This week Alteon’s CEO, Matthew Cimaglia, accepted the award for the NAB Show Product of the Year. Alteon.io, a soup-to-nuts video production management app that is taking professional and newbie creators by storm, just copped the first of what I am guessing will be many awards this year. If you make video at any level, you owe it to yourself to see what Alteon has to offer.
As a content creator, I always have my ear to the ground for the latest and greatest, from gear to apps, and when Alteon.io came into view, I just thought it was another cloud-based storage solution, but I was wrong. After my first conversation with Cimaglia, I found myself curious but slightly refusing to believe this application could do everything he claimed.
My first briefing went smoothly. I was impressed with how user-friendly and intuitive the Alteon app was on my laptop, but when it was suggested that I try out the iOS app, I basically said, "Yeah, sure, kid." However, I quickly had to eat my words as I had it set up and was ready to upload and manage media from my phone and my laptop in a minute flat.
My stubborn speculative mistrusting New Yorker voice was grumbling; it couldn’t be this easy. This is a new app; where are the bugs? Where was the failure to meet the hype moment? I stewed and went to bed. I got up, hopped on a plane, and spent two days with Matthew and the Alteon team at NAB 2023.
What is Alteon, and what does it do?
During my plane ride west, I looked deeper into Alteon and learned its motto, “You create, we do the rest.” It is highly accurate. Alteon is a cloud-based media content management system created by a team of professionals, many with over 20 years of experience in delivering high-quality video to networks, studios, and clients worldwide. These are leaders in the industry that have come together to build a new solution from the ground up.
Matthew Cimaglia was a long-time producer at NBC News, a position that requires the ability to create content and manages gobs of media, getting it fully edited and on-air as quickly as possible. When I interviewed Matthew briefly from the floor at NAB, he said he wished he had access to an app like Alteon during his time at NBC as it would have saved a great deal of time. We see this all the time with tech success stories, the founders look to create something to solve a problem that they are experiencing, and Alteon looks poised to be another chapter in that book.
Based on those origins, you would think it would be focused only on broadcast productions, but it is for creators at every level. Alteon is a comprehensive cloud-based platform that streamlines creative workflows for content creators of all stripes, from people trying to level up their Instagram to those building out full commercial productions, Alteon’s flexibility, ease of use, and affordability are what helped it win not just Product of the Year at NAB, but also TV Tech’s Best of Show Award.
Enough of their accolades, here’s a closer look at what exactly Alteon can do. Alteon is by far the most comprehensive cloud-based content management suite that I’ve used, but thanks to its use of IBM’s Aspera, it’s also one of the fastest, especially once you download the Alteon accelerator app. Alteon is so simple to use because everything is drag and drop, with a clean, streamlined user interface that is so simple you want to doubt it.
Sharing your content via Alteon is also easy. Unlike many other cloud storage services or content management systems, those you share your content with do not have to sign up for Alteon to view or comment on your media. However, if you sign up, even the free tier comes with 10GB of storage, which is enough to manage quite a few short videos if you’re starting to create online content. Imagine you’re the one doing the filming, and you have a friend that edits, Alteon is a fast way to share those files with your editor, and it automatically creates proxies that help speed up the editing process.
Many use different software to edit, I prefer Davinci Resolve, others Adobe Premiere, and still others love Final Cut Pro. Well, Alteon works seamlessly with all three. Alteon can even easily handle Resolves BRAW codec, and as announced at NAB 2023, by years end, in collaboration with Blackmagic, Davinici Resolve and Alteon will allow you to edit with others in the Alteon cloud collaboratively.
Lastly, the aforementioned Alteon app for iOS and Android allows you to manage media from your smartphone. You can upload media from your phone or check up on media you’ve already uploaded that your team may be working on.
I will have an in-depth review of Alteon.io in the coming week and some awesome video content that I used Alteon to manage and share.
