Slingshot Automations Engine and API

Slingshot, EVO’s easy-to-use automations engine and robust RESTful API, comes included with every EVO shared storage solution. Save time and resources with the advanced automation capabilities of your EVO video editing server, so you can create amazing content, faster.

Slingshot transcoding and automations

Automatic media backups, transcoding, and file transfers for your collaborative video editing workflow.

Included with EVO

Save time and resources with the advanced automation capabilities of Slingshot, the transcoder and automations engine built into your EVO video editing server.

Slingshot is both powerful and easy to use, and it comes included with every EVO shared storage solution so you can create amazing content, faster, from anywhere.

Backup, sync, and transcode with Slingshot

With a few clicks, you can schedule backup, sync, replication, and transcoding jobs to automatically run whenever you want.

Automate your backups

Run scheduled or on-demand jobs to backup files and projects to another network server, USB device, or cloud services like Amazon S3 and Azure.

Sync & replicate

Automatically sync new content and file changes between multiple systems, whether they’re in the same office or around the globe.

Transcode upon ingest

Transcode source media into proxy files so you can preview clips in EVO’s built-in MAM and download proxy media for remote editing.

Save time with Slingshot’s automation task builder

With its simple point-and-click task builder, Slingshot manages a variety of automations for your media production workflow like copying, moving, deleting, transcoding, and emailing your files, folders, and shares. Here are some examples of how that might look for your creative team.

Examples:
  • Copy your entire media library to a backup location or sync newly finished projects to an FTP site for client delivery.
  • Move files from a watched folder to cloud storage Saturdays at 2am.
  • Delete scratch renders after 60 days.
  • Transcode new video files into edit-ready proxies every evening at 7pm.

Automatic proxy generation

EVO is built to handle your highest resolution media and most demanding creative projects, but your video editors may not want to work at full resolution all the time.

In fact, there are many instances where high-resolution media can create a bottleneck in your workflow.

That’s where proxy files can make a big difference.

Slingshot automatically creates lightweight proxy files to speed up your workflow when you prefer to work with lower-res media, such as remote editing, previewing media, and working on offline projects.

What are proxy files?
Proxy files are smaller, lower-quality versions of your original source video files. Proxies are created through a process called transcoding.
ShareBrowser preview proxies
ShareBrowser preview proxies are transcoded to h.264 and optimized for previewing media in ShareBrowser, EVO’s included media asset manager.

These preview proxies are ultra lightweight and can also be used for offline or remote editing projects.

Edit-ready ProRes proxies
If you prefer not to use the h.264 ShareBrowser preview proxies for your remote editing workflow, you can also enable Slingshot’s Apple-certified ProRes transcoding.

We call these proxies “edit-ready” because they feature an ideal balance of resolution and file size for remote editorial.

BRAW, R3D, ARRIRAW, and more
Slingshot can transcode a variety of high-resolution source media (including BRAW, R3D, ARRIRAW, Apple ProRes, and more) into multiple proxy formats.
On-demand proxy generation
If you need a file or folder transcoded outside of your regularly scheduled automations, you can trigger ad hoc proxy generation anytime directly from ShareBrowser as you are browsing that file or folder in the MAM system.
Watermark and timecode
You can set your proxy files to feature a custom watermark image and burnt-in timecode (BITC) overlay, giving you and your team more control over proxy media.

Faster transcoding

Streamline your workflow like never before with Transcode Accelerator, a free EVO plug-in.

Transcode Accelerator lets your EVO systems tackle large transcoding jobs together, turning your multi-EVO environment into a high-performance transcode group and enabling faster proxy generation for the whole team.

“The most helpful tool in the EVO Suite is proxy creation and indexing with Slingshot. It speeds up our workflow by a lot.”

Kyle Delso
Co-owner, Third Beacon Studios

Choose your destination

Backing up your files is a crucial component of creative media workflow. With Slingshot, your EVO shared storage server can sync, copy, and backup your shares, folders, and files to any of these destinations.

Cloud storage services

Automatically send files to cloud storage for backup before deep archive and for sharing files with clients and remote collaborators. Slingshot works with several cloud services including Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, Dropbox, Wasabi, Backblaze, and Google Cloud Platform.

EVO and EVO Nearline servers

Slingshot can run automation tasks within a single EVO server, across multiple EVO systems, and to EVO Nearline servers as well. With a proper VPN setup, you can even transfer files to other EVO servers that you control anywhere in the world.

Other storage destinations on your network

You can use Slingshot to backup, copy, or sync files from EVO to other network-attached servers—including FTP systems—or to a USB device connected to EVO. EVO can transfer media to nearly any SMB or FTP system with the included Slingshot automations engine.

Multiple storage locations

Using the Slingshot API as an offload/transport engine, you can transfer files from one of these supported systems to any other supported system, even if none of those files are on EVO.

EVO shared storage servers in 16 Bay, 8 Bay, 4 Bay, and MOD models
Slingshot is part of the EVO suite of workflow tools included with every EVO video editing server.

Customize your automation jobs

Slingshot’s filters and scheduling features let you automate what you want, when you want.

Start and stop times

To schedule automations during off-peak hours, Slingshot lets you select the start and pause/stop time for your automation tasks. You can also run jobs on-demand at any time.

Learn more
All Slingshot automations use the processing power of your EVO, so you won’t tie up any workstations for your backup and sync jobs no matter when you schedule them.
Slingshot filters

Trigger your Slingshot automations based on a file’s name, type, or age—or a combination of these attributes.

Learn more
Slingshot filters are available in both include and exclude modes, so if you want to include only .mov files or everything except .prproj files, simply toggle the include/exclude setting accordingly.
Recurring automations

Slingshot lets you schedule recurring automations at convenient time intervals that work with your schedule. This gives you the freedom to set an automation once and let it run exactly as planned.

Learn more
For example, you could set a watched folder to do both an hourly transcode and nightly backup to cloud storage.

Automate anything with EVO’s APIs

Developers and integrators, it’s time to get technical. Our RESTful APIs for Slingshot and ShareBrowser allow you to integrate your technologies and products into the EVO suite.

From offloading complex file transfers to integrating with advanced AI programs and other systems in your workflow, our APIs open a world of possibilities for software developers, product manufacturers, and systems integrators.

Access to our APIs is included free with EVO shared storage systems. We also offer custom development services for more complex API integrations.

For more information about our powerful APIs, check out our Knowledge Base or contact us to learn more.

What people are saying

Our monitors will go out, the consoles will act up, Pro Tools can crash, this is all normal. But I never have to worry about the one thing that keeps things running smoothly–how we’re storing and accessing our files… We just want to focus on doing what we love, and EVO makes that possible.

Reid Caulfield
Lead Re-Recording Mixer and VP of Operations, Central Post LA

90% of our freelance staff work on projects outside the office. We share files with them using Dropbox. EVO ensures they have the most up-to-date media files without manual intervention.

Jeremy Garchow
Producer and Editor, Maday Productions

We have better processes in place because of EVO. It’s allowed us to sleep… without it, it would always be crunch time.

Andy Fink
Lead Video Editor, MasterClass

Slingshot saves time for production teams

Ask us how EVO and Slingshot can improve your team’s workflow and save time in your busy production schedule.

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