We’re pleased to announce a new partnership with Clarizen – a robust, easy-to-use online project management platform that provides a complete suite of integrated tools for ensuring that your projects run efficiently and are aligned to meet your business objectives. Unlike most project management systems that tend to focus on the management aspects of a project, Clarizen offers a more “user-centric” workflow that benefits the individual team member and facilitates team collaboration – an approach that makes it particularly appealing for creative media projects involving many internal and external stakeholders.

Cozimo offers a natural extension to Clarizen’s centralized approach to content management by allowing users to review and provide feedback and collaborate directly on any rich media content that may be posted. This combination provides a complete and cost-effective solution for organizations looking for a more advanced and integrated approach to project management and digital content collaboration. Try the solution out for yourself by signing up for a free 30-day trial of Clarizen.

This month we’re talking with Boaz Ashkenazy, a founder and principal with Studio/216 located in Seattle, WA.

Hi Boaz. Why don’t you start out by telling me about Studio216?

We’re a visual communications company that specializes in “storytelling” -  creating 3D animations, video and renderings to help design and market capital construction projects. The kinds of clients we typically work with are architects, developers, municipalities that are in the process of starting capital or construction projects.

How did you get started using Cozimo?

Our work requires a lot of coordination with our clients.  In past years, we got by using email and using some web conferencing products but it was all very inefficient. We really needed a way to combine the asynchronous and synchronous feedback and organize the whole process. We also wanted our clients to have a convenient tool that could support drawing and note annotations. Sometime the notes can be more important that the scribbles and in the past it was sometimes difficult to make sense of a lot of the feedback we were getting. Having everyone use the drawing and note tools in Cozimo keeps it consistent and clear.

You mention asynchronous and synchronous collaboration. How do you find yourselves using Cozimo most often?

Well my goal would really be to work as asynchronously as possible. It’s a lot more time efficient to let the client review the content internally and add notes on their own time. But there are also times when we have to talk through something together and it’s important to be able to get online and point things out. I used to spend a lot of time marking things up and making notes after having conversations with clients. Cozimo is much more efficient because now we can just make and share the notes as we talk. And whether the clients leave notes on their own or we work together it’s all recorded in one central location that I can share with the staff.

Are you using Cozimo often?

Absolutely – every day. It’s an indispensable tool for us now.

How do your clients like it?

They’re very pleased. There’s a bit of a learning curve but not a steep one. Once they get going they love it.

From a business perspective, has Cozimo proven to be cost-effective for you?

I would say that Cozimo is saving me 2 to 3 hours a day that I use to spend just collecting, interpreting and organizing client feedback for the production staff. It’s a huge time savings for us.

You’ve been using Cozimo now for over a year now. How have you found the reliability and support?

It’s great. What’s nice is that when I have a question or a problem I can pick up the phone or Skype and speak directly with someone on the product team. That was especially helpful when we were getting started. But, it’s been a while now since I’ve had to have any support.

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to read the latest book by David Coleman – 42 Rules for Successful Collaboration. As the founder and director of Collaborative Strategies, David has been involved in the collaboration world since 1989. He’s a leading analyst, author and public speaker who has consulted with many of the top vendors in the collaboration industry. His blog is a great source for insightful information on current trends. I first met David myself at an Enterprise 2.0 conference back in 2007 and since then he’s provided us with much valuable advice on our own business development.

This is David’s fourth book dealing with collaboration, though his other books have tended to have more of an academic flavor. What I found so effective about this book was the simplicity of the format with which the ideas were presented. Each rule was concisely presented in a page or two. You can read through the book in about an hour or two and take away many valuable insights to help your business. I also liked the way that the book itself was developed as a collaborative undertaking, with over 3/4 of the rules being contributed by people from various fields who relate the collaboration issues they’ve addressed first hand in their organizations. This gives the book a diverse and very practical perspective.

As examples, here are the top 10 rules that I thought were most relevant to our mission with Cozimo:

• Rule 2 – Know Why You Are Collaborating
• Rule 4 – Include All of Your Stakeholders
• Rule 7 – Structured Communications Support Successful Collaboration
• Rule 22 – Accountability Is the Next Step in Collaboration
• Rule 25 – Collaboration Can Make Projects More Successful
• Rule 31 – Collaboration Tools Should Be Easy
• Rule 34 – Communication Improves with Collaboration Technologies
• Rule 38 – Persistence Is Critical
• Rule 39 – Use Visual Technologies for Collaboration
• Rule 40 – It Is Easier to Move Bits than Butts

To get the full story in a fast and easy read,  I would highly recommend picking up a copy of this very insightful and practical book. You can order it online here.

This month we take a more detailed look at one of the more powerful features of Cozimo – the ability to review and annotate video. Cozimo’s system allows any number of remote team members to play and annotate a video from any standard web browser. Members can review videos on their own or you can have online meetings where the playback and annotation are fully synchronized between all participants. To optimize the real-time performance of the system, we recommend that video files posted for review and feedback not be larger than necessary for the type of feedback required (there is a 60 MB per file limit).

Formats and Encoding – Cozimo supports most popular video formats, including QuickTime (.mov), MPEG (.mpg, .mp4), AVI, Windows media (.wmv) and Flash video (.flv). When formats other than .flv are uploaded an .flv proxy is created for the purposes of playback and review. Because the encoding occurs on the fly at upload, there may be a delay between the time that the file uploads and the thumbnail of the file appears in the file tab indicating that it is available for review. This delay is usually a few minutes but it can sometimes take quite a bit longer if the file is large (or the encoding server very busy).

The encoding parameters have been set to preserve the resolution and quality of the original file as much as possible though with any encoding process there can be variations so it’s a good idea to check the result prior to distribution if this can be an issue. You can maintain complete control of the quality by uploading your own .flv files. This way you avoid the encoding delay as well.

Playback  and Annotation – During playback, video files are progressively downloaded to the browser (not streamed). You can start playing the video clip after 20% of the file has downloaded. File download progress is indicated as an orange line in the scrub bar:

Use the buttons or hotkeys to control the playback as shown below:

Click on the label above the controls to toggle between a timecode display or frame count:

Stop on any keyframe to make annotations on it as you would on any image. Frames that have annotations on them are indicated with a blue marker in the timeline. By default, Cozimo inserts a keyframe at every six frames during the encoding process. If you upload your own .flv files you can insert keyframes at any frequency you wish.

To synchronize the playback of the video between multiple collaborators, click on “Presenter Mode”. While in presenter mode you can play the video or scrub to any keyframe and all participants will be synchronized to the same frame. When you stop to annotate all participants can “whiteboard” on the same frame together. If a participant moves off the synchronized playback to view the video independently, the presenter can re-synchronize the participant by pausing and restarting the playback. Any collaborator can click on Presenter Mode at any time to take control of the playback.

Last week, the winners of the annual CGarchitect Architectural 3D Awards were announced at the Mundos Digitales Conference in La Coruna Spain. In recent years, the field of digital architecture has grown into a significant specialty of the digital media world – a fact recognized by the inclusion in this year’s conference of a dedicated digital architecture track alongside the more traditional fields of Animation, Vfx and Games. A review of the winning entries and nominations shows just how far this field has advanced with the quality of productions often surpassing both the technical and creative standards of many Hollywood films. Our congratulations to all of this years winners and nominees.

Now in its sixth year, the CGarchitect 3D awards have become widely recognized as the “Academy Awards” of the field. Organized by Jeff Mottle, founder of CGarchitect.com, the event now attracts over 1200 entries from dozens of countries around the globe to compete in ten categories. A panel of twelve industry leaders reviewed all the entries to first nominate the finalists in each category and then to select the winners. With the judges themselves spread over three continents, Cozimo helped out by providing a platform to facilitate the distribution of the entries and the sharing of feedback during the judging process. “What’s become apparent”, Jeff observed “is just how international this field has become over the years. With tools like Cozimo, talented artists and producers from countries all over the globe can collaborate effectively with partners or clients anywhere in the world. It’s really changing the dynamics of the industry.”