Success story

Engineering a MAM app through seamless team integration

Supporting secure playback, advanced media review, and scalable product development

Briefing the project collaboration

The client
Media technology provider
The request
Rapid delivery of a content review and management app for production studios
Oxagile's participation
Integrating an online video engineering team into the client's product team

The use case behind the solution

Step 1
Media ingestion
Production teams import daily footage and editorial cuts into the platform for processing and distribution.
Step 2
Cloud processing and publishing
The system automatically transfers and transcodes media in the cloud, publishing it as review sessions such as dailies reviews.
Step 3
Secure content review
Executives access reviews through an iPad or web player with offline viewing available on iPad.
Step 4
Editorial workflow and collaboration
Users organize content into watchlists, export editorial data in EDL, OTIO, and ALE formats, and share reviews with authorized project members.
Step 5
Workspace administration and access control
Workspace managers independently manage projects, users, and roles.

The client was looking for advanced video expertise

Product team members wanted:

We don't need just additional developers. We're looking for experienced video technology specialists with deep expertise in video and media asset management (MAM). They need to understand complex media workflows, including content ingestion, transcoding, metadata management, and video playback, and actively contribute their technical expertise to product development and engineering decisions.

Engineering skills required for the project

Scalable frontend architecture and product engineering
Advanced media processing and video playback
Full-stack development and backend integrations
Native iOS and offline-first development
Automated testing, CI/CD and release engineering

The solution at a glance

Media ingestion and processing
Helping production teams upload media packages, monitor transfer progress, manage upload errors, and automatically transcode media in the cloud for review.
Review management
Supporting different review types, including Dailies and Cuts, with tools to create and manage reviews, organize clips, combine multiple cuts, attach files, and export editorial data in EDL, OTIO, and ALE formats.
Secure media playback
Providing high-quality streaming through a secure player with DRM, visible watermarking, playback analytics, timeline navigation, sequence playback, and AirPlay support.
Web and iPad access
Offering a consistent review experience across web browsers and a native iPad app, with offline review capabilities, content synchronization, and notifications about expiring offline content.
Collaboration and content organization
Giving reviewers a centralized workspace to access active and shared reviews, browse available content, apply filters, and create personalized watchlists.
Workspace and user administration
Allowing workspace managers to handle projects, users, roles, permissions, and workflows through a dedicated administration interface.
Access control and security
Supporting enterprise single sign-on (SSO), role-based permissions, policy-based watermarking, and screen-capture restrictions.
Integration and operational support
Providing API-based media ingestion and project management through the app's CLI, alongside internal support tools and AI-assisted access to administrative diagnostics through an MCP server.

Oxagile's engineering contribution

Review management and lifecycle

Development of the central Review Drawer for opening, creating, editing and publishing reviews, including responsive design and dashboard integration
Review creation for Dailies, general reviews, and Cut reviews
Consistent review creation and editing workflows across the app and the dashboard
Review lifecycle improvements: deletion, editing published reviews, publishing workflows, routing, and hand-over
Managing review content, with clip removal and reordering
Restricting contributors to the dashboard

New review form with media upload and a video preview

Media player and playback

Development of the general media player and review player, that had a time-clock service and high-speed playback
New player layout for imports and removal of the legacy player
Player improvements and bug fixes on Safari, iPad, and AirPlay

Video review player with playback controls

Review sharing, permissions, and access control

Direct sharing with project users, share modal, and sharing from the review panel and All Reviews table
Implementation of sharing restrictions and permission-based access
Role-based access control (RBAC) design and permissions

Approved video review card with a share button

Reviewer workspace, navigation, and discovery

Reviewer workspace navigation and the content review area improvements, including Continue Watching, General Reviews, date filters, and thumbnail progress indicators
Main workspace development, with active and received reviews, top-level navigation, and reviewer visibility in Projects
Workspace Manager improvements, like Projects, workspace switcher, and project-specific user lists
All Reviews table redesign, responsiveness, filters, and row interactions
Workspaces tab in user settings

Reviewer workspace with a video review list on a monitor

Watchlists

Watchlist creation, review management, reordering, and browsing
Watchlist drawer and quick actions
Removing reviews from watchlists and deleting watchlists

Video watchlist with project thumbnails and approval details

Offline review experience

iPad offline mode UI and workspace-scoped offline reviews
Re-authentication window for offline access
Offline content expiry notifications and re-sync functionality
Native offline review playback

Person reviewing video projects on a tablet

Administration, projects, and workflow management

Users and Roles integration that implied backend implementation and user off-boarding
Workflow templates design and Workflows page implementation (front-end and Django backend)
Admin Projects tab, project creation, and sidebar
Project General tab
Attachments and export menu
User and role management throughout the administration experience

Admin panel with review stats, users, and workspace activity

Engineering quality and security

Developer experience improvements, such as live reload, AI agent setup, and ESLint
CI pipeline for TestFlight builds and investigation of flaky front-end tests
Session-sharing bookmarklet for testing under different user roles
Resolution of all critical and high-severity npm vulnerabilities in the app
Broad bug fixing in the dashboard, login, sharing, player, Safari, iPad, and AirPlay
Front-end architecture review leadership

Developer writing code on a desktop monitor

The engineering team's perspective on key challenges

The engineering team's perspective on key challenges
Area	Challenge	Architectural decision
Chrome incompatibility with video codecs	Certain video codecs, such as HEVC/hev1, were not properly parsed by Chrome. This resulted in NaN video duration and failures that could freeze or crash the review player.	We addressed this by introducing guarded seek calculations and verifying the fix across Chrome and Safari.
Unreliable video transcoding	Transcoding failures caused by AWS task termination, Hybrik bugs, network issues, and race conditions could stall entire reviews.	We developed a more resilient workflow that isolated failed clips, provided manual retries and validated unsupported media upfront.
Native offline player for iPad	The initial native iPad offline player implementation had grown to approximately 5,000 lines of Swift code. But it was still lacking essential functionality, for instance, a timeline and seek bar.	We stopped this approach early, redesigned the implementation around reusable patterns, and delivered the native offline review player.
Streamlining iOS release versioning	The iOS publishing process had a versioning bottleneck: once a build was submitted to the App Store, the current version became invalid for subsequent builds, potentially blocking the entire team.	We improved the release agent so it can automatically propose the required version-bump PR.

The engineering approach that accelerated time-to-market

Agent-driven release automation
An AI-powered launch agent coordinates deployments on various service repositories, automating documentation, change verification, versioning, environment checks, and iOS submissions. A four-phase workflow with planning, testing, release, and post-release, delivers consistency with critical decisions kept under human control.
Deterministic quality gates for AI-generated code
Automated quality checks make AI-generated code more predictable and maintainable. The framework covers performance, security, complexity, consistency, and bundle size, combining TypeScript, linting, automated testing, Figma visual comparisons, and Feature-Sliced Design.
Human-in-the-loop development
AI agents handle repetitive engineering and verification tasks, and developers retain control over critical technical decisions. This balance supports longer autonomous development cycles and frees engineers to focus on product development and complex problem-solving.

Technology stack

Web and iPad: TypeScript · React · Vite · Redux Toolkit · TanStack Query · React Router · styled-components · Capacitor (iOS/iPadOS apps from a shared codebase) · Swift · Capgo (over-the-air updates) · Shaka Player · Mux Data · Auth0 · Sentry · Intercom · Storybook · Vitest · React Testing Library
Admin app: TypeScript · React · React Bootstrap · TanStack Query · Auth0 · Sentry
Backend and APIs: Python 3.12+ · Django 6 · Django REST Framework · Django Channels (WebSockets) · Gunicorn · Uvicorn · Daphne · PostgreSQL · Redis · Elasticsearch · Amazon S3 · SendGrid · OpenTimelineIO · FFmpeg · MediaInfo · HLS · Apache Airflow client · FastMCP · Sentry · uv · pytest
CLI and MCP server: Python · uv · MCP
Video transcoding: Hybrik
Infrastructure and DevOps: AWS · Terraform · Packer · Ansible · Helm (preview environments) · Docker · CircleCI · GitHub · Trivy
iOS build and delivery: TestFlight · App Store Connect · fastlane
Test automation: Playwright · pytest · Allure
AI tools: Claude Code · Cubic