Wowza Demonstrates Latest Unified Media Streaming Innovations at CableLabs Winter Conference

Posted by Derrick on February 9, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression | Be the First to Comment

Wowza Media Systems, the media server company,  demonstrated its unified media server, Wowza Media Server 2, at the CableLabs Winter Conference 2010 February 7-9th in Denver, Colorado.

Wowza was chosen to be among a group of companies that were present to demonstrate at the CableLabs Innovation Showcase during the conference. The showcase featured 12 companies, a combination of established and venture capital-stage companies, who presented and demonstrated cutting edge broadband technologies for the audience of predominantly cable technology executives.

Wowza’s demonstration highlighted how cable providers can cost-effectively deploy client agnostic WebTV and MobileTV infrastructures that encompass multiple player and device platforms, including Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight smooth streaming, iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, and IPTV set-top boxes.

Wowza Media Server 2 is the first platform that allows streaming from one H.264 encode simultaneously to multiple players and devices. As a result, cable providers and other organizations serious about delivering video can slash capital and operational costs. By enabling simultaneous streaming to multiple clients from a single standard H.264 live encoder or file, Wowza Media Server 2 eliminates the need for separate client-specific encoders and media servers.

Wowza Media Server 2 is the only software on the market to natively implement concurrent streaming support for Adobe RTMP protocol suite, Apple HTTP Streaming, Microsoft Smooth Streaming, RTSP/RTP delivery for Apple QuickTime, mobile and other clients as well as MPEG-TS for IPTV set-top delivery.

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.

Wowza Empowers Live Dutch Webcast for Haiti Earthquake Relief

Posted by Derrick on February 2, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression | Be the First to Comment

A one-day national fundraising effort championed by a collection of Dutch radio and TV stations helped to raise a startling €83,448,252 for earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. Supporting the effort, U.S.-based Wowza Media Systems, donated its media servers and the Dutch IS Internet Services in cooperation with Radio538 hosted the live webcast streams that reached more than one million online listeners.

Recognized for creating the first unified media server capable of simultaneously streaming to all major desktop, mobile device and IPTV player clients, Wowza Media Systems has been particularly embraced by radio and TV broadcasters worldwide looking to expand their audiences through the online channel.

The participating radio stations, including popular commercial stations Radio538, Q Music, SLAM FM, Radio Veronica, as well as public networks 3FM and Radio 2, broadcasted the fundraiser  Thursday, January 21 as Radio 555. The giro number 555 is used in the Netherlands for donations to charities such as Oxfam, Unicef, the Red Cross and others which fall under the Dutch national aid organization cooperative, Samenwerkende Hulporganisaties (SHO).

“We’ve been using Wowza Media Servers to stream our programming content online for some time now and we knew the technology was more than up to the task of supporting this kind of effort,” said Alexander Josiassen, Technology and Operations Manager of Radio538. “Without hesitation, Wowza donated the additional software to power the massive webcast and wildly surpassed our technical expectations by enabling streaming to 145,000 simultaneous online listeners and reaching more than one million people in total for the day.”

This realization is driving strong demand for Wowza Media Server 2 from a broad range of customers. Mirror Image Internet, a global CDN that has already upgraded to Wowza Media Server 2, was able to add iPhone streaming capability to its portfolio of services at virtually zero incremental cost. Other companies including Livestream, one of the largest live streaming platforms, is now offering customers simultaneous Flash and iPhone reach without having to make any investment or impose changes to how they encode content.

The broadcast fundraiser for Haiti mirrors efforts by the Dutch broadcasters who conducted a similar national relief effort for victims of the 2004 tsunami in Asia.

“The incredibly quick and effective response by these broadcasters, and the tremendous outpouring of support from the Dutch people themselves provides great deal of hope that we’ll be able to make a difference in the lives of those who have been affected by this tragedy,” said Dave Stubenvoll, CEO and Co-founder of Wowza Media Systems. “We are humbled and proud to have been able to play a role in this humanitarian effort.”

Wowza Media Systems Nominated for the Third Consecutive Year in Streaming Media’s Readers’ Choice Awards

Posted by Derrick on October 8, 2009 under Video Streaming and Compression | Be the First to Comment

Wowza Media Systems, the media server software company, announced that the company has been selected as a nominee in two categories in this year’s Streaming Media’s Readers’ Choice Award. The Wowza Media Server 2 Advanced is in the running for the Best Streaming Innovation category which is designed to acknowledge a product, technology, or service that most changed the streaming landscape in the past year. In addition, Wowza will once again be competing in the Best Server Hardware/Software category, which the company won last year.

This is the third consecutive year that Wowza received nominations for Streaming Media’s prestigious Readers’ Choice Awards. In 2007, as an upstart, Wowza won recognition against Adobe and Microsoft. In 2008, the company received the title Best Server Hardware/Software and was a finalist in the Best Streaming Radio Solution category.

“The ongoing recognition by the Streaming Media community is a reflection of our focus and our ability to consistently deliver high-performance software,” said Dave Stubenvoll, CEO and Co-Founder, Wowza Media Systems. “These awards are particularly meaningful because the voters represent the professionals that are using these products to stay ahead of the curve in the business of online video and audio. We are looking forward to the announcement of the winners at Streaming Media West in November.”

Voting for the awards is now open at www.streamingmedia.com/readerschoice/ and will remain open until October 16. The finalists in each category will be announced on October 23, 2009 and the winners will be revealed at Streaming Media West on November 19, 2009. For more information on the awards and the categories, visit www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=11372.

1-Day Wowza Media Server Training – PC

Posted by Derrick on May 3, 2009 under Video Streaming and Compression | 6 Comments to Read

Class Summary:

The Wowza Media Server 3 training teaches Flash on-demand and live streaming set-up. It also covers Flash encoding using the On2 VP6 codec, Flash encoding using the H.264 codec and how to deliver these files from Wowza Media Server 3. Learning to stream Live Flash video using Wirecast with the Wowza Media Server 3 is a special topic that is included in this training class. Flash video is one of the most exciting developments in streaming video and you’ll also learn how to author your web pages for Flash Streaming. Learn how to take advantage of cross-platform, cross-browser video playback that the Flash format provides with the Wowza Media Server 3.

Students will learn in this training:

• How to set up their Wowza Media Server 3
• How to configure On-demand streaming
• How to configure Flash live streaming
• Flash encoding using the On2 VP6 codec
• Flash encoding using the H.264 codec
• Live Streaming to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch
• On-demand Streaming to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch
• How to use Wirecast to stream Live Flash video
• How to use Sawmill to analyze Wowza Media Server 3 log files

Software Featured for Class

• Wowza Media Server 3
• Sorenson Squeeze 6
• Wirecast
• Sawmill Professional

VIEW UPCOMING TRAINING SCHEDULE

Class Overview

1. Streaming Server Set-up

Your instructor will walk you through the process of the set-up for the Wowza Media Server 3 server for Flash real-time streaming. This section of the class will cover all of the install, networking and test procedures to make sure the server is functioning properly.

2. Wowza Media Server Overview

This portion of class provides students with an overview of how the Wowz Media Server works.  In this training module the instructor teaches students about: Application.xml files, Vhost.xml files, Modules, Properties, Stream Types, AddOnPackages, HTTP Streamers, Live Streaming Packetizers and Content Storage.

3. Application Setup

This portion of the training teaches students how to utilize the available applications on the Wowza Media Server and how to customize their own applications for streaming.  The hands-on instruction shared in this portion of the training allows attendees to successfully navigate and use Wowza Media Server 3.

4. Configuring On-demand Streaming

In this section of training, students will learn to set-up on-demand streaming for On2VP6 and H.264 content. Students will learn where to place videos that are streaming from the server and how to reference on-demand streaming folders.

5. Configuring Live Streaming

This section will cover the procedure for setting up live streaming on the Wowza Media Server 3. Students will learn all of the necessary configurations required for live streaming to work on the streaming server.  This training module will teach students how to set-up live streams using Wirecast.

6. Authentication for Live Streaming

In this training module students will learn how to create an application for Live Streaming that requires Authentication from the Live Encoder.  This protects who can stream to your Wowza Media Server. In addition to creating your application, you will learn how to add users who have Live Streaming privileges.

7. Flash Encoding Using the On2 VP6 Codec

Learn how to encode Flash On2 VP6 content for real-time streaming for delivery from Wowza Media Server 3. You will learn how to encode Flash On2 VP6 videos using Sorenson Squeeze 6. Your instructor will guide you through the different adjustments that need be made in the encoder and will teach you how to create great looking videos for streaming server delivery. Learn about key frame every, frames per second, frame sizes, audio codecs, and other compression adjustments in this portion of the training.

8. Flash Encoding Using the H.264 Codec

Learn how to encode Flash H.264 content for real-time streaming for delivery from Wowza Media Server 3. You will learn how to encode Flash H.264 videos using Sorenson Squeeze 6. Students will be guided through various adjustments that need to be made in the encoder and will learn how to create great looking videos for streaming server delivery. Learn about key frame every, frames per second, frame sizes, audio codecs, and other compression adjustments in this part of the training class.

9. Authoring Flash On-Demand Streaming Videos and Live Streaming Videos in Web pages

This section will teach students how to create web pages for Flash streaming videos. Many Video Editors and multimedia professionals can encode their videos to the Flash video format, but don’t understand how to author their web pages to deliver Flash streaming videos. This class will teach you how. Students will learn about Embed and Object Tags as well as javascript code and how they make web pages with streaming videos look great.

10. Analyzing Wowza Media Server Log files with Sawmill Professional

Students will learn how to analyze log files from Wowza Media Server. Also, learn where to locate the log files on Wowza Media Server. In addition, class participants will learn how to gather information from log files such as: domain names, session paths, most popular videos viewed, most popular viewing days, most popular viewing months, video playback errors, viewer demographics and other information.

11. Streaming to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch

One of the features of Wowza Media Server 3 is that it allows video content providers the ability to delivery On-demand and Live Streams to the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.  This class will show you how to configure your Wowza Media Server for streaming to the iPhone. The class covers set-up of both On-demand and Live Streaming to the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Give us a call about signing up to attend one of our Wowza Media Server Trainings in Orlando or On-line.  Call Freeman Compression Inc. at 407.477.5837 for more information or E-mail us at info@freemancompression.com. Individuals from any country can attend our On-line training classes.