NOS Bringing Vancouver Olympic Games to The Netherlands with StreamZ Encoders

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

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.

Teracue IPTV Encoder and Decoder at the Olympic Games in Vancouver 

Posted by Derrick on January 31, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression | Be the First to Comment

Teracue AG supplied Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk with the ENC-200 H.264 encoder and the DEC-200 H.264 decoder for the Olympic Winter Games 2010 in Vancouver.

The ready-to-broadcast signal, which goes to ARD and/or ZDF is encoded with the ENC-200 into a compressed H.264 format and is streamed via an IP network into hotels in Vancouver to be distributed and decoded again there. This gives the editorial teams on site the chance to follow the Olympic Games in hotels where normally the ARD and ZDF signals are not available.

The decision to use the Teracue H.264 encoders/decoders in Vancouver was made due to the ENC / DEC-200 devices being very simple to operate using a web browser, the excellent picture quality with a low broadband bandwith, low latency as well as this product’s exceptional reliability.

The ENC / DEC-200 range was developed specifically for live streaming applications in which camera signals, DVD players or internal TV channels are transmitted live into the intranet or internet. The H.264 video encoder/decoder ENC / DEC-200 supports the real-time compression of video and audio formats.

Free Video Streaming and Compression Tools Training in Cincinnati

Posted by Derrick on January 26, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression | Be the First to Comment

A free Video Streaming and Compression Tools Training will take place in Cincinnati, Ohio on February 19, 2010.  The training Sponsored by Telestream and Flowerfire will be held at the Courtyard Cincinnati Covington.  The training will be taught by Derrick Freeman, Instructor and Video Streaming and Compression Consultant for Freeman Compression Inc. If you need to get familiar with video streaming and compression and live in Ohio, Kentucky, or Indiana, then make sure you attend the Free Episode Encoder, Wirecast and Sawmill Professional Training in Ohio. The training will get you up to speed with video encoding using Telestream’s Episode Encoder and webcasting with Telestream’s Wirecast.  Attendees will also learn how to encode videos for downloadable streaming and real-time streaming, plus learn about different compression methods such as 1-pass and 2-pass encoding.  You will also get familiar with analyzing log files using Sawmill Professional.  Sawmill can process hundreds of different log types and users will learn how to process Streaming server logs, Apache Server logs, FTP logs, and IIS Web Server logs and other log types in the Sawmill training session. Click Here to Register for the Event in Ohio.

Attend Free Video Streaming and Compression Tools Training in Orlando

Posted by Derrick on January 11, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression | Be the First to Comment

Attend a Free Video Streaming and Compression Tools Training in Orlando, Florida next week.  The training will take place on January 22, at the Holiday Inn Express – Lake Buena Vista.  If you’re in or near Orlando, Florida and need to get familiar with video streaming and compression, then make sure you attend the Free Episode Encoder, Wirecast and Sawmill Professional Training. The training will get you up to speed with video encoding using Telestream’s Episode Encoder and webcasting with Telestream’s Wirecast. Attendees will learn how to encode videos for downloadable streaming and real-time streaming and also learn about 1-pass and 2-pass encoding as well as many other technical items related to video compression. The training day also includes Instructor and Video Streaming and Compression Consultant, Derrick Freeman, teaching attendees how to perform log file analysis using Sawmill Professional. You can Click Here to Register for the Event in Orlando.

Authoring Flash Videos with Dreamweaver and the Web Stunning Player

Posted by Derrick on December 1, 2009 under Video Streaming and Compression | Be the First to Comment

Authoring Flash Videos with Dreamweaver and the Web Stunning Player is something that many will start to do.  Many have heard of the JW Player for authoring Flash content but the Web Stunning Player is another player available.  In this tutorial you’ll learn how to install the Web Stunning Player as a Dreamweaver Extension and use it to author a Flash Real-time Streaming video.

Let’s get started.  First go the Web Stunning website and download the Web Stunning FLV Player.

Once you download the player double-click the .zip file and install the Web Stunning Video Player Extension for Dreamweaver.

When you finish installing the Extension click the OK button.

With the Web Stunning Extension running you can see it displayed in the Extension Manager. Notice that the Web Stunning Player is supported on Dreamweaver 8.  It also works with newer versions as well.  Now we’re ready to start authoring our Flash Real-time Streaming video.

To get started we first need to create a new .html  web page.  In Dreamweaver go the the File Pull-down menu and select New.

At the dialog window choose HTML

and click the create button.

With your page open click Save from the File pull-down menu and save your file as WebStunningFlash.html.  You can save your web page to where you save your .html pages.

Once you name your file choose your destination click the Save button.

Now let’s insert a table to help keep the video where we want.  Select the Insert Pull-down menu and choose Table.

In the Rows text box type in 2 and in the Columns text box type in 1.

Next, click the OK button

Select the newly created table and in the Properties Inspector under Align choose Center from the Drop-down menu.

Notice that there are two rows for the table with only one column. In the first row let’s give our video a name.  Type in Web Stunning Flash Real-time Streaming for the name.  This will appear above the video.  Now, to insert the streaming video you’ll need to select inside the second row.  This space is where your video will appear.

From Dreamweaver, select the Insert Pull-down menu, then choose Media and from the Sub-menu click the Web Stunning Video Player.

Now you can see the Web Stunning Player options available.

First let’s look at the Playlist Tab.  For this tutorial you can remove all the options outside of what is mentioned here.  Remember we are authoring a Flash Real-time Streaming video which is a video that is sitting on a Flash Streaming Server.

For this exercise we’ll use a video titled bunny_532L_RT_HD12fpsS.flv that is located in the content folder of our Wowza Server.  We are using the Fastplay application for On-demand streaming.

For the next step specify the name of your Flash .flv file.  For my video I’m using bunny_532L_RT_HD12fpsS.flv.  Under Element Title type your video name.

Under Type of Main Video Select the RTMP Stream (rtmp://Server_Path/Stream_Name) option.   For Main Video type in RTMP for the protocol, the IP Address to the Server, the application name and the name of your file.  In my case I’ll input the following:

rtmp://ServerIPAddress/fastplay/bunny_532K_RT_HD12fpsS.flv

You should see your video that you’re authoring displayed in the Preview.  Select Save to retain your information.   Now switch to the Player Tab.

On the Player Tab go down to  Playback and click Auto Play.  Save your settings and click the Insert/Update button on the right hand column.

Once you choose Insert/Update your Flash video populates the 2nd row of you table in Dreamweaver.  Save your .html web page by choosing Save from the File Pull-down menu.  Now upload your .html web page to your website.  When the Dialog appears for Put dependent files? choose Yes.  This will make sure any associated files get to your web server.

Once you upload your .html web page refresh the server and type in the URL to your web page in a Web Browser.  Your video should appear and play automatically.  Here’s what my video looks like using the Web Stunning Flash Player.