Posted by Valerie937 on February 8, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression | 
Ooyala Inc., a leading provider of end-to-end video platform applications and services, announced that Telegraph Media Group (TMG), publisher of the UK’s leading newspaper and online news destination site, Telegraph.co.uk, has chosen Ooyala’s market leading online video platform to power its online video. Ooyala and TMG will also partner to develop new technologies to improve the way information is delivered and consumed online.
Ooyala was recently rated as a market-leading video platform provider and the leader in the area of video analytics and monetisation, by Forrester Research. “Ooyala’s end-to-end video platform offers best-in-class video analytics and monetization capabilities” - Bobby Tulsiani, Sr. Analyst at Forrester Research.
TMG reaches over 30 million unique users and delivers over a million hours of online video on a monthly basis. With the Ooyala partnership, TMG aims to set new standards within the industry by delivering a higher quality and more personalized consumer experience, creating greater efficiencies in news content management and providing advertisers with increased consumer insight.
In 2009, TMG saw a dramatic rise in online video consumption. By moving to Ooyala’s platform and leveraging its real-time analytics, TMG will be able to provide its audience with highly targeted video content at a market leading speed.
Ooyala Inc., a U.S based company with offices in London, provides a fully integrated online video platform that enables media companies to manage, deliver, syndicate, analyze and monetise their premium video content. The platform’s real-time analytics engine allows clients to view, in real-time, how their online video and associated advertising is being consumed.
“Ooyala’s innovative video solutions will help us accelerate our overall online video strategy” said Paul Cheesbrough, Chief Information Officer at Telegraph Media Group. “Their online video publishing, analytics, and video monetization services will ensure we are fully able to exploit the value of our online video content in 2010” he added.
In May 2009, Telegraph Media Group was named ‘Best Digital Publisher – Consumer’ at the Association of Online Publishers Awards. On November 30, TMG announced a multi-million pound investment in a new digital business unit, that will be headed by Editor-in-Chief Will Lewis.
“Telegraph Media Group has led its commercial rivals in online news for 15 years. Faced with the challenges of making online video profitable, the company has recognised that the key to successfully monetising content lies in having better consumer insights” said Jay Fulcher, Ooyala’s President and CEO. “We are excited to be partnering with such a forward-thinking company and look forward to building technologies that will enable the news industry to better monetize and expand their global media footprint.”
In 2010 Ooyala is planning to invest heavily to expand its operations into the European markets.
Posted by Derrick on under Video Streaming and Compression |
Digital Rapids — the leading provider of tools and solutions for bringing television, film and web content to wider audiences — and Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS) announced that the Dutch public broadcaster has selected Digital Rapids’ StreamZ encoding systems to power live and on-demand Internet and mobile coverage of the 2010 Olympic Games for audiences in the Netherlands. The 2010 Olympic Games will be held February 12-28 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Part of Netherlands public broadcasting system Nederlandse Publieke Omroep (NPO), NOS is a market leader in the field of news and sports coverage on television, radio, the Internet and mobile devices. NOS will supplement their television coverage of the Vancouver Olympic Games with up to eight simultaneous live streams on the Web and extensive mobile content. The StreamZ systems will encode source video feeds into Web-friendly streams for viewing through an interactive experience powered by Microsoft(r) Silverlight(r) technology, and into multiple formats for mobile viewing. The encoded live streams will also be archived for viewers to watch on-demand.
“Our goal at NOS is to help strengthen the position of Dutch sports, by enabling the public to follow the many sports that play an important role in our society across all possible digital media platforms,” said Roeland Stekelenburg, Head of New Media at NOS. “During the 2008 Olympic Games, the ratio of streams viewed on our Website relative to the size of our country’s population was one of the highest in the world. Digital Rapids StreamZ encoders allow us to provide the quality and reliability we need for coverage of an event of this significance.”
“We’re thrilled that NOS has again chosen our award-winning encoding systems for their online Olympic Games coverage,” said Brick Eksten, President of Digital Rapids. “Audience expectations for the breadth, depth and quality of online sports coverage are higher than ever, and StreamZ encoding solutions are ideal for enabling superior Web-based experiences surpassing these expectations.”
StreamZ is the industry’s most versatile encoding solution, delivering multi-format video capture, encoding, transcoding and live streaming in a powerful turnkey configuration that integrates easily into any professional media environment. Combining the quality and performance advantages of hardware-based preprocessing with a format-flexible and feature-rich software application, StreamZ seamlessly supports live and on-demand multi-platform distribution opportunities with real-time, simultaneous encoding to multiple output formats.
Tags: content, devices, Digital Rapids, encode, encoders, encoding, formats, live, mobile, multiple, on-demand, output, Real-time, Silverlight, streams, StreamZ, Systems, transcoding, Video
Posted by Derrick on February 5, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression |
Encoding Flash Linked Downloadable Streaming videos with Sorenson Media’s Sorenson Squeeze 6 is enhanced. This tutorial will help you if you’ve upgraded to Sorenson Squeeze 6 or purchased the new version and new Squeeze 6 license. This workflow in this tutorial is helpful if you need to encode Flash Linked .SWF and .FLV using the Sorenson Media player skins for Download Streaming. We’ll show you how to create a Flash Linked Downloadable Streaming video that is geared for high broadband users. The video that we’re encoding is a 720 x 480 DV progressive source with PCM audio and black edges.
Now, let’s get started.
Navigate to the Formats tab located in the Presets section. Twirl down the Adobe Flash Movie (.swf) templates and navigate to the F8 SWF 360p (4×3) compression preset. Now copy the preset to create a version you can customize. Select the preset and Right-click your mouse and select Copy Audience Preset from the Contextual Menu. You can also select the Creates a Copy button below the presets. Locate your new preset which should have copy at the end of the Preset name. Double-click the preset to open it for editing.
Once your preset opens you can adjust your settings but first you need to name your new preset. For this tutorial name your preset F8_flashlinked_DL_360. Remember it’s best to make sure you don’t have any spaces in your preset names as they are included in the name of your output file. Removing spaces mainly helps in the web authoring process.
OK. Now move to the Codec settings within the Video Tab. You’ll adjust our preset for Downloadable Streaming video for high broadband users. Keep in mind this is general preset. You might have to do some additional tweaking to get your desired quality for output. In your preset the On2 VP6 Pro Codec should be selected along with 2-Pass VBR. Since the video frame rate is 29.97 frames per second adjust your output frame rate to 15 fps. By doing this you’re cutting the frame rate in half which will give you smooth motion. For your target Data Rate adjust it to 600Kbps. You can keep VP6-E for the Profile with Auto Key Frames Enabled with an Auto Key Frame Threshold of 70.
For Frame Size select 480 x 360. You can select Maintain Aspect Ratio with Key Frames set to Key Frame Every 90 frames. So in this case the codec will ad a new key frame at least every 6 seconds since 15 fps is our output frame rate.
Moving onto the Audio settings within the Audio tab. The Fraunhofer MP3 Codec should be selected. Adjust your datarate to 40Kbps, Sample Rate set to 22050, Channels to Stereo and 16 bit for your Sample Size.
Next move to the Player Options Tab. At this point you’re going to determine the Player/Skin that you want to surround your video for playback on the web. For this tutorial select the Aluminum Player.
For the Video location you can leave the default value of http:// for the URL/Path and make sure Play Automatically is selected.
A new feature in Squeeze 6 is you can actually attach Filter presets within your compression presets. However, in this tutorial you want to create a filter that we can apply to other videos as well. Moving on, navigate to the Filters section on the left hand side within Squeeze 6.
Move down to the Web Generic Filter and select it then click the Creates a Copy button. Now double-click the Web Generic copy Filter you just created. When the Filter preset opens change your filter name to SD_Cropping_NoDeinterlace. You’re giving your Filter this name because you’re making a Filter preset for encoding Progressive SD sources that have blacking edges.
In the Filter preset settings you can check on uncheck items you don’t want to include. For this Filter uncheck Deinterlace since the source is progressive. Now check Crop, Brightness, Contrast and Audio Volume. For Brightness adjust to your setting to 10. For contrast adjust your setting to 15, and for Audio Choose Normalize and adjust to 90. Keep in mind if your source file is really bright you might need to deselect the Contrast and Brightness values.
For cropping off our black edges you’ll multiply the aspect ratio of 4:3 times 8 in which you’ll crop 32 pixels off the left and right and 24 pixels off the top and bottom. So for the Top input 12 pixels, for Bottom input 12 pixels, for the Left 16 pixels and for the Right input 16 pixels. Click OK once you’ve made all of your adjustments.
Now onto compressing your video. Drag your source file into the Batch Tree. You can also choose Import File from the Input Options and navigate to your desired video and click Open.
Next Select your F8_flashlinked_DL_360 Compression preset and drag it onto your video. In my case, I’ll drag the F8_flashlinked_DL_360 preset on top of my video called Car02 in the Batch Tree. Then drag your Filter preset over top of your Compression Preset in the Batch Tree. Looking at the image above you would drag your Filter preset over top of F8_flashlinked_DL_360 located under Source Settings. You’ll know your filter is applied when you see Filter : SD_Cropping_NoDeinterlace display within your applied Compression preset.
To select a custom output for you file you can adjust this within the Squeeze Preferences. Click the Edit Pull-down menu and choose Preferences.
When the dialog opens click the Output Tab and the Browse button to create an output location for all of your encodes. If you don’t select a custom output for your video Squeeze will put your output videos in the same location as your source. Click OK on the Preferences tab once you’re done.
Now you’re all set to encode your video. Click the Squeeze It! button.
Once your video is finished encoding you will have 3 files in your output location. All files will have the same name except for the file extension. One file is the .SWF file, another if the Flash .FLV file and the final file is an .HTML file. You will need these files when you author your video for your Web Page. For details on the authoring process for Flash Linked .SWF and .FLV files view the tutorial Authoring a Web Page for Flash Linked Downloadable Streaming with Dreamweaver CS4 on www.FreemanCompression.com/weblog. Other tutorials are available on our blog as well.
Tags: .FLV, codec, Compression, Downloadable, encode, encoding, flash, Linked, On2, Player, preset, skin, Sorenson, Squeeze 6, streaming, SWF, tutorial, videos, vp6
Posted by Valerie937 on February 4, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression |
Shannon Dunn can attest to the game-changing impact of Sorenson Squeeze 6, the latest incarnation of Sorenson Media’s pioneering video encoding solution.
“There is nothing that can touch Sorenson Squeeze 6 for creating, editing and managing Internet video,” said Dunn, senior editor for Sprint’s Creative Media Services group, the video production arm of the telecom giant’s corporate communications division. “We produce hundreds of videos every year, and Sorenson Squeeze saves us untold time and energy.”
Sorenson Squeeze 6 is an intuitive, total video workflow solution that enables video professionals, small businesses and large enterprise customers alike to quickly and easily deliver exceptional video quality in all of the leading video formats – from Flash and VC-1 to H.264 and HD for MPEG-2.
One of the most significant value-adding features of Sorenson Squeeze 6 is its innovative new review and approval process made available through integration with the Sorenson 360 online video platform. “Seamless integration of our Sorenson 360 video delivery network represents a huge leap forward. There is nothing else like our total video solution in the marketplace,” said David Dudas, vice president of product development for Sorenson Media. “Because we have integrated Sorenson 360 into Squeeze 6, our customers get it all in one easy-to-use solution – our award-winning differentiated client-side encoding, as well as a true hosted solution for the storage and delivery of their video content.”
The review and approval process in Sorenson Squeeze 6 enables real-time collaboration. With Squeeze 6, the creator of the video content can automatically send an email or SMS text with a secure link to the video. The recipient then views the video and provides immediate feedback to the content creator, who can then make changes until all parties have approved the content.
“Sorenson Squeeze has enabled me to protect our brand and effectively manage the process of approvals and posting,” said Dunn, who must get approval from a handful of stakeholders for each project he completes. “We no longer undergo the inconvenient process of posting video files to an FTP site for each iteration of the video creation process – and files don’t get downloaded and posted prematurely.”
Another compelling benefit of Sorenson Squeeze 6 is the publishing presets feature, which enables Dunn and his team to create and distribute multiple files at once. “When I finish developing a video, I can just drag and drop a preset to the video and automatically output it to multiple locations in a variety of different formats,” Dunn added. “For example, using the same video file we can send out an uncompressed QuickTime file for archiving; a 256k WMV file for publishing on lots of portals; a file to an FTP site for clients; and a view-ready QuickTime file in 360 for internal review.”
Along the same vein, Valerie Junge, film editor at Big Sky Editorial, uses Sorenson Squeeze in all of the projects she edits for her high-profile clients, including celebrated Web viral videos such as the Microsoft Xbox 360 campaign “Behind the Fun,” featuring “Glee” star Jane Lynch. The Web virals, which Junge worked on with the T.A.G. unit of McCann Worldgroup, exclusively utilize Sorenson Squeeze 6 encoding.
“Sorenson Squeeze is the only product we use,” said Junge. “The process is so user-friendly and efficient, and the quality is so high that it is uncommon for anyone to ask for tapes or DVDs for approvals. We use Sorenson Squeeze to post high-quality rough cuts for online review and approval; it enables us to show our client a true representation of how the video content will really look. Our clients are always satisfied when they see their work posted on our site.”
Junge added that Sorenson Squeeze 6 is singularly effective performing across multiple formats, including HD. “We like to work in a HD environment here, and Sorenson Squeeze performs much better in HD than competing products do,” said Junge. “We are really big on quality control, and Sorenson Squeeze is reliable and works with any combination of platforms and applications. That is why it is a permanent component of our workflow.”
Posted by Derrick on February 3, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression |
Compression using Encoding.com Desktop is very handy if you subscribe to the Encoding.com service. The Encoding.com Desktop Uploader is available for both Mac and PC users. This tutorial will get you familiar with using Encoding.com Desktop as you learn how to encode downloadable streaming videos for Flash using the On2VP6 codec. To help with this tutorial please sign-up for a free trial account at Encoding.com and install Encoding.com Desktop. The benefit of Encoding.com Desktop is it allows you to upload you videos to the Encoding.com Cloud for encoding instead of compressing videos on your desktop.
OK. Let’s begin.
Open up Encoding.com Desktop. Notice that in the image above it’s labeled encoding.com desktop uploader.app.
When Encoding.com Desktop opens go to the File Pull-down menu and click on Preferences.
When the Preferences Dialog window opens click on the Account tab. Before you can begin encoding videos you’ll need to add your User Id and API User Key here. This allows Encoding.com Desktop to know which account to upload videos to for encoding. Once you enter your information click the Save button.
First you need to add a source file to encode. Click on the Add Media button.
Then locate the video on your desktop that you would like to encode. For this tutorial I’m encoding the QuickTime video called 166_10105.mov.
Once you choose your video for encoding click the Select button.
You’ll see your video displayed now in Encoding.com Desktop. Select the video similar to above to create a compression preset. Once you select your video you will notice it highlighted.
With your video selected click the Add Task Items button.
When the dialog window opens listing your available presets click the Add Preset button. It’s located at the button left of the My Presets Dialog window.
Next, click the Save as button when the Video Compression Setting Dialog window opens.
Now type in the name for your compression setting. You can type in Flash_600k_DL. Once you name your setting click the Save button.
Now time to customize your compression setting. This preset will serve as a good starting point for encoding downloadable streaming video for high broadband viewers. On this preset you’re creating a good general setting that will work well for SD and HD content. Flash up to 9 should be selected. For the frame size select 480 x 360 and type in 600k for the Video bitrate. For audio type in 64k with 44100 for your sample rate with 2 for the Audio channels to make it stereo. Under the Video codec setting choose vp6 and for the audio codec choose libm3lame. Lastly for this section, click the 2 pass encoding check box.
Let’s continue with adjusting your preset. For the Minimum bit rate type in 100k and for Maximum bit rate type in 1000k. Make sure the De-interlacing check box is selected if your content in Interlaced. You can specify a Thumbnail size of 160 x 120 to get familiar with the thumbnail setting. You can leave it set at the default value for Time to capture thumbnail. For the Keyframe period type in 180. This will work well for a video that is 29.97 frames per second. For audio volume adjust this value to 200. This will boost the audio little for those that don’t have amplified speakers. Once you make all of your adjustments click the Save button. Now click on the Show Presets button.
When your presets display select the preset that you’ve just created and click the Add Task button. Your preset should be labeled Flash_600k_DL.
Now that your preset is applied you will see it displayed right below your source file. You can apply multiple compression presets to a source if you’d like.
Next when you’re ready for encoding to begin using the Encoding.com Cloud click the upload button and your file will begin uploading.
To check the status of your upload, you can click the Show Details button within Encoding.com Desktop.
The Show Details section will display the Start Upload Time and End Upload time for your video upload. If you see the End Upload Time displayed you’ll know that video has finished uploading. To see the processing status of the actually encoding you can view your Encoding Queue within your Encoding.com account on-line. Congratulations! Now your familiar with utilizing Encoding.com Desktop to upload videos for encoding with the Encoding.com Cloud.
Tags: 2-pass, compressing, Compression, Desktop, Downloadable, encoding, Encoding.com, flash, On2VP6 codec, preset, streaming, Uploader, videos
