The Encoding.com team is excited to be selected as one of Streaming Media's 100 Companies That Matter Most in Online Media for a second consecutive year!

Learn how AOL On Network and Revision3 use cloud encoding 

to acheive their business objectives.

AOL On Network

AOL On Network collaborated with Encoding.com on high volume, scalable, cloud-based encoding to power properties such as TechCrunch, The Huffington Post, 5min Media and many more.

Revision3

Learn how Revison3 replaced their on-premise encoding infrastructure with cloud based encoding from Encoding.com.

The benefits of video encoding in the cloud are clear and have been widely adopted by leading media publishers, agencies, video platforms and just about everyone who manages video. And in 2012, we can add Hollywood to the list. With cloud scalability, parallel processing and support for the ever-changing video technology landscape, the benefits of video transcoding-as-a-service have finally attracted long-form premium content providers.

The case for Hollywood to utilize cloud transcoding is undeniably strong. VOD providers and Studios have previously been limited to either enlisting the high priced services of old-school media service providers such as Technicolor, Deluxe and Rovi, or investing millions in transcoding infrastructure and internal resources to manage in-house.  Moreover, it’s increasingly complex for Hollywood to navigate the growing multitude of online distribution channels including “Over-The-Top” VOD providers (Netflix, Apple TV, Hulu), mobile devices (iOS, Android, Windows), cable/satellite services and physical format media (Blu-ray, DVD, etc).  So, why has Hollywood avoided partnering with cloud transcoding solution providers?

In the past, cloud video transcoding has failed to address several key checkboxes essential to supporting the specific requirements of Hollywood content providers such as high-speed transfer of large “long-form” video files to off-site cloud processing centers, secure transcoding over private vs. public cloud architecture to mitigate piracy concerns, and several critical features such as support for DRM and UltraViolet.

Encoding.com’s recent launch of the EDC Private Cloud represents a potential game changer for Hollywood and is quickly winning the attention and business of several key players. Perhaps the most notable benefits to Hollywood include:

• High Speed file ingest and processing with 1Gbps ingest/egress and “faster than real-time” HD video processing over 32 core multi-threading processors. As a result, Hollywood studios can reduce project time cycles and accelerate time-to-market.

• Privately managed file transfer and cloud processing infrastructure for maximum security. Studios can even deliver their content to Encoding.com’s front door to ensure every aspect of the project is securely managed.

• A full-suite of required Hollywood features including support for edit codecs, Ultraviolet Common File Format, subtitling, Widevine Digital Rights Management and more.

Whether you are a long-form, premium content provider, or a high-volume web content publisher, you can leverage Encoding.com’s automated, powerful platform to reduce your transcoding costs while accelerating your time-to-market.

Football season has officially kicked-off and that means Fantasy Football players around the globe are readying their game faces!  When Wieden + Kennedy and ESPN asked us to help them push the online transcoding envelope for a cool new video project, it was game on!  

Here is the concept: Each Fantasy Football league commissioner would receive an online toolkit with simple instructions for participating in a simulated interview with Sport Center host Robert Flores. A pre-recorded video of Robert would ask the participating commissioner a series of pre-recorded questions and provide a fixed amount of time for the commissioner to record his/her answer via their web camera. Once the interview was completed, the recorded footage would be sent to the Encoding.com API for transcoding and other finishing touches via a series of API calls.  

To accomplish this challenge, Encoding.com built a set of advanced editing features that are now available to all Encoding.com customers. These features include: PIP Picture in Picture, Split Screen, Overlays, and Youtube as a destination with full meta data.  Here is an example of their workflow:

Step1
ESPN sends two source videos with the interviewer and Commissioner in addition to an overlay background that matches the Sports Center television experience.

Step2 
A notification is sent using the GetStatus API call that Step 1 has completed processing. Next a request is sent to concatenate all source videos (intro, interview questions, split screens, closing) in a timed sequence and into one output that includes the ESPN ticker and name labels as an overlay.

Step3
Encoding.com sends a final compiled output to the YouTube ESPN Fantasy Football Channel complete with meta data.

As avid football fans, we were excited to participate in this ground breaking project and offer even more cool new features to the Encoding.com community.

The Process                                                                                                                    

                     

The Final Product

I am often asked the question "when does it make sense to use Vid.ly instead of YouTube?" Although both solutions offer their own distinctive advantages, Encoding.com customers typically use Vid.ly to accomplish a number of business objectives that YouTube is not built to support.  When deciding on the best solution for your video project, consider the following evaluation criteria:

Specializing in Universal Mobile Delivery

YouTube's model requires free video hosting at massive scale. Unlike Vid.ly, YouTube can't afford to encode your video in every format necessary to guarantee best-possible quality to the nearly 6,000 mobile devices available on the market. A Vid.ly video will look better than a YouTube video on nearly any mobile device. 

Updating Your Messaging


Need to update videos linked to the QR codes in your catalog, magazine, newspaper, billboard or other out-of-home advertising? YouTube won't let you update a video on their site or using their API. It's impossible. Vid.ly makes it easy. Need to update the curriculum in your OSHA safety videos? Vid.ly can handle that for you. Need to update the videos in your archive securely and without making any changes to your site? Vid.ly says no problem. Boom! Point, Vid.ly.


Branding Your Video

YouTube provides an acceptable medium for video delivery under the condition that you are amenable to YouTube’s terms of service. These terms include granting YouTube control over the branded playback environment, as well as non-exclusive rights to use and advertise on your content in any way they see fit. If maintaining control of your brand messaging is critical, Vid.ly provides a powerful suite of features designed to enable video delivery on your terms. YouTube watermarks every video you embed with their logo.  Using Vid.ly, your video stays your video. Vid.ly makes it easy to automate the remixing and editing of user generated video with branded content (watermarking, stitching, voiceovers, etc). You will have complete control over your video's branding with a single CSS customization for both the Vid.ly Flash and HTML5 video players. Boom! Point, Vid.ly.

Securing Your IP

YouTube does not offer any security features. Vid.ly is the only option when you require review for approval prior to publishing (ex. moderation of user-generated video), secure delivery to all devices, access restrictions on those devices, or preparation of content for monetization (ex. online courses). Vid.ly enables the level(s) of security you need to achieve your objectives. Need to restrict access based on the viewer's location? Vid.ly can handle that. Need to restrict access to a specific time frame? Vid.ly can handle that. Need to make sure your video can only be seen on your website? Vid.ly can handle that for you. YouTube can't handle any of that. YouTube is not secure – ever. Boom! Point, Vid.ly.

Engaging Your Customers

YouTube offers a “no-frills” approach to video delivery. Your video deserves “frills.” When a prospect watching your videos is valuable to you, the “frills” are what get the job done right. Vid.ly offers QR Code support to drive in-store and at-the-ad views. Vid.ly offers super-simple moderation of UGV contributions. Vid.ly makes your video play on any device. Vid.ly lets you update videos as they become obsolete. Need to update the video in that QR code you printed on 20,000 billboards? Vid.ly makes it easy. YouTube makes it impossible. Vid.ly Analytics also makes it easy to measure user engagement on each platform and device. People call this closing the loop. Boom! Point, Vid.ly.

Supporting You

YouTube does not provide customer support. Vid.ly offers live technical support, expert consultation, and professional services.  Which would you rather depend on? Boom! Point, Vid.ly.

YouTube is in the business of making your content fit into their business model. If your business creates video to share your cute cat with the world or make your grandson laugh, then please ignore me. YouTube is perfect for you. If you create video to engage with customers and generate business, then you should consider building your own branded content hub. Vid.ly gives you the building blocks that put the video sizzle in any app or site you need. Your video, your way.

Please, tell YouTube he’s they're fired. And give me or my team a call. We’re happy to help.

Life is never dull working for the world’s largest transcoding service provider. Where do we find the energy to power through massive volumes of video content while rapidly growing our business? The answer is juicing. No…not the Barry Bonds type of juicing…the healthy kind. After months spent honing their skills, Encoding.com’s five most talented juice artisans have developed the following recipes that are sure to improve your health…and the health of your business. Enjoy!

Rockstar’s Delight – Recipe by Jeff Malkin

As company president and a local musician, Jeff spends much of the day throttling his voice box to spread the Encoding.com gospel and entertain fans. This miracle recipe is sure to sooth even the most strained of vocal chords:

• 2 apples (green -- golden delicious are good for juicer)
• 2 carrots (medium to large)
• 1 lemon (no peel)
• 1 chunk of ginger (adds nice spice for the throat -- about 1/2 thumb size)
• 3 celery stalks
• Lots of green kale or spinach (3 bushy stalks of kale or 2 big handfuls of spinach)
• Once mixed, the color will be brownish green (tastes amazing, looks not so good)

​

The Bleep Bloop Bleep – Recipe by Markus Peek

As a world-class compressionist, Marcus requires 1.21 gigawatts of juice power to fuel his supercomputer brain. When not extracting syntax elements from H.264 bitstreams, Markus clocks-up his processor speed with this tasty elixir:

• 1 large carrot
• 1 slice of beet
• 1 leaf of kale
• 1 cup of spinach
• 1 cup of mint leaves
• 1 half peach
• 4 strawberries,
• 1 kiwi
• 1 slice of ginger
• 1 tablespoon of honey
• 1 half pear,
• 1 tablespoon of flaxseed oil
• 1 peeled banana
• 1 cup of coconut water
• 1 cup of tea

​

The Marathon Man – Recipe by Ryan Noland

A former military man, Ryan lives a disciplined lifestyle of healthy eating and exercise. When not helping customers or at the gym, he maintains his athletic prowess by gulping down glasses of this all natural energy drink:

• 1 tomato
• 1 pear
• 1 apple
• 1/2 cucumber
• 1/2 stalk of cucumber
• 1 stalk of broccoli
• 2 hand fulls of spinach

​

SchwartzJuice  - Recipe by Jesse Schwartz

Named for its inventor, this flavorful blend is perfect for sharpening one's sales skills to help qualify customer needs and identify best-fit solutions:

• 1 pear
• 2 apples
• 1 lemon (cut into a square to get peel off)
• 1 pinch of parsley
• 2 large carrots
• 2 cups of Spinach

​

Oracle Juice - Recipe by Karalyn Capone

Karalyn, our resident Oracle, knows everything about everything. She is as competent with a crowbar as she is with a compression algorithm. The following recipe will not imbue its drinker with Karalyn's omniscience (ask her what that means)...but it tastes much better than her motorcycle sounds:

• 1 handful of parsley
• 1 lime - no skin
• 1 chunk of ginger
• 4 carrots
• 2 apples
• 1 bunch of kale
• 1 lemon - no skin

Webs, the world's largest do-it-yourself solution for creating great looking websites and recently acquired by Vistaprint, has integrated Encoding.com's Vid.ly into its SiteBuilder3 website builder platform to power its premium video product.  Now everyone can enhance their websites with video without requiring any technical or coding skills. 

Webs has made it very simple for its users to enable video on their sites which can then be viewed by any browser or mobile device.  Webs users can upload their videos via the SiteBuilder3 interface.  Vid.ly then converts the video into a variety of formats and bitrates appropriate for all popular browsers and mobile devices.  Webs users are provided a short URL and embed code to publish on their sites.  When visitors click on the video, Vid.ly detects what device / browser they are using and delivers the appropriate video format. 

"Video content is a key element of any modern, professional website and Encoding.com's Vid.ly, integrated into SiteBuilder3, makes building a website that includes rich video content easier than ever," said Haroon Mokhtarzada, co-founder of Webs and VP of Global Digital Products for Vistaprint.

No design or coding expertise required. Start building your video site today!

The good folks over at RED do a fantastic thing every summer.  With an eye on the future filmmakers of the world, they open up their Hollywood, CA studio to children of all ages and conduct a summer camp based on the most advanced digital cinema equipment in the market place.  For 5 straight days kids romp around the historic RED Studio (where I Love Lucy, Seinfeild, and many other hit shows were filmed) and get their  hands on with the exact same production equipment that Spiderman, The Hobbit and Criminal Minds are shot on.  An entire army of film students serve as counselors for the week and teach everything from camera set up, lightning, 3D, post production, editing and digital workflow.  At the end of the week, parents gather in RED's 4K digital theatre for a film festival to screen all their children's hard work.  Other than really stoked kids, there is another bi product of the week, hundreds of TBs of 4K RED RAW footage.  Since Encoding.com is the only cloud encoding provider to decode RED's proprietary RAW video format (.R3D) we thought we would stop by and help them transcode all this super high definition content for web and mobile delivery.  Utilizing our integration with Aspera we uploaded source content from the RED Studio to Encoding.com at 600Mbps and in a matter of hours quickly transcoded all the kid's movies in paralell into 24 output renditions for all major HTML5, Flash, mobile and tablet devices on the market.   Check out this great video made by one of the older kids that shows what camp life is all about.

 

Someone once shared a profoundly simple sentiment about online video with me..."there are really only two ways video is used commercially online today, business's are either selling with video or selling video."  If you agree with this statment, it means that to date vid.ly has been great for businesses who want to sell with video (where the most important objective is to get their product or service message out to as many people as possible). However, has not been a great solution for selling video.   If the goal is to present premium content, then having robust video protection tools are a must.  Today, we are happy to announce a powerful suite of security features that allow you to secure your video in 3 distinct ways:

Token: With token based authentication, you can ensure the vid.ly can only be played from a specific domain name or set of domain names.  Using token based authentication will prohibit someone going into your site's source code and grabbing your embed code for use on an un authorized website.

Time: With vid.ly start and expiration dates, you can run a vid.ly for a specific time period.  Time based security is great for a time sensitive video like video associated with an event or campaign.

Location: With IP based access rights, vid.ly will only play for a specified IP address or range of IP addresses.  Use location based authentication to allow your video to play only for users on an office network (like internal training videos) or only within certain geographic regions.

All three of these new security options are now available via the <protect> section of the Vid.ly API.

New Support for Smooth Streaming (MSS) and Adobe's HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS)

Adaptive Bitrate HTTP media delivery offers an efficient, scalable and cost effective alternative to traditional RTMP streaming.  Encoding.com gives you the power to decide which of the competing  technologies are right for your audience and now prepares media compliant with all 3 of the dominant HTTP segmenting technologies backed by Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft.  We are pleased to announce support for both Smooth Streaming (MSS) and Adobe's HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) to our existing portfolio of Wowza SMIL streaming protocol and Apple's HTTP Live Streaming (HLS).  

Smooth Streaming is a great choice for those targeting the Microsoft Silverlight desktop client, Xbox 360, or Windows 7 devices.  Most reports gauge Silverlight plugin penetration on the desktop at about 75-80%%. All new Windows 7 phones are bundled with Silverlight, and Microsoft is making a big push to use the Xbox as the center of its living room media strategy.  Choose the "Smooth Streaming" preset from the Encoding.com client interface, watch folder or API and we will generate the single or multi-bitrate video files (ismv) along with required client (ismc) and server (ism) streaming manifest files.  Read the Smooth Streaming KB article or API docs to get started now.

Adobe's HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) utilizes Adobe's packaging technology to prepare files for delivery on their Flash Media Server (or recently renamed Adobe Media Server) or any Apache web server with the Adobe HTTP module installed.  While Flash Mobile has an unknown future, Flash desktop plugin (HDS requires Flash 10.1 of later - released June 2012) is over 90% browser penetration making HDS a solid choice for adaptive bitrate delivery to the desktop.  Choose the "HTTP Dynamic Streaming" preset from the Encoding.com client interface, watch folder or "hds" from the Encoding.com API and we will generate the streaming manifest(.f4m), fragmented video files (.f4v) and the individual bitrate index files (.f4x) Read the Adobe Dynamic HTTP Streaming KB article or API docs to get started now.

Complete Dolby Audio Support
The Dolby Media Generator (DMG) is now live and integrated into the Encoding.com platform providing and greatly enhanced audio experience. DMG offers both HE-AAC and HE-AACv2 which offer especially rich audio quality at low bitrates when compared with the faac engine.  HE-AAC really shines at low bitrates, as within the 64Kbps audio-only fallback required by Apple's HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) protocol, an Apple requirment for all video over a certain length within an iOS app.  Dolby Digital Plus (EAC3) is also now available which offer fantastic multi-channel audio to video files destined for set-top box destinations connected to a multi channel audio system.

Listen to the difference in dynamic ranges between FAAC and HE-AAC at various bitrates:

Old FAAC at 56Kbps (Tinseltown to the Boogiedown (Radio Edit)

New HE-ACC at 56Kbps (Tinseltown to the Boogiedown (Radio Edit)

New HE-ACCv2 at 48Kbps (Tinseltown to the Boogiedown (Radio Edit)

New HE-ACC at 120Kbps (Tinseltown to the Boogiedown (Radio Edit)

Dolby Digital Plus EC3 (320Kbps) (Tinseltown to the Boogiedown (Radio Edit)
(Download only as EC3 is decoded only by compatible multi channel audio systems)

Decoding Support for the Speex and wmalossless audio codec.
Many Flash(flv) and VOIP recording solutions like (Adobe Air, Red5, and RTMPLite) record using the Speex audio codec.  Speex has held the #2 on the Enocding.com user feature request system for months yet none of the open source and commercial encoding engines we operate could decode the Speex audio codec so we compiled a special version just for the job.

API Workflow Enhancements 

• Allow video "start from" or "duration" in sub-second intervals (not just second intervals)
• Added the ability to to stop or cancel a job in progress, previously you could only do this when the job was in completed status.  
• Added the ability to restart only and individual task or only tasks that finished with a error, previously you could only restart all jobs.  
• New API notification field <notify_encoding_errors> which will only notify when a job returns an error, great for error monitoring workflows