations teams end up chasing "did it arrive?" over WhatsApp across five different apps.
What we built
A branded delivery platform: producers verify by email code and upload straight to the cloud — resumable, up to 300 GB per file. Quality control runs automatically on every package (DCP validation, audio, subtitles), the catalog the team already keeps in Google Sheets updates itself, and a sync agent lands finished sessions on the studio's own storage overnight. Films that arrive as Drive or WeTransfer links get pulled into the same pipeline. And when the festival approves, the same portal distributes: each cinema gets an invitation link scoped to its films, downloads its projection copy with every download verified, and if a film is replaced, everyone who already took the old one gets told.
What changed
More than 300 clients worldwide deliver their content through the platform — and the same system now carries each film through to the cinema’s verified download. QC that used to be manual runs in the cloud on arrival, and "what's missing?" is answered by the live catalog instead of a message thread.

Running in production for an international film festival's submission cycle.

What the system does

  • A branded portal on the festival's own subdomain — logo, limits and mail sender per client
  • Passwordless for submitters: identity confirmed with an emailed one-time code
  • Whole-folder uploads that preserve the original directory tree — built for DCPs
  • Single files up to 300 GB, resumable: a dropped connection continues from the last uploaded part, not from zero
  • Import from an external link when the material already lives somewhere else
  • Automatic QC on every delivery: DCP structure and cross-references, codec probe, and a pass / warning / fail verdict with a numeric score
  • A downloadable QC report per delivery, PDF included
  • The festival's own tracking spreadsheet updates itself — status, links and dates written back automatically
  • A sync agent lands finished sessions on the festival's own storage overnight, verified file by file
  • A delivery review console: verify, override a verdict, request a resubmission, pause and schedule the queue
  • Catalogue documents validated and parsed on upload
  • Editors get a portal scoped to trailers only; delivery status is readable by the team's mail assistant through an API
  • Destructive deletions require a second emailed code — no single person can purge content
  • Retention rules delete content automatically after confirmed delivery; nightly backups and a full audit log

By the numbers

  • 300 GB per-file ceiling, configurable per client
  • Every delivered file verified with SHA-256 — a 42 GB master checksummed about 3 minutes after completion
  • A real 40+ GB, 9-file DCP validated end to end before go-live
  • 300+ clients worldwide deliver through the platform
  • Architecture mapped to MPA content-security practices
  • Read the pipeline: how a festival receives a 300 GB film →

Where it sits among the transfer tools

Signiant, Aspera, MASV and WeTransfer are good at what they were built for: moving bytes. Submit Portal exists because for a festival, moving bytes was never the whole job — identity, quality control, the catalog and verified distribution are.

ToolBuilt forCinema-size filesQC on arrivalFestival operationCost shape
WeTransferConsumer file sharingStruggles at DCP scaleNoneNone — links in email threadsSubscription per user
MASVLarge-file transferYesNo content QC — it moves what you give itUpload portals, but no catalog, QC or verified distributionPay per gigabyte moved — a cost that scales with every submission cycle
Signiant Media ShuttleEnterprise accelerated transferYesNoneBranded portals, but the delivery operation stays manualEnterprise subscription
IBM AsperaEnterprise accelerated transferYes — excellent at raw speedNoneNone — it's a pipe, by designEnterprise licensing — the class of contract that runs $15–20K a year
Submit PortalThe festival's delivery operationResumable to 300 GB per fileAutomatic: DCP structure, codec, audio, subtitles — pass/warning/fail with a reportOTP identity, self-updating catalog, sync to own storage, verified cinema distributionOwned — no per-seat, no per-gigabyte

Fair is fair: if raw cross-continent transfer speed is your only problem, Aspera and Signiant are excellent at exactly that. This comparison is about running a submission cycle end to end — which is the job the 300+ clients above are actually doing.

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