Sony’s excellent free cloud storage service for creators gets some excellent upgrades: support for Dolby Atmos and a snazzy desktop app to speed up transfers

By James On Jan 27, 2024

Sony has announced significant upgrades to its Ci Media Cloud platform, a cloud-based media management and collaboration service. The updates include a new plan tailored for small and medium businesses, the introduction of a desktop file transfer app, and improved support for Dolby Atmos audio files.

The new Ci Transfer desktop app (available until to download free for all Ci users) ensures fast transfer of files and folders to and from the Ci Media Cloud platform.

Available for both Mac and PC, the app supports multi-gigabyte transfer speeds, retries transfers after interruptions, and is optimized to handle hundreds of files. It also features pause and resume functions, transfers reports, and can be combined with a new sidecar capture workflow for larger organizations migrating archive libraries.

Improved Dolby Atmos support

In addition to the Free, Pro and Team online plans, there’s a new Business Plan for small and medium-sized organizations, which Sony says is a step up from Ci’s original Team plan.

It costs around $249 per month and offers unlimited workspaces, 1 TB of active storage, 4 TB of archive storage, and 500 GB of monthly data transfers. The plan also includes advanced features such as custom branding and usage analytics.

The platform’s enhanced support for Dolby Atmos audio files allows users to upload and play video and audio files with immersive, authentic sound.

Integrated with Dolby.io, the platform supports ADM BWF Atmos audio, and users can visually see Loudness Unit Full Scale (LUFS) and True Peak levels in Ci’s built-in media analysis tool. This allows creative and quality assurance teams to work with compelling content the way it was meant to be heard.

“We are continually evolving our Ci platform to better meet users’ needs and become an even more intrinsic part of their daily workflow,” said David Rosen, Vice President of Cloud Applications and Services, Sony Electronics.

“With the addition of a plan built to meet the needs and budgets of small and medium businesses, a rich new desktop app experience and Dolby Atmos audio for immersive, authentic sound, we’re making Ci even more accessible and more user-friendly. and powerful for creatives and organizations in every facet of the industry.”