Showing posts with label web content. Show all posts
Showing posts with label web content. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Digital Rapids Connects Top-Tier Content Owners to YouTube

Digital Rapids-the leading provider of tools and solutions for bringing television, film and web content to wider audiences -- announced that the company is working with YouTube to integrate support for Content ID, YouTube's content identification and management system, directly into Digital Rapids' award-winning range of media production and repurposing systems.

Digital Rapids’ encoding and transcoding systems are used by leading media organizations to transform live, tape and file-based video and audio content into the formats required for viewing on multiple platforms including broadcast, cable and satellite television; IPTV; the Web; mobile phones and personal media players.

The integration of YouTube Content ID support with Digital Rapids' systems enables users to generate Content ID reference files -- often referred to as "fingerprints" -- immediately from the content during the encoding or transcoding process. These digital fingerprints are then uploaded to YouTube's Content ID system. YouTube's content identification tools compare existing and incoming user-uploaded videos against the reference file, identifying the ownership of such content and taking the action specified by the owner's usage policies. Content owners can choose to block user-uploaded content, permit it on YouTube while simply tracking usage data, or monetize the uploaded media by running advertising against it.

The creation of Content ID reference files directly within existing encoding and transcoding workflows increases productivity and reduces operational costs by eliminating the need for separate steps to create the fingerprints. By generating the Content ID reference files during production, content owners also need only upload the much smaller ID file to YouTube for tracking and protection, rather than the actual content itself -- increasing security and significantly shortening the time before YouTube can begin blocking, tracking or monetizing uploaded copies of the content.

"We're excited to be working with YouTube to streamline their interactions with content owners. Content identification technologies are often thought of strictly in terms of protection against piracy, but they also enable new monetization opportunities," said Brick Eksten, President of Digital Rapids Corporation. "The automatic identification of content and its ownership gives content owners the option of capitalizing on additional revenue opportunities wherever the content appears. The integration of YouTube's Content ID technology into our systems makes it easy for media organizations to take advantage of these capabilities within efficient, automated media production workflows."

"We're pleased to be working with Digital Rapids to integrate our Content ID technology with their solutions, which are used by leading broadcasters, motion picture studies and content providers worldwide," said George Salem, Content ID Product Manager at YouTube. "Easing content owners' ability to identify their content on YouTube is critical to how they work with us to both control and monetize their assets. Support for Content ID directly within Digital Rapids powered live ingest, encoding and file-based transcoding workflows lets their customers easily provide us with ID files at almost the exact same time the content is produced, without changing how they currently do business."

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Digital Rapids Unveils New Features and Storage Options for TouchStream


Digital Rapids -- the leading provider of tools and solutions for bringing television, film and web content to wider audiences -- demonstrated new enhancements for the award-winning TouchStream live video streaming appliance at the 2009 IBC Conference and Exhibition.

TouchStream delivers Digital Rapids' renowned streaming video quality and reliability in a fully self-contained, portable appliance with unparalleled ease of use. Software controls are accessed through an intuitive touch-screen interface with integrated video monitoring, eliminating the need for laptops, keyboards, mice and separate monitors. Flexible features allow refinement of the incoming source and the addition of branding to the outgoing stream, while models supporting multiple formats -- including VC-1 and H.264 compression formats for Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash technologies -- provide easy adaptability to varying project requirements.

New features include customizable, password-protected function locking. Administrators can configure a custom set of interface controls to be locked with a password, letting them limit the functions available to less experienced users to as little as desired -- even just start and stop. Taking 'one-click streaming' a step further -- to no clicks at all -- TouchStream can also be configured to begin streaming with the most recent encoding parameters upon power-up, without user interaction.

Two new storage options have also been introduced for TouchStream, supporting its ability to simultaneously archive live streams to files for subsequent on-demand use. Complementing TouchStream's existing support for external USB or IEEE-1394 storage devices, new internal hard drive and removable storage options allow the addition of archive storage without the added physical space requirements of external drives.

Digital Rapids is also gave IBC attendees a sneak preview of future functionality in TouchStream, including a Web browser-based remote control interface that looks virtually identical to the unit's local interface.

"Industry and customer response since we began shipping TouchStream has been phenomenal, but we aren't content to rest on that success," said Wesley Thiessen, Product Manager, Digital Rapids Corporation. "Our new enhancements continue to make TouchStream even easier and more flexible, particularly in multi-user environments where operators have varying degrees of experience."