Streaming

When I asked a friend about his favorite part of NAB, he responded “Thursday afternoon, one minute after close” because that was the longest time until the next NAB. I do not share his pessimism, but after attending these shows for a quarter of a century, I surely understand the sentiment.

It seems that every year the show gets bigger and more diverse, which means a lot more products to see and understand, but also a lot more to regret missing. This year's scene was no less fascinating. With the new LVCC South Hall's two floors, the Sands Convention Center and the behemoth North Hall, three-and-a-half days is just not enough.

The show was kicked off with a keynote from AOL Time Warner's CEO Designate, Richard Parsons. He spoke on the perennial topic of convergence, with the understanding that convergence is happening not only in the broadcast business, but in the creation of all media.

There has been some significant revamping of the streaming industry. Many of the players that were here last year are gone. The idea of streaming as a major competitor to broadcast has been replaced by a more realistic view. Streaming is now being billed, by the marketing types, as an adjunct to broadcast instead of a direct replacement. New products from AnyStream, Envivio, Real, Panasonic and others are making streaming more accessible to many.

How can any article about this show start with anything but the fabulous Apple booth? Their recent purchase of Nothing Real — developers of the compositing program “Shake” — gives us an insight into how devoted Apple is to the high-end post-production industry. Their newly updated Final Cut Pro 3 and DVD Studio Pro run on a dual 1 GHz G4 with the new Nvidia GeForce4 Titanium graphics card for real-time rendering.

Anystream announced an entry-level modular Agility Enterprise product specifically designed for live Webcasting applications for corporations, producers and service providers doing audio/video or audio-only live Webcasting.

The solution for streaming IP-based content also offers users the ability to add video-on-demand and other features. The Agility Enterprise product family can integrate seamlessly with existing workflows and scale to manage a varying number of simultaneous streams. The software also runs on off-the-shelf servers, eliminating the need for proprietary hardware.

The new configuration enables clients to Webcast several different concurrent live events using multiple capture cards and in multiple formats — Real System, Microsoft Windows Media and Apple QuickTime can be concurrently acquired, preprocessed, watermarked, encoded and archived.

Pioneer showed their new PVR-9000 for the one-off-studio DVD business. It is a stand-alone professional DVD recorder that can use either DVD-RW (re-recordable) or DVD-R (write one) disks and will play back multiple formats such as: DVD-R, DVD-RW, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-Video, CD Audio and Video CD.

It has both analog (composite and Y/C) and digital (IEEE 1394) inputs and some limited editing functions. One of its most interesting features was its ability to record at different compression levels, allowing up to six hours of content to be stored on a DVD-RW. The PVR-9000 can serve as a utility recorder and allows users to archive off-lines for clients. It could also be used as a small-scale IP broadcaster to allow limited content streaming.

Panasonic showed off some interesting tools of their own, including the new IDVR100 (desktop) and IDVR200 (rack mount) digital video replay servers, which are low-cost HD-quality video presentation systems.

The IDVR is an Internet-enabled HD MPEG server with built-in DVD-RAM drive, with 24- and 60-frame progressive high-definition playback plus stereo, or optional 5.1 channel surround sound. They are capable of storing approximately 30 minutes of MPEG-2 HD-encoded video at the nominal 19 Mbits/s data rate from a single 4.7 GByte capacity DVD-R or DVD-RAM disk; and in the case of the iDVR200, much longer elements may be stored and played back by caching from the DVD disk to an internal hard-disk array.

The compact iDVR100 is designed for desktop or shelf-mount installation, while the iDVR200 has a 4RU rack-mount frame designed for additional internal hard-disk drive array storage and installation in equipment rooms. Both units are networkable via Ethernet, allowing video content to be distributed to just a specific iDVR, or any nominated group of iDVRs, over an IP network (either public Internet or corporate intranet). In addition, content can be distributed via DVD-R or DVD-RAM pre-recorded disks. iDVR operating functions can also be remotely controlled via the Internet. iDVR features include scheduled video playback with content verification for targeted advertising and pay-per-view program applications.

On a slightly different front, Real Networks has slowly but surely been filling out their suite of Internet commerce tools with the recently announced RBN managed subscription service, a customizable revenue-generating business solution through Real Broadcast Network (RBN). It is a turnkey subscription solution for media companies seeking new e-commerce opportunities and stronger brand alliance with online audiences.

The new Real Networks service offers content providers the necessary components to create and launch a stand-alone, branded online subscription service, reducing the cost and time required to build their own infrastructure. This scalable solution — which allows for pay-per-view, rental and subscription online commerce models — includes the following components: customer registration and subscriber management, content security systems to protect against unauthorized access, payment processing and billing systems, user report accounting, end-user customer service, and back-end hosting systems through RBN.

The most interesting piece of this solution is that it seems to be the first to offer a full end-to-end system to distribute content and collect revenue, something other CDNs have failed to supply.

Wacom showed off one of the best user interface devices for content creation I have seen. The new Cintiq 18sx interactive pen display is pressure-sensitive and allows Mac and PC users to draw directly on the LCD. The SXGA screen has a resolution of 1280×1024 and includes a pressure-sensitive wireless pen. Besides the screen display, Wacom has all but eliminated the annoyance of connecting cables by incorporating the power, video and control cables all into one. The stand allows the user a wide variety of different positions.

Discreet announced Cleaner Streaming Studio — a new package combining the Internet streaming media software applications Cleaner Live, Cinestream and Cleaner.

Cleaner Live helps deliver live Web events through integrated streaming and PowerPoint presentations and supports real-time media capture for archiving projects. Cinestream, the DV-based content capture and nonlinear editing tool with interactivity authoring capabilities, enables users to produce visual experiences for the Web. The Cleaner software is a desktop content mastering application used to capture, author, filter, compress, format, secure and publish media for on-demand delivery.

InterMedia Solutions' authoring software LiVE-CONTROL and the encoder management solution ENTERPRiSE-CONTROL allows automation of production and distribution processes. The unified console interface enables the creation and live transmission from multiple streams at different bandwidths and in different formats in parallel. The multiple formats and bandwidths enables users to reach a wide audience. The new A/V option extends the capabilities of LiVE-CONTROL to control audio/video inputs and allows superimposing of logos in video streams.

The ENTERPRiSE-CONTROL software enables reliable encoding by detecting malfunctions and alerting the operator while the built-in failover functionality starts standby encoders within seconds with the same parameters as the failed system so that the stream to the viewer will not be interrupted. ENTERPRiSE-CONTROL runs independent from any specific hardware platforms and allows mixed operation of encoder hardware from a variety of manufacturers.

Envivio showed off their integration of the Envivio MPEG-4 streaming server with SeaChange International's VOD system. The streaming server is capable of streaming ISMA and ISO MPEG-4 through almost any transport medium — Internet, intranet and broadcast networks — with controls to optimize the presentation of audio, video and mixed media. They also showed other components of their suite of end-to-end software products.

Envivio's Live Broadcaster is a full-resolution MPEG-4 real-time encoder that provides improved compression and advanced options for streaming higher quality content at lower bit rates. The encoder utilizes the Intel Xeon processor. The Broadcaster includes new and advanced encoding algorithms, user-friendly APIs for development, a remote management system and real-time encoding at full D1 resolution.

ViewCast showed off the Osprey-540, a professional digital and analog capture device designed specifically for streaming media applications. It offers an array of inputs, outputs and advanced features that allow streaming to seamlessly integrate with professional media equipment and workflow environment. Closed-caption extraction from analog and SDI inputs, enhanced audio/video synchronization and analog audio/video outputs for real-time monitoring are also new features on the Osprey-540. Video formats the device works with include Digital SDI and DV, analog composite and S-Video. On the audio side, the device offers Digital SDI, AES/EBU, analog balanced and unbalanced stereo. The Osprey-540 features hardware de-interlacing, scaling, cropping and color conversion.

Microsoft was showing off their relatively new Corona suite of compression technologies. The key feature being touted is the “instant” playback streams. Other features within the suite are a new audio codec with six discreet channels, 24-bit/96 kHz at data rates of 128 Kbits/s to 768 Kbits/s, and server-side playlists. The system comes with the Microsoft DRM system to protect your content.

Philips and Minerva Networks have formed a strategic marketing partnership to sell integrated hardware and software solutions for the distribution of video content over broadband IP networks.

Several vendors were showing off MPEG-4 based systems. Macrovision (yes, the company that protected our VHS tapes from being pirated) is working closely with iVast to provide an integrated suite of content protection services (from tamper resistance and copy protection to watermarking). Several vendors were demonstrating set-top boxes that included MPEG-4 decoders. Interestingly, we saw a wide range of supported bit rates with everything from standard-definition to high-definition content. Interoperability is a necessity for this format to become an accepted industry standard. Therefore, it is no surprise that interoperability of various MPEG-4 systems was being stressed at the MPEG-4 Industry Forum booth.

On the MPEG-7 front, only a few vendors/research institutes were directly participating in the MPEG-7 booth. Franhoufer showed an interesting demonstration of music track identification compliant with MPEG-7 using strictly the physical characteristics of the analog audio signal as input. Smoothy, a Japanese-based company, demonstrated the utility of MPEG-7 as an interoperability feature for their IP-based digital content distribution system. On the floor, metadata creation and capture was given a lot of lip service. When I asked the vendors what their development plans were, almost all said they were working on MPEG-7 compliant metadata specifications.

Could MPEG-7 compliant applications be the big news for NAB2003?

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