Video Streaming Shifts to Mobile Devices

Posted by Derrick on August 18, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression | Be the First to Comment

Video Streaming Shifts to Mobile Devices and this is bringing plenty of excitement to video content providers and end users. Many are not only looking to provide video streaming experiences for viewers only on the desktop but many are now targeting Mobile Devices as well. This is great because now the latest Mobile Devices are ready for ‘prime-time’. The key to the streaming video revolution on Mobile Devices is many of the newest Smartphones support the H.264 codec, have powerful processors and can take advantage of 3G speeds. So the streaming landscape for Mobile Devices today is much different from many years ago when mobile connection speeds were much lower, many devices only supported MPEG-4 Part 2 and processors were not as powerful.

Now with these great Mobile Devices, video content providers will need to employ a Streaming Server that can assist with the streaming video delivery. Wowza Media Systems is positioned to be a winner of the sweepstakes for “Mobile Streaming Delivery” with their Wowza Media Server 2 Streaming Server. The Streaming Server supports video delivery to: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and a plethora Smartphones that support Real-time Streaming.  The good news is that streaming experiences on Mobile Devices can only get better and it’ll be exciting to see the end user experiences that develop as Video Streaming Shifts to Mobile Devices.

Cantos Extends Distribution of Online Video Initiatives to Mobile Devices with Brightcove

Posted by Derrick on August 8, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression | Be the First to Comment

Brightcove, the leading online video platform, and Cantos, the market leader in online investor communications, announced the launch of the Cantos iPhone app, developed using Brightcove’s App Software Development Kit (SDK) for iOS. The new app provides users with high quality, in-depth video interviews with leading CEOs and financial industry commentators that they can watch at their convenience. This initiative builds on the existing partnership between Brightcove and Cantos to bring online video – content and platforms – to the business world.

“The Cantos app now allows the viewers of our popular financial news and information to access it on the go, as well as save to their phone and forward to colleagues,” said Charlie Cannell, Cantos CEO. “It also helps expand the reach of our video content to new markets and audiences.”

Cantos’ new iPhone app was created in response to research conducted by Cantos that examined the information consumption habits of their audience and found that users were increasingly inclined to watch video content from their mobile device.

Cantos leveraged the Brightcove App SDK for iOS to create an app that lets users watch business videos directly on their iPhone, save and download videos to be watched at a later date, and share video content with third parties via the app’s email function. The Brightcove-powered app features video interviews with CEOs of leading UK and international companies, daily technical analysis from respected charting experts and monthly global financial forecasts.

“Cantos understands that people want financial news content to be available on the go, on any device, anywhere in the world,” said David Mendels, Brightcove president and chief operating officer. “Brightcove makes it easy to do this with our mobile SDKs that help organizations like Cantos quickly build and deliver a powerful, fan-friendly app. It’s great to see Cantos accelerate time-to-market for its new iPhone app and we look forward to helping the company roll out additional mobile apps in the months ahead.”

In the future, Cantos plans to take advantage of Brightcove’s comprehensive mobile video solutions to expand its video offerings to new platforms, including Research in Motion BlackBerry and Google Android. Cantos also plans to introduce new features for its mobile apps, including the ability for end-users to set preferences and notifications around new content, as well as obtain transcripts of video interviews, all within the app.

Marvell Technology Integrates Sorenson Spark Video Decoder into Platform Solutions

Posted by Derrick on August 5, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression | Be the First to Comment

Sorenson Media announced that the Sorenson Spark Software Developers Kit (SDK) has been licensed by Marvell Technology to incorporate the Sorenson Spark decoder in Marvell products. Sorenson Spark will be included in the company’s platform solutions designed to scale with set-top boxes, media players, e-readers, netbooks, smart phones, high-performance tablets and other advanced mobile devices.

Sorenson Spark is the industry’s most ubiquitous video codec and was the first codec used in Macromedia Flash, now Adobe Flash. The decoder exclusively enables the playback of hundreds of millions of videos on the Internet, including those on YouTube, the single largest online video destination today. The Sorenson Spark SDK allows developers to integrate the Sorenson Spark decoder into a wide array of programmable chipsets and semiconductors. The kit is designed to provide Sorenson Spark decoding on any platform, including custom silicon.

Marvell is a leading fabless semiconductor company with expertise in microprocessor architecture.   Marvell’s multiple platforms included networked Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, media players, mobile and wireless, and high volume storage solutions. These are used to power the complete value chain of mobile and wireless devices.

“Marvell is a technology leader, driving highly efficient and scalable platform solutions for consumers worldwide,” said Douglas Cebik, director of business development of Sorenson Media.  “Now, the company’s high performance mobile platforms will be able to play Internet video using the industry’s most common codec and consumers will enjoy more complete access to the full world of online video.”

All Roads Lead to Wowza Media Server

Posted by Derrick on August 3, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression | Be the First to Comment

All roads lead to Wowza Media Server.  If it’s not the case it really looks that way.  Wowza Media Server supports the primary video delivery options for most content providers.  Flash and Silverlight are both supported. In regards to Flash, users can delivery streaming video content in the H.264 and .FLV flavor.  Wowza also has iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch support.  The latest improvements for Wowza include better support for real-time streaming (RTSP) to mobile devices such as Blackberry, Android, Nokia and others.  In addition the above items Wowza supports many other types of delivery.  The fact that Wowza is very customizable places it in a place where no other Streaming Server software has been able to dwell.  Wowza Media Server administrators, once they understand how the streaming server software works, can creatively implement the type of applications they want to use.

The Wowza Server software has only been out for about half a decade and it has really blown away much of its competition.  The software simply continues to get better and better.

Streaming to Mobile Devices Training Launches in September

Posted by Derrick on July 29, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression | Be the First to Comment

Streaming to Mobile Devices Training launches in September.  There has been great interest in streaming video and especially the desire to add another delivery outside of desktop video playback. Streaming to mobile devices is much more challenging than delivering to the desktop.  This new class will cover tools for mobile video encoding, video compression techniques, streaming server delivery, and other items.   If you need to stream video content to iPhone,  iPod Touch, Blackberry, Nokia, Samsung or other Smartphones this class is for you. Look for the class on our Video Streaming and Compression Training Schedule in September 2010.