Professional Hardware Encoding Systems

Below is a short description of the most popular video Transcoding appliances available in the market today.

Inlet technologies:

Armada: $14,000 + $7,500 additional node.

Windows Media VC-1, Flash 8 (VP6), H.264, MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-2 and AC3 Stereo.
Nice management system. You can define pre encoding tasks such as file verification and metadata extraction and post encoding tasks such as quality control, encryption and even publishing. Multi-CPU system.
No formal reviews are available yet.

http://www.inlethd.com/encoding/65/47/Automated-Transcoding-and-Encoding-Workflow-Management/

Fathom:

H.264, MPEG-4, Windows Media, VC-1, MPEG-2, AVI, and Flash
Watch folders, accepts from tape, servers or editing workstations. Both HD and SD are offered.
http://www.xyhd.tv/2006/11/reviews/review-of-inlets-fathom-vc-1-hardware-accelerator/
http://www.inlethd.com/encoding/18/16/Fathom/

Spinnaker: $9,995

Live encoding and streaming. VC-1, VP6 and H.264.
Price ranges between 30k to 70K.
http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=10182
http://www.inlethd.com/encoding/20/18/Spinnaker/


Media Excel:

HERA Line of appliances.

The HERA u is designed with web and mobile delivery of user generated content while the HERA f is targeted to Broadcasting.
HERA Series outputs to MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, xVID, QuickTime, Flash 9, WM9, 3GPP. And is configurable to output on Gigabit Ethernet, Fiber Channel and may accept HD-SDI as input.
Metadata extraction and insertion. Scalable and high speed.
No reviews as of the writing of this post. This system is being unveiled at IBC 2008

http://www.mediaexcel.com/hera_4000u.php

HMS File management

The HMS File management system is designed to manage all the Transcoding and delivery of files across many HERA encoding appliances.

http://www.mediaexcel.com/hera_management_system.php

ViewCast:

Niagara Streaming Encoders:

Capture, encode and stream workflows. Depending on the mode it can compress to Mpeg-4 and Flash, wmv and Real. Designed to stream live. Offer SDK.
http://www.viewcast.com/product_GoStreamSURF.asp


Digital Rapids:

Transcode Manager with StreamZ: $20,000 + $5,000 additional node.

Digital Rapids Transcode Manager with StreamZ

A very sophisticated and with unlimited scalability. It offers a full API via XML. It is a very robust system that can be configured to handle specific outputs if needed. You need a server ($20,000) and you can add nodes for $5,000 to $8,000 depending on the output types. They offer a Lite system that can support up to 10 engines. The light version server costs $5,000 and each node is $5,000. The lite API is has some restrictions and limitations.
http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=9423&page=1
http://www.digital-rapids.com/Products/IndividualProducts/Transcode%20Mgr.aspx
http://www.digital-rapids.com/Products/IndividualProducts/StreamZ.aspx

Ripcode:

Video Transcoding Appliance

Formats: WMV9 / VC-1, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 MP@ML, MPEG-1 Program Stream, H.264 BP and MP, Flash Video (On2 VP6), MPEG-4 Part 2 Simple Profile, 3GPP, AVI, M-JPEG
This is a different take on video Transcoding. The concept is to provide an array of DSP’s that can simultaneously transcode up to 8 different video streams. I saw a demo at streaming media west where the system was simultaneously Transcoding 8 mobile streams.
http://www.ripcode.com/productOverview.php

Consumer Software Transcoding Applications

Below are some of the most popular consumer video transcoding applications in the market. They often are bundled with DVD authoring and DV Cam capture modules that come in handy. Some of these software packages don’t allow you to change or customize encoding parameters like the bit rate. Often they only offer a limited amount of pre-defined profiles for users to choose from.

AVS Video Converter: $39.95
Movavi Video Converter 6: $29.99
Pinnacle Studio 12: $49.99
Nero: $59.99
QuickTime Pro: $29.99
TMPGEnc 4 XPress: $99.95
Roxio Crunch: $39.99

AVS Video Converter:
Good value for your buck. You can convert to many formats, AVI, MPEG (including for DVD, iPod, and Mobile) QT, WMV, RM and Flash. It offered some simple yet handy editing features. They have a trial version that watermarks the output file. Output video quality is good.

http://video-converter-software-review.toptenreviews.com/avs-video-tools-review.html
http://www.avsmedia.com/VideoTools/index.aspx

Movavi Video Converter 6:
It doesn’t accept flash video files. Output formats cover MPEG, MOV, FLV, 3GP, AVI and WMV. Real.
You can select a profile and then go into “Settings” to change bit rates, resizing parameters, audio settings and more. It also offers some editing tools that come in handy. The Evaluation version didn’t work for me at all so I can’t comment on the output quality.

http://video-converter-software-review.toptenreviews.com/movavi-video-converter-review.html
http://movavi.com/videoconverter/whats-new/v60.html

Pinnacle Studio 12:
No trial version, so just read the review below.

http://computershopper.com/reviews/pinnacle-studio-12-review
http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Products/Consumer+Products/Home+Video/Studio+Family/Studio.html

Nero:
Good application. Mainly targets users that want to burn video to DVD or CD. Supports AVCHD on regular DVD’s.

http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/Nero-7-Premium-Review-11730.shtml
http://www.nero.com/enu/nero8-introduction.html?NeroSID=7e4d874f7793823d9a17d6d5055b0141

Quicktime Pro:
Nice Product. The user interface for video conversion is not very good and the video quality is not the greatest, but you can’t beat the price. Output formats are limited. There is no support to convert to WMV, FLV or Real.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1875130,00.asp
http://store.apple.com/us/product/D3380Z/A

TMPGEnc 4 Xpress:
Easy to use. Has a batch encode utility. It offers basic editing features and filters for video and audio. It lets users set a great deal more parameters within a template profile than other consumer applications. There is no conversion to Real or Flash. You can save to DVD and VCD formats. Output video quality is good.

http://dvdcreation.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=48204
http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/te4xp.html

Roxio Crunch:
They didn’t offer a trial version, so I couldn’t give it a try myself.

http://www.itreviews.co.uk/software/s511.htm
http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/crunch/mac/overview.html

Next time I will review hardware encoding solutions.

Professional Video Transcoding Systems

In this blog I will be covering real world encoding issues with the most current tools available in the market.
To start, I wanted to list some of the software professional transcoding tools that are most common in the industry today. Follow the links to the company websites as well as product reviews when available. The prices were gathered at their websites or reviews for the products and might have changed by the time you read this article.
This are software only solutions, you have to get your own hardware to run them.

Rhozet Carbon Server: $14,995 (minimum requirement)
Rhozet Carbon Coder: $4,995 (additional node)
Anystream: $10,000 (base system)
Flip factory : $5,495
ProCoder 3: $470
Sorenson squeeze 5: $499
Flip4Mac Episode: $ 499
Flip4Mac Episode Pro: $ 995


Rhozet Carbon Server / Coder

Probably the most popular application for video transcoding today is Rhozet. And for good reason. It is, very robust, scalable with a very flexible API.
The system requires that you buy the Carbon Server at a minimum, which is itself an encoding node, and you can buy additional Carbon Coders or nodes to extend the system's capacity.
http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=9543
http://www.rhozet.com/

Anystream Agility System

This is another excellent product with a good API. Very reliable and robust. The system can be extended to suit your needs.
http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=10177
http://www.anystream.com/

Telestream FlipFactory

A good system, but with a bit less straight forward interface and approach.
http://www.telestream.net/news/article_streamingmedia_FF12_18_01.htm
http://www.telestream.net/products/flipfactory.htm

ProCoder 3

Good bang for your buck. Not scalable but can easily automate simple workflows.
http://digitalcontentproducer.com/videoencodvd/revfeat/grass_valley_procoder/
http://desktop.thomsongrassvalley.com/products/ProCoderSW/closeup.php

Telestream Flip4Mac and Flip4Mac Pro

Supports many of the semi-pro and pro formats (Pro version.) You can do batch encoding. If you use a Mac, you need this tool.
http://www.macworld.com/article/46733/2005/09/flip4mac.html
http://www.flip4mac.com/

Sorenson Squeeze 5

Also a good bang for your buck. Not scalable, but you can batch encode with ease.
http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=10439
http://www.sorensonmedia.com/products/?pageID=1&ppc=3

Next post will cover some of the most popular consumer applications available in the market today.