CRS Racing provides exclusive motorsport racing experiences and needed a central media archive for photographers and social media managers
From chaos to order: a fully operational media platform in just 8 working days, supporting files up to 5GB
The Challenge
CRS Racing, provider of exclusive motorsport racing experiences, was dealing with growing chaos around their media assets. Photographers and videographers captured hundreds of photos and videos during races, but sharing with social media managers was cumbersome via WeTransfer, Google Drive, and WhatsApp.
Core Problems:
- No central overview of all media assets
- Photographers had to manually share large RAW files (up to 5GB)
- Social media managers couldn’t efficiently search for specific content
- No control over who had access to which files
- No automatic backups or archiving
Our Approach
At JBit, we developed a fully serverless media archive platform on AWS. The focus was on scalability, ease of use, and low operational costs.
Phase 1: Infrastructure & Authentication
We built a robust cloud infrastructure with CloudFormation (Infrastructure as Code):
- S3 for secure media storage with automatic archiving
- Cognito for user management with three roles: administrators, uploaders, and viewers
- CloudFront for fast global access
Phase 2: Upload Functionality
Implementation of a powerful upload system:
- Support for files up to 5GB
- RAW formats from professional cameras (Canon CR2, Nikon NEF, Sony ARW)
- Automatic thumbnail generation with Sharp and FFmpeg
- Metadata extraction and editing
Phase 3: Browse & Download
User-friendly interface for social media managers:
- Filter by type, date, uploader, and tags
- Bulk operations: download, edit, or delete multiple files at once
- In-browser preview of photos and videos
Phase 4: Monitoring & Security
- CloudWatch dashboards and alarms
- Email notifications for issues
- Point-in-Time Recovery for the database
- HTTPS with automatic SSL certificates
The Result
After just 8 working days (~45 hours), the platform was fully operational:
- Central media archive for the entire team
- Files up to 5GB can be uploaded without issues
- RAW support for professional photographers
- Role-based access for administrators, photographers, and social media managers
- 99.9% uptime thanks to serverless AWS architecture
- Automatic backups and intelligent archiving (90 days → IA, 365 days → Glacier)
- Two environments: test (dev) and production for safe updates
Technologies Used
- AWS (S3, Lambda, DynamoDB, CloudFront, Cognito, API Gateway, CloudWatch)
- CloudFormation for Infrastructure as Code
- GitHub Actions for CI/CD
- Node.js for backend Lambda functions
- Vanilla JavaScript for the frontend (no framework overhead)
- Sharp & FFmpeg for media processing
"Finally, our photographers and social media managers can collaborate seamlessly. Uploading large RAW files is lightning fast."