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NAB Show 2009 Through My Ears, Eyes and Sore Feet, Part 2

May 26, 2009 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer

Enterprise Encoding Tools

By “enterprise encoding tools,” I mean high-end batch-encoding tools that cost upwards of $5,000 and incorporate sophisticated file retrieval, multiformat encoding, and file delivery. Many of these same tools allow you to join multiple encoding stations into a high-performance rendering farm.

The awesome new feature that appeared at NAB is integrated quality control, which is now integrated (or soon will be) into Inlet Technologies Armada, Rhozet Carbon Coder, and AmberFin iCR 4.5, with third-party options available for Digital Rapids Transcode Manager. These tools check the encoded files for a variety of issues such as dropped frames, excessive blockiness or quantization, audio over or under selected volume thresholds, and other potential maladies, and they either pass the files or flag them for review. They then present the errors in an interface that lets the reviewer quickly see the offending frames to evaluate the problem and either override the objection or send the file back for re-encoding.

Quality control is the Achilles' Heel of most encoding shops, since it’s time-consuming and expensive, and god-awful boring. Any level of automation should improve overall quality and cut QC costs, and this type of feature will quickly become essential for any purportedly high-end tool.

Otherwise, most vendors in this space had a significant announcement or two. For example, Inlet announced that its soup-to-nuts encoding workflow tool, Armada, is now available, and the launch of Spinnaker 80, a multichannel live audio encoder that can input eight separate streams, and output 32 streams.

Telestream announced FlipFactory 7, which should be available by the end of the Summer, 2009. New features include increased format support, compatibility with Avid TransferManager, Avid MXF file compatibility, ITU-R BS.1770-1 loudness correction, and generally improved performance—including multithreaded encoding of VP6 files, which is a first as far as I know.

Newly renamed Grab Networks (nee Anystream) announced Agility 2G (for second generation), which has been completely redesigned from a standalone application to a web-based interface. Other new features include increased reliability with automated fail-over and recovery and enhanced scalability.

Rhozet announced a new version of Carbon Coder to be delivered in May, 2009. New features include enhanced H.264 quality and faster encoding, as well as two new filters, video deblocking and motion-compensated temporal filtering. I saw a demo of its new quality control tool, which looked great, but the company isn’t committing to a specific ship date.

Amberfin’s iCR 4.5 release includes native support for Avid DNxHD and Final Cut Pro; MXF support of native Panasonic P2, Sony XDCAM, and Avid OP-Atom MXF; simultaneous ingest and transcoding;and new broadcast-quality sharpening and softening preprocessing filters.

One of my favorite new toys was Digital Rapids TouchStream live video-streaming appliance, which is about 16in. long, 6in. tall, and 5in. wide. Inputs vary by configuration, but can include composite and component analog video with XLR or RCA audio inputs, and SDI inputs up to full-rez 1080p. Outputs include VP6, H.264 for both QuickTime and Flash, and VC-1/Windows Media.

You control operation via a touchscreen interface with integrated live video monitoring and VU meters. Designed for live events such as concerts, sporting events, and news, the new unit looks like a great alternative to notebook or computer based streaming products.

Speaking of notebook based event streaming products, Kulabyte introduced XStreamCast Traveler, a luggable touchscreen computer for live event H.264 streaming. Produced by NextComputing, the computer can be configured with either four or eight cores, and a Blackmagic Design Decklink HD Extreme card. Operationally, the unit ingests HD SDI and outputs up to four or eight H.264 streams maxing out at 720p.

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