Frequently Asked Questions

In short, GravityFlash turns your cloud storage folders into a modern, visual web portal customized with your brand. Today, there are S3-compatible cloud storage providers (such as Wasabi, Backblaze B2, or Cloudflare R2) that offer massive storage capacities at extremely low prices. However, these platforms lack a simple, user-friendly interface for end clients (like a journalist in a press room or an influencer needing to download videos quickly) to search, preview, and download assets without dealing with complex technical consoles. That is where GravityFlash comes in: we unite the best of both worlds. You connect your ultra-affordable storage, and we transform it into a clean, private web portal (such as a press room or B2B download area) hosted on a GravityFlash subdomain or even under your own domain. Your users access it securely, see animated thumbnails of clips in streaming, and download the original master files at full speed, without you having to pay abusive fees per user or data volume.

We believe in transparency and absolute control of your data. Instead of forcing you to buy cloud storage resold by us at inflated prices, GravityFlash connects directly to your own buckets on cloud providers (such as Wasabi, AWS S3, Cloudflare R2, or Backblaze B2). By using your own provider, you pay the actual storage cost without commercial markups from us, allowing you to save significantly, maintain full ownership of your files, and avoid middleman commissions.

For direct distribution, we recommend standardized, highly compatible formats like MP4 (with H.264 or H.265 codec) for video, and MP3 or AAC for audio. These formats ensure your clients can instantly view or play content from any browser without needing special codecs.

Services like WeTransfer are great for one-off sending (quick file transfers to a specific recipient), while Dropbox is focused on personal storage and synchronization. However, both lack brand identity, corporate-level economic scalability, and often have strict transfer limits. GravityFlash lets you build your own distribution portal (white-label), connected to your infinite storage, without charging commissions for your users' download volume.

They are tools with different purposes. Aspera, Signiant, FileCatalyst, or MASV are accelerated transfer (MFT) solutions, ideal for moving huge raw camera files between production facilities. The truth is that all of these tools perform their function wonderfully. However, the purpose of GravityFlash is different: it is specifically designed for the final mass distribution of content (such as a press room, press release distribution, or massive B2B delivery). Its goal is to let the end client access and download the final master incredibly easily, on a portal with your brand, leveraging the economics of your own S3 storage without anyone having to install complex software or clients.

Web browsers have limited support for certain professional formats or commercial codecs (such as ProRes, DNxHD, MKV, or AC3/DTS audio) due to licensing or web standards. While there are ways to enable playback using conversion systems or local browser plugins, these options may require using hardware resources on the user's device, which can degrade the browsing experience for those without suitable equipment. For this reason, we prefer to keep the system as efficient, fast, and lightweight as possible, especially considering that the core purpose of GravityFlash is to offer a secure and high-performance download portal, allowing you to download the original 'bit-by-bit' file for local playback or editing without any quality loss.

Absolutely not. GravityFlash does not charge you for bandwidth or data transfer. Any egress costs will depend entirely on the rates of your chosen S3 storage provider (for example, Wasabi and Cloudflare R2 offer free egress in many of their plans).

GravityFlash generates direct access links (presigned URLs) to your files so your users can download them directly from the S3 provider. Our servers do not store, read, or process the content of your files internally, guaranteeing your privacy and security, except for the specific purpose of generating thumbnails, as specified in the following point.

To improve the user experience for your end clients. When a journalist or client enters your press room, seeing instant thumbnails allows them to quickly identify what content they need to download without having to download heavy files to preview them. These thumbnails are extracted by downloading small segments of the original clip on our servers, and are automatically deleted when deleting the original file or any reference to it, as well as deleting the associated repository, the related project, or the account linked to the project. This process (nor any other) never writes to or makes any modification to your buckets.

To generate thumbnails instantly without overloading the server or slowing down page performance, we limit image processing to a maximum file size. UHD/4K videos or extremely heavy files require high resource usage to decode. To avoid long loading times and keep the portal ultra-fast, these files are displayed with a standard file type icon instead of a generated thumbnail.

Yes. Your cloud access credentials are stored strongly encrypted in our database. Furthermore, we always recommend using restricted access IAM keys (with only read or write permissions for specific buckets) instead of global administrator keys. The use of credentials with write permission is only necessary to delete or modify items from the portal, as well as to upload media from it.

The actual limit is dictated by your S3 storage provider (which is usually up to 5 Terabytes per file on AWS). From GravityFlash's side, there is no limitation on the size of the files your clients can download through your portals.

GravityFlash is optimized for fast, active distribution (Hot Storage). While you can connect Glacier or Deep Archive buckets, the retrieval latency of those services could affect the web experience. We recommend using GravityFlash with standard S3 storage tiers for immediate distribution.

GravityFlash orchestrates and secures access, but the actual delivery of the heavy file (streaming or downloading) happens directly from your S3 provider to the client. For global CDN performance, we recommend enabling CDN options directly at your provider (like Cloudfront on AWS or the Cloudflare network).

Yes. However, although the folder creation and file upload functionalities are implemented, the purpose of GravityFlash is media downloading by end clients. The most practical way to upload material and prepare the portal for download is to use S3 client software like Cyberduck, and reserve the portal for download management and previewing.

Since the files are served from your S3 provider, if they (e.g., AWS or Wasabi) experience an outage, your users will not be able to download files until the provider restores service. The GravityFlash portal, however, will remain active and display the interface.

Our core focus is fast, lightweight, and reliable B2B distribution. Cloud video editing requires massive rendering infrastructures that would dramatically increase the product's cost. GravityFlash is designed to deliver the final master to the professional who needs it, without friction.

Yes, that is our core philosophy ("White Label"). Depending on your plan, you can configure logos, corporate colors, typography, and map a completely custom domain (e.g., media.your-brand.com), making GravityFlash completely invisible to your clients. Certain pages with the GravityFlash logo only appear in internal administration or support sections, but these sections are only accessible by project owners and managers, not by end users.

Not at all. GravityFlash is a 100% web-based application. Any user with a modern browser and an access link can log in, preview, and download content immediately, without installing extensions or FTP/S3 clients.

GravityFlash generates temporary cryptographic signatures for downloading from your S3. This means the "bottleneck" of massive traffic does not pass through our servers, but directly through the elastic infrastructure of global providers like AWS or Cloudflare, which are designed exactly to handle global spikes.

No. We guarantee "Bit-by-Bit" delivery. The file you upload to your provider is exactly the same file, with the same quality and compression, that your client will download. Ideal for broadcast environments and advertising agencies.

It builds trust. A media outlet or client will always prefer to download press material from press.yourcompany.com rather than a generic third-party link. It reinforces your institutional authority.

Not by default, and for a good security reason. GravityFlash is designed for corporate environments where knowing who downloads what (and revoking access instantly) is vital. Instead of sharing a generic link that anyone can forward uncontrollably, you invite your users (or give them an access code) to enter a secure portal. This way you maintain absolute control over your material.

You will lose access to the web interface, custom domains, and user management provided by GravityFlash. However, your files remain 100% yours and will never be deleted, because they reside in your own S3 bucket (you will continue to have absolute access to them from your provider's console). It is always possible to subscribe to the service again in the future; however, please note that all customization settings, created users, and assigned permissions are permanently deleted when accounts and projects are removed for privacy reasons, meaning that if you sign up again, you will need to perform these configurations and recreate your users from scratch.