Posted by Derrick on February 12, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression | 
Telestream announced that it played a key technical role in bringing this week’s highly-acclaimed White House concert to television and web viewers. The concert, “In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement,” broadcasted nationally on PBS stations February 11 at 8:00 p.m. ET. Concert highlights are available on PBS websites. MVI Post, Washington DC’s HD leader in production and post production, successfully posted the concert for TV and web audiences under an extremely tight turnaround thanks in large part to Telestream’s Pipeline video capture system and Episode Encoder.
“Pipeline solved our problem of how to digitize four HDCAM tapes simultaneously into our server,” reports an elated Craig Maniglia, MVI Post owner who was working under a tight 18-hour deadline. “We needed a quick and efficient way to import and export HDCam tapes into our server while utilizing all of our decks simultaneously. After considerable searching, we discovered Telestream’s Pipeline product, and the problem was immediately solved.”
Two Pipeline HD Dual video capture systems were used to simultaneously ingest 16 hours of content in four hours from four high-definition camera sources, without tying up Avid workstations. Pipeline encoded the sources to DNxHD in native Avid MXF files for use directly in post production. This enabled MVI Post to quickly edit and mix the video while the concert was still taking place. In a separate bay, Episode Encoder Pro provided fast transcoding of concert highlights into H.264 video and AAC audio formats for PBS websites.
“We’ve been using Telestream’s Episode Encoder Pro software for quite some time for all our transcoding needs, because it’s the best for delivering time-critical broadcast content with flawless execution to all new media playout devices,” added Maniglia. “So, it was a no brainer to turn to Telestream for help in solving our tape digitizing dilemma.”
“MVI Post presented the perfect challenge for Pipeline, with its need to simultaneously capture multiple channels of video for quick turnaround editing,” said Barbara DeHart, VP of marketing at Telestream. “Pipeline and Episode Encoder are ideally suited for fast-paced production environments requiring high-quality video ingest and reformatting for multiplatform delivery.”
“In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement” was hosted by President and Mrs. Obama at the White House in honor of Black History Month. The concert includes performances by Natalie Cole, Bob Dylan, Jennifer Hudson, Smokey Robinson, John Mellencamp, Blind Boys of Alabama, Yolanda Adams, Joan Baez, the Howard University Choir and The Freedom Singers. The program showcases the rich fabric of American culture in the setting of the nation’s most famous home.
On the strength of its HD workflow augmentation and creative talent, MVI Post was awarded the post-production rights to the concert. The music special is a production of WETA Washington, D.C., in association with The GRAMMY Museum, AEG Ehrlich Ventures and the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC).
MVI Post (www.mvipost.com) is a premier provider of HD digital media production on a local and national level for the web, broadcast, cable and radio. The company offers a signature mix of compelling, high-end production values and vivid cinematography with state-of-the-art post editing and mixing that consistently represents quality for its clients.
Posted by Derrick on February 10, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression |
Kaltura has released video extensions for both Moodle, an open source course management system, and Joomla, an open source content management platform. The extensions allow site-builders for either application to manipulate video and other rich media on their sites, including content management, syndication, monetization, transcoding, uploading, importing, and editing.
Using the Kaltura video extension for Moodle, faculty can upload and manage rich-media content, such as full lectures in an online course. Students can post video comments, ask questions, and create a face-to-face discussion recorded directly from their webcam or other sources.
The extension also includes Kaltura’s Video-PowerPoint Widget, which presents a video and a slideshow in full synchronization. Presenters can upload their videos and slides and then select the key points to synchronize their presentations. Students can view the presentation, scroll through the slides, and be presented with the relevant video footage for each slide.
The Joomla extension allows site builders to play video from any page in the Web site. They can also import videos, images, and audio files from MySpace, Flickr, and other social networking sites. The user can delete, tag, and moderate content; view statistics and reports; customize player design; and create playlists.
The video extensions are available in two forms: a free, community-supported video platform extension that’s self-hosted by the publisher and a video extension based on Kaltura’s software-as-a-service platform, which includes support, hosting and streaming, transcoding, syndication, advertising, and security. The extension is available for download on the Kaltura site.
“The demand for and use of learning management systems is on the rise, and open source Moodle is leading the charge” said Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura chairman and CEO. “Powered with Kaltura’s robust rich-media capabilities, the online learning experience comes to life with videos and photos, creating an environment that resembles that of a physical classroom. Top-notch education can now be delivered to remote doorsteps, everywhere. This is the power of the Web at its best!”
Tags: content management, Flickr, Joomla, Kaltura, monetization, Moodle, MySpace, streaming, syndication, transcoding, Video-PowerPoint Widget
Posted by Derrick on February 8, 2010 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 November 29, 2009 under Video Streaming and Compression |
Harmonic Inc. announced that its Rhozet Carbon Coder universal media transcoding solution has won the Streaming Media 2009 Readers’ Choice Award in one of the two Encoding Software categories. Winners were announced November 19 at a reception in San Jose as part of the Streaming Media West conference. This year’s selection by Streaming Media readers follows last year’s recognition of Carbon Coder as a “Streaming Media Editors’ Pick,” representing one of the 10 most outstanding products for the streaming media industry.
“The Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Awards are the only awards of their kind in the online video industry,” said Streaming Media Magazine Editor Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen. “While other awards focus exclusively on content, this is the only awards program that honors the technology that makes it all possible, and it’s definitely the only one where the people decide who wins. And this year, more than 5,000 votes were cast for more than 200 nominees. Clearly, people care deeply about the tools they use to get their jobs done.”
“This vote of confidence from Streaming Media readers confirms that we are successfully
tackling the key concerns of how to achieve cost-effective, high-quality transcoding,” said David Trescot, Vice President of the Rhozet Business Unit at Harmonic Inc. “The Carbon Coder family of transcoding solutions continues to gain momentum in the marketplace, securing Harmonic’s position as a leading provider of scalable, enterprise-level transcoding.”
Carbon Coder is a universal media transcoding solution used by leading media companies
including Ascent Media Group, British Sky Broadcasting (BskyB), Lifetime Networks, MTV,
Yahoo! and YouTube to facilitate the creation of multi-format video for Internet, mobile and broadcast applications. Multiple Carbon Coder nodes can be configured as a rendering farm, controlled by one or more Carbon Servers, for distributed enterprise transcoding. Additionally, Carbon QC brings automated compliance and quality testing to the transcoding workflow.
Posted by Derrick on October 23, 2009 under Video Streaming and Compression |
RipCode, Inc., the leader in transactional video transcoding, announced a distribution alliance with Century Sage Scientific (CSS), a premier reseller and systems integrator of broadcast, Internet, and streaming technologies to the Chinese media and telecommunications markets.
As a certified systems integrator to some of the world’s largest broadcast and telecom equipment manufacturers and operators, CSS has a proven track record of delivering fully integrated, turnkey systems for IPTV, Web, and communications applications. Recent CSS projects include large-scale deployments for CCTV, Shenzen Media Group, and the upcoming master-control build-out for the 11th National Games in the People’s Republic of China. RipCode’s transactional transcoding technology expands the CSS portfolio for broadcast, broadband and 3G mobile services, while also providing cost-effective options for Internet delivery of educational and other entertainment content.
China’s broadcast and mobile communications market has unique requirements and regulations relative to other geographical regions. The number of mobile users is expected to surpass 1.2 billion within four years, leading to a growing appetite for quality content over broadband and wireless connections. “Given the sheer number and model variance of devices, optimizing transmission and encoding recipes for local browsers and mobile handsets is both a significant undertaking and opportunity for a value-added service,” says Alex So, CSS vice president of marketing. “In order to best serve the local market, CSS and RipCode have already begun joint testing and development to ensure smooth adoption of RipCode transcoding technology in China. RipCode’s solution portfolio provides leading transcoding technology – but goes beyond what we’ve seen from traditional vendors by also addressing on-demand ad insertion, client detection, and policy-based bandwidth optimization – key factors in our selection of RipCode for the China market.”
“We are seeing increasing interest and demand in China – not only for three-screen content delivery – but also in the innovation RipCode delivers through its end-to-end transactional transcoding solution approach,” says Greg Lowitz, RipCode executive vice president of sales. “CSS represents the top brands in the broadcast and communications business, and we’re thrilled to be part of their solution portfolio for the Chinese media and telecommunication markets.”
