James Mabbett: Hi, everybody. Thanks very much for joining us. I'm James Mabbett the creative manager at Webvid and with me today is...
Neil Bentley: Well, I'm Neil Bentley and I am the CEO of Webvid, but I'm here today to talk about this beauty. Welcome to Camflare. It's born!
James: Exciting. So, Camflare is our new product that's launching very very shortly. Neil, I just wanted to talk a little bit about Camflare and ask you a few questions about it so people could understand what it is and what it does. So, if you could summarise that very quickly. What would you like to say?
Neil: Well, Camflare is a web application where you don't need to download any apps. It's an online platform which allows you to record and receive video in the easiest way possible. So, Camflare the easiest way to record and receive video. That's all you need to know.
James: Nice and simple, that's fantastic. And, obviously, there's been a lot going on during this lockdown time, so why why have you developed this product?
Neil: So, over the past kind of four months, as you will well know, we've had to deal with lots of different scenarios around virtual events. Now, Webvid, as a digital company and a creative agency has been around for for eight years where we've been working in digital so we've been used to this, but there was a massive shift four months ago when the pandemic hit and we found that there wasn't any platform that really helped us get content from people in the best quality that they could give it to us in. You could say, well if someone's got an iPhone 11 with the best camera on a phone and they had to do a half hour record, that's great but how do they get it back to us? They can't the files are too large, it's very difficult. The people we were dealing with had different levels of skill and also disparate equipment, we never knew what we were dealing with.
So, there wasn't really a platform that allowed us to do that. We could use Zoom, and we could use Hangouts and, we could use all the other
meeting apps but it all recorded in the cloud, which meant that we were only receiving the the video as good as the internet connection was
and that didn't really work for us as well because, you know, Webvid is all about quality.
So, kind of three/four months ago we set out on the journey of planning what web application would be useful for us on this journey, and here's Camflare. And, like I said, Camflare is the easiest way to record and receive video without any apps downloading.
James: Quality and simplicity is definitely at the heart of what's gone into the thinking behind this isn't it?
Neil: Absolutely.
James: So, for anyone that's inside Camflare, what does it do? What what features are available when you're in there?
Neil: Okay, so, Camflare when you go in, you can connect your cloud storage. So, we're launching with Dropbox integration from the start, which means that you can connect your Dropbox literally within 10 seconds and then you've got your Dropbox, or you can set up a new 2GB Dropboxes, or connects multiple Dropboxes to have a huge amount of recording time. So, for example, if you had a 2GB free Dropbox account that you signed up
for and connected, you would get over 110 minutes of recording time.
So, that's the first thing. You connect your cloud storage, so that means if you have it synced with your computers in multiple places,
when somebody sends you back a file from our studio that goes straight into your Dropbox and syncs with your machines. Amazing. So simple.
Secondly, you can create a studio link for your guests or guests, which you can literally deploy anywhere in the world in five seconds. You can also add a teleprompter, which is a really really cool thing. So, if somebody's got a script to say, you might want them to do a five-minute
piece with a script, you can put that script in the teleprompter and then they can have all the settings the other side to change the speed the
width and the script itself, if they need to in a very very simple UI.
Yeah, I mean it's just absolutely beautiful. It's really really simple to use. It works on Chrome across Mac, PC and Chromebook and it's just perfect. In fact, what we're recording today, is on Camflare.
James: I think that's a that's a very very good example. If you were to throw just a few more ideas out there, I mean, how else would you see
Camflare being used by people?
Neil: Well, obviously we made it and it's born out of the events market and, I mean, it serves that events market really really well. We already have people using it to add content to their uh conferences and award ceremonies, so it can be like a 10 second piece that you want from somebody or it might be a five minute or half an hour piece that you want for a conference, but I think that when you open this up, the broad spectrum of uses for Camflare is just, well, it's almost limitless.
So, marketing. If you're a big brand and you want to get back feedback or content from your audience, you can send out one Camflare link, which by the way I didn't say, we can have a link expiration on the studio. So, you could say "we've got 12 hours to record your content and send it back." So, brands can use it for getting that marketing and then creating stuff with that video for social, or for broadcast, or just for reflective internal comms.
You can use it for internal coms for many different things. If you're a corporate, again it connects with your Dropbox and we're adding other cloud storage partners after launch, so it's really secure.
What about, doing auditions? So, if you've got a a company where you're looking for people to do some auditions for a new stage show. Perfect to use Camflare. They don't have to download anything, they literally click on a link they're straight into the studio.
What about using it for jobs? So, interviewing people, so using that for bringing people's bios into a video form. It goes on and on and on and on, all the way down the line. As long as you want to get video from somebody for a content use, then Camflare is the perfect way to do it. And, I've got to say it again, it's the simplicity of it coming back to you. It comes back into your Dropbox in a folder where you know that is and it syncs with all your machines. It's just a beautiful thing.
James: Very exciting. I'm sure people will have, like, further questions. So, if you want to share those with us do leave them in the comments below, or if people would like to find out any more information about Camflare, where can they go?
Neil: They can go to Camflare.io, which is the website, or you can go to our social which is now starting to build up. So, you can go to
@CamflareApp on Twitter. You can go to
@cam.flare on Instagram, or you can go to
facebook.com/camflare on Facebook.
In fact, James, what I'm going to do is I'm going to include in this post a
Camflare link for a studio so if there's anybody watching this right now and they want to leave us a message and they want to, I don't know, give us some content back or just have a look how the studio works, just click that, go into our studio on Chrome and it's really really easy to record a piece and send it straight back to our Dropbox.
James: Awesome. I think that sounds like a fantastic idea. Well, Neil, thanks very much for that and thank you everybody for joining us for our chat about Camflare today and we look forward to seeing you soon.
