Normally, Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Media Encoder, etc. require a physical file to be located on a standard file system, shared or local.  MediaReactor Lite (and MediaReactor Workstation) allow all these software products to edit files directly from S3/HTTP/HTTPS file stores.  The magic is performed by tiny local text files with the extension .stream.  These are encrypted or unencrypted descriptions of the file's actual location, saved on a local or accessible network storage for Adobe to use.

Direct Access to Cloud Assets

Adobe Premiere uses files, and cannot see ephemeral assets, such as streams on an S3 or HTTPS provider. Typically video files are into the hundred of MBs, sometimes GBs, so there is both a delay, and an added cost, to download a file from S3 before opening a local copy (and to upload it after saving).

Other companies have used proxy files with subsequent conform to mitigate the delay (and cost) editors face using cloud storage solutions. Drastic lets you access these files directly, with frame accurate time code, closed captions, and metadata intact. Now you can fully realize the advantages of a cloud based content creation workflow with immediate acces to your media. Simply pass video data to and from S3 as required rather than dealing only with the local file system.

Drastic software products support direct access to cloud resources using HTTP, HTTPS, S3, and other file sharing methods.  For the most part, the path to these files is a URL (e.g. https://someserver/somefile).  Most software editing packages including Adobe's require that the file be directly accessible on local or network storage to be used.  MediaReactor uses ".stream" files to bridge this gap and allow Adobe to read the file directly.

MediaReactor Lite and MediaReactor Workstation

MediaReactor Lite provides a limited number of the most commonly requested formats, for an economical price of $99.00 US. The addition of the .stream format to this package extends its phenomenal value to the cloud.

MediaReactor Workstation adds our complete range of acquisition, production, mezzanine and output formats to provide the widest compatibility between devices and software. MediaReactor Workstation is $495.00 US.

Setting up a .stream file

A .stream file is simply a URL in a text file that points to the resource you want to load into your Adobe software.  This URL can be in clear text, or encrypted. 

The below link is a sample file located on our flowcaster.live server. You can play it in your browser, but it would be nice to look at it in Premiere.

https://www.flowcaster.live/video/BigBuckBunny.mp4

Open notepad.
Enter your file's URL.
Save the file.
Close it.
Browse to its location and change the .txt extension to .stream.
Ignore the warning the changing the file extension may cause the file to become unusable. Premiere will use it.

The image below shows the file open in notepad.

To use the .stream file in Premiere, you will need to install at least MediaReactor Lite for Adobe in your Windows or macOS system.

Run Premiere.
Start a new project or open an existing project.
Select Import.
Browse to the location of the file and import it.
Adobe will open and read the file directly from HTTPS.

Amazon S3/Object Storage

Direct access without a rootkey.csv is also supported by providing the ID:SecretKey on the URL before the site.  The two parts must be separated by a colon (:) and the site name must be separated with an at sign (@):  https://<id>:<secret>@s3.amazon.com/<bucket>/<file>.

https://MEOWJDNGFSUIGNWCAT:djJFASTjfowljgwowf8473sdjhH＠s3.amazonaws.com/netxcode-pft/sourceABR.mp4

For more information on setting S3 and Object Storage access, please see

Setting up Amazon S3 AWS Access

Encrypted .stream Files

Encrypted .stream files are also supported, with contents that cannot be read without a decryption key. These files produce a lengthy string of random alphanumeric characters similar to the following:

These can be used to protect the location and name of the source file, as well as any IDs or secret keys.  For more information on producing encrypted .stream files, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..