Digital Rapids StreamZ Encoder Fuels Free Agent Fever for Miami HEAT

Posted by Derrick on August 17, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression | Be the First to Comment

Digital Rapids announced that The HEAT Group, owners of the Miami HEAT National Basketball Association (NBA) team and operators of Miami’s AmericanAirlines Arena, are using Digital Rapids’ StreamZ encoding system to speed the production of high-quality live and on-demand video content for the HEAT.com website and internal production workflows. Most recently, StreamZ was used for live streaming of events leading up to and following the signings of high-profile free agent players Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh.

The Broadcast Services department at The HEAT Group produces live event coverage and pre-packaged content for all departments in the organization, including advertising, marketing, internal training, the HEAT.com website, and shows airing on NBA TV and regional television. The group also produces content such as half-time features that are used within live game broadcasts on SunSports.

Online video is a key focus for the production group, as the team leverages it to support the HEAT brand, engage existing fans and grow the team’s fan base globally. Content from the team’s in-arena HEATV broadcast, special features and more are encoded through StreamZ into the formats required for on-demand Web viewing. StreamZ is also used for live Web streaming of special events and announcements. The StreamZ system is also used in an automated workflow to transcode library footage provided by NBA Entertainment into The HEAT Group’s preferred editing format for subsequent production needs.

Finding their existing encoding solution slow and inefficient, The HEAT Group chose StreamZ for its exceptional performance, high quality and the versatility to meet their broad and growing digital media needs. StreamZ was supplied to The HEAT Group by reseller CIS Group.

“By enabling us to efficiently create high-quality material for HEAT.com with very fast turnaround, the Digital Rapids StreamZ system helps us engage and grow our fan base, and that has a direct impact on our revenues,” said Ed Filomia, Senior Director of Broadcast Services for The HEAT Group. “We’re able to get video content from the arena and events onto the website faster than ever before, while the versatility of the system lowers our equipment and operational costs by supporting our live and on-demand production needs in one platform.”

The importance of streaming video as an integral part of the team’s marketing strategy was underscored at the recent start of the NBA’s 2010 free agency period. As part of a campaign to encourage HEAT star Wade to re-sign with the team, HEAT mascot Burnie took up residence on an exterior ledge of the arena for a week. To fuel publicity and fan interest in the campaign, StreamZ was used to provide a live stream of Burnie’s exploits 24-hours per day through the HEAT.com website. The StreamZ system was also used for live streaming of the welcoming party and press conference marking the signings of Wade and his new superstar teammates James and Bosh.

Digital Rapids Redefines Adaptive Bit Rate Streaming Performance and Quality with StreamZHD Live ABR

Posted by Derrick on March 11, 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 – unveiled the new StreamZHD Live ABR encoder, the industry’s highest-performance Adaptive Bit Rate streaming system. The latest model in the StreamZ Live family, StreamZHD Live ABR encodes and streams live HD and SD content at unparalleled quality for delivery through the latest generation of adaptive streaming technologies.

StreamZHD Live ABR supports the Dynamic Streaming capabilities of Adobe® Flash Media Server®; adaptive HTTP streaming to Apple® iPhone® mobile devices, and Microsoft® Internet Information Services (IIS) Smooth Streaming to Microsoft® Silverlight® powered viewing experiences. StreamZHD Live ABR is also easily extensible to support additional adaptive delivery technologies, such as Adobe’s upcoming HTTP Dynamic Streaming (announced as Project Zeri).

Adaptive bit rate streaming enables higher-quality viewing experiences with television-like continuity and reliability on the Web and mobile devices. StreamZHD Live ABR creates multiple output streams at varying bit rates and resolutions from the input source. As the content is delivered to each viewer, the chosen adaptive delivery technology automatically switches between these streams to deliver the best possible quality based on the viewer’s current network and local system conditions. The results are consistent, uninterrupted viewing experiences up to HD quality even under dramatically changing network connectivity and playback conditions.

Building on Digital Rapids’ long-standing ability to output multiple formats, resolutions and bit rates simultaneously in real time, StreamZHD Live ABR provides superior encoding performance for adaptive delivery. Combinations of up to seven HD and SD streams can be output simultaneously in real time from a single StreamZHD Live ABR unit. StreamZHD Live ABR can output streams up to full 1920×1080 at 30fps in the H.264 compression format — including simultaneous 1080p and 720p outputs — and up to 720p with VC-1 compression. Multiple StreamZHD Live ABR systems can be synchronized to encode the same source for adaptive streaming applications requiring a greater number of simultaneous streams. A single StreamZHD Live ABR unit can also create outputs for multiple platforms — such as the Web and iPhone — concurrently.

Adaptive bit rate technologies also minimize the initial viewing delay typical with earlier streaming methods, providing fast start-up times approaching the immediacy of traditional television. The historical approach of content providers offering streams in two or three tiered bit rates for the viewer to select between — often with poor results under changing conditions or if viewers over-estimate their capabilities — is also no longer necessary. Viewers simply start viewing from a single engagement point, with the adaptive technologies managing the bit rate dynamically.

StreamZHD Live ABR combines all of these benefits with the proven advantages of Digital Rapids’ StreamZ Live encoder family, forming the ideal adaptive streaming platform. Advanced video pre-processing features including motion adaptive de-interlacing with pixel-level analysis and video noise reduction deliver superior visual quality with the most efficient use of bandwidth in the compressed result. Video adjustments and graphic overlay enable refinement of incoming sources and the addition of branding to output streams. Multiple StreamZHD Live ABR encoders can be combined with the scalable Digital Rapids Broadcast Manager software for enterprise-class management, automation, scheduling, multi-channel monitoring and failover.

“Our live encoding and streaming solutions have long been regarded as the quality leaders, but even with the best encoding quality, the viewing experience can be constrained by delivery challenges such as varying network bandwidth. StreamZHD Live ABR combines our superior quality and robust, enterprise-class features with advanced delivery mechanisms to significantly improve the viewer experience,” said Darren Gallipeau, Product Manager at Digital Rapids. “Higher quality and consistent reliability lead to longer viewer engagement times, which in turn offer greater monetization opportunities to content owners. Meanwhile, the exceptional performance of StreamZHD Live ABR lowers the cost of encoding for adaptive streaming by producing all of the outputs within a single unit.”

The new StreamZHD Live ABR model is now shipping. Full adaptive streaming capabilities are also available in Digital Rapids’ versatile StreamZHD multi-format, live and on-demand studio encoders.

StreamZHD Live ABR and other Digital Rapids solutions will be showcased in booth number SL6010 at the 2010 NAB Show, April 12-15 in Las Vegas. For more information about Digital Rapids, please visit http://www.digital-rapids.com/.

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.

Automatic Web Page Publishing and FTP After Encoding

Posted by Derrick on April 6, 2009 under Video Streaming and Compression | Be the First to Comment

Automatic web page publishing and FTP after encoding is difficult to find in many of today’s compression tools.  Many tools have the FTP capability but many can’t create web pages automatically after the compression process is complete.  Well, enter the Digital Rapids‘ encoding servers.  Digital rapids has the StreamZ Encoding Server and the StreamZHD Encoding Server both of which are turnkey encoding solutions which use the Digital Rapids’ StreamEnterprise software. In the StreamEnterprise software you can set up automatic FTP and web page publishing after your compression job is finished.  The StreamEnterprise software has many other filters for video and audio encoding.  Now if these two features mentioned above weren’t enough here’s another.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be notified after your encoding jobs are complete?  Well if you’re using the StreamZ Encoding Server or the StreamZHD Encoding Server, you can set up E-mail notification after completion of your encoded file.  You can even include a lower datarate copy of your video in an attachment.  Simply Amazing!