Services
Company Background
Cinestock is a visionary project aiming to be the Shutterstock equivalent for film.
Driven by the recognition that existing stock footage and images online were not easily accessible, often expensive, and lacked accurate representation of the Middle East, North Africa, and the Indian subcontinent, the company envisioned a localized platform. Cinestock sought to empower local photographers and content creators to upload their work, creating a diverse and accessible library of stock videos for users.
The challenge
The primary challenge lay in the intricacies of video processing. This encompassed handling high-detail, large video files directly from cameras, transcoding and encoding these files into accessible formats for previews, watermarking to protect against unauthorized use, and facilitating multi-format downloads. Building a robust microservices-based backend architecture was imperative, requiring powerful servers for video processing and a responsive web server for the user interface.
How we approached this project
Our approach involved designing a robust backend architecture, prioritizing powerful servers for video encoding and transcoding tasks. Microservices were strategically implemented to efficiently handle the complex processes associated with video processing.
We developed a user-friendly web application comprising both a portal for end-users to browse and download footage, including watermarked samples, and a contributor portal. Content creators could sign up, undergo approval based on the quality of their work, upload videos, and manage payment details, allowing for seamless contributions to the platform.
Implementing a secure and efficient payment mechanism was crucial. We built a comprehensive system for payment collection, disbursement in the marketplace, and notifications. Contributors received alerts on video processing completion, purchases, and fund availability for withdrawal, ensuring transparency and timely communication.
Flutter was selected as a robust cross-platform framework for the mobile application, whereas the web application was built in the ever-popular React. Both were selected for their high levels of support and ease-of-use. The web server was developed in NodeJS.
As the data models and database schema was iterated repeatedly throughout development, MongoDB was selected as a highly-flexible database. The data server that managed data processing, updates, anonymization and backups was developed in Python, leveraging NumPy and Pandas for various functions.
A separate WordPress application is used to manage the platform’s static pages for easy content editing. All of the servers and the web application were built on the AWS EC2 infrastructure.
The result of our work
We engineered COVID Nearby as a platform where people can anonymously and securely report their location and health symptoms, and generate information that is crucial to fight COVID-19. This information is used to identify the presence of the virus and track its spread in US communities.
COVID Nearby was able to track and gather data from over 34,000 users for further analysis over a period of six months.
This is what we achieved for Covid Nearby
The project received additional funding by the National Institute of Health to modularize it to build a privacy-preserving crowd-sensing platform that could be instrumental in future public data collection efforts at the university level and potentially across academia.
Further study continues into how privacy guarantees affect the willingness of people to share information that may help in coordinating service delivery and emergency responses by local governments.
01
A dynamic website that compliments their branding and service
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Created a user journey that makes finding hot zones simple and easy to navigate around
03
Implemented a notifications and alerts module to improve end-user safety and precautions
04
Deployed mobile apps on both stores to ensure that information on nearby outbreaks is always available
34,000
Users self-reported symptoms
2022 Best Paper Award
IEEE Computer Society
3
Research Publications
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