A new era in home and mobile entertainment has arrived!  

Encoding.com is thrilled to announce our partnership with the great folks over at Dolby Labratories, Inc. (NYSE: DLB).  Together, Encoding.com and Dolby are bringing true theater experiences to mobile devices, web browsers, STBs and connected TVs. 

So, what does this announcement mean for you? 

Using Dolby technologies via the Encoding.com platform, you will be able to do the following via the API and UI:

1. Utilize HE AAC and HE AAC+ audio codecs for superior audio quality… even at low bitrates.  You'll be blown away with the improvements on mobile and laptop devices.
2. Utilize the Dolby Digital Plus EAC3 audio codec for multi-channel audio which is great for speakers connected to computers or STBs connected to home theater systems.
3. Detect and repair audio features… even poor sounding source content can be improved.
4. Utilize Audio Normalization features to control loudness and to maximize audio levels for specific mobile devices.

Encoding.com is the first cloud-based encoding provider to enable Dolby audio for all video content providers.  Customers can utilize Dolby Digital Plus to deliver a studio-quality HD audio experience to a huge array of mobile devices, STBs, game consoles, Blu-ray players and connected TVs.  There are more than 640 million devices which support Dolby Digital.

"Dolby Digital Plus is a key part of high-definition entertainment and delivers a cinematic sound experience to consumers across a wide range of devices," said Jean-Christophe Morizur, Senior Director, Professional Solutions at Dolby Laboratories. "Encoding.com is a leader in Cloud encoding services and our collaboration enables service providers to deliver high-quality, multi-channel audio entertainment for services, devices and applications."

There was an extra day in February this year so we had a chance to fill this platform update with some major new features:

Microsoft Azure Cloud Storage Support
We are now pleased to support our 3rd commercial cloud storage provider, Microsoft's Windows Azure.  Now the Microsoft developer community (or any developer for that matter) can use a Windows Azure Blob as a source location for a job with encoding.com or chose to send the output of a encoding job to your Azure blob.  Please read our KB article for the proper syntax to send use an Azure Blob.

High Performance Aspera I/O
Aspera's fasp™ technology dramatically speeds transfer time over public networks making it a perfect compliment for cloud based video encoding.  During our internal tests, we couldn't even get our Aspera integration up to top speed as we were limited by our servers bandwidth every time.  Transferring your video to and from an Aspera Enterprise Server or Aspera Connect Server to Encoding.com over fasp:// will provide accelerated and encrypted file transfer as well as support for extremely large source videos.  Please see our API docs article the Aspera integration for more details.

Global Data Centers
We now support a total of 7 international Data Centers for video storage and processing.  On a per job basis you can specify the Data Center that is closest to your source video, drastically limiting download time.  No more sending videos from Sydney to Virginia!  Read our KB article on how to specify an data center for you next job.

Virginia
Northern California
Oregon
Singapore
Tokyo
Sao Paulo

New file type decoding RED(.R3D) and GotoMeeting (.G2M4)
We added two new major file formats to confirm our position as the industry leading decoder.  We can now decode RED's .R3D format which is created from the ultra high resolution RED Epic, Scarlet-X or RED One video cameras.  If you have not had a chance to see the 5000K output from a RED camera make sure you spend some time learning about RED as the camera has revolutionized the movie, commercial and fashion industry.  With the addition of GotoMeeting (.G24M) we can now decode the entire spectrum of GotoMeeting .G2M2, .G2M3, and G2M4.  See our complete list of supported input file formats.

HLS Encryption
Encoding.com now offers HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) Encryption.  You can now turn on or off HLS 128 bit encryption on a per job basis and either send us your keys with the API request or have us pull your key off of your own sever.  Please read our KB article for more details about HLS Encryption or a great Apple developer article on serve your keys.
 

Strip Chapter Metadata
We have added a new feature to automatically strip chapter meta data from your source videos.  This is most useful for FLV output destined for the Adobe Flash Media Server as Adobe flvcheck requires chapter data to be removed for proper playback.  Read our article on stripping meta data for more information.

Kindle Fire Preset
I don't have one but I saw an older gentlemen on a plane once with a Kindle Fire and he said he loved it so I thought we would create a one click  preset for preparing your video content for this beautiful full color screen.  Read the article on the Kindle Fire preset.

Oh ya and now you can search your encoding queue by media or task ID, really cool and difficult for us to implement.

We are in the process of reworking the information architecture of the encoding.com client interface and would love your feedback.  What features are currently missing from the interface?  What exisrting features could be implemented better? Speak now or forever hold your encoding queue!

We pushed this nice little upgrade to vid.ly today, here is what was included.

Drastic speed improvements on video load time.  We had some complaints about multi second load time of vidlys and reworked the logic of the device detection to be significantly faster.  Our qualitative testing has shown some big improvements, we will share any quantitative metrics when we have them available.  Please send us your feedback on the video load times.

Automatically upgrade a free vid.ly to a paid vid.ly.  Now any free vid.ly owner can visit their vid.ly url /upgrade  (e.g vid.ly/a1b2c3/upgrade) and add billing information to convert their free vid.ly to a paid vid.ly.  This feature is useful when a user creates a vid.ly, runs into their free 50GB limit monthly bandwidth limit and wants to convert it to a paid account.  

Not bad for a Monday, now on to the rest of the week.

It took us a little bit more time than expected to get it out the door the "right" way however we are now very pleased to announce the availability of a vid.ly analytics package delivering detailed browser and mobile device statistics via the new API call GetStatistics   We built the vid.ly analytics platform on Cassandra and join a growing number of companies (e.g  Facebook, Digg) who have deployed Cassandra to manage enormous amounts of data.  The vid.ly analytics package provides a deep analysis of your mobile device audience by providing viewership data on over 6000 mobile devices and tablets.    Vid.ly analytics is available as a webservice via our API allowing you to customize this data to meet your organization's individual needs and easily integrate the realtime data into your existing systems and media workflow.  Vid.ly analytics data can be pulled for a single vid.ly url, group of urls, or account wide on any date interval. Below is the data we are returning for a mobile device as well as web view:

                <col>Vendor</col>  (Desktop or Mobile)
                <col>Model</col>  (Mobile Device Manufacturer, Apple) 
                <col>Platform</col>  (Mobile Brand, iPhone )
                <col>OS</col> (Operating System, Windows)
                <col>Browser</col> (Browser, Firefox)
                <col>Browser Ver</col> (Browse,  9.0.1)
                <col>Hits</col> (Number of video plays)

And just one more thing...we have just also released a new API call UpdateMedia  This function allows users to update the source media for a vid.ly that has already been created.  This scenario occurs when a vid.ly is published or hardcoded and the preference is to reuse the same url as opposed to creating a new one.  This function also supports our new vanity URL feature which allows customers to reserve a vanity vid.ly, for example vid.ly/obama and continue to update it with new and relevant video content.
 

The vid.ly universal video service is now available within the Encoding.com UI, Watch Folder, and API.   All prepay or monthly Encoding.com customers can now chose the new video preset "vid.ly" to give this new innovative and powerful new service a test spin.

What is vid.ly?

Vid.ly is a universal video service delivered within a single short url and embed code.The vid.ly service seamlessly integrates a HTML5 video player, Flash video player, transcoding, storage, delivery, and device detection.  When you chose the vid.ly preset within the Encoding.com UI, Watch Folder, or API we automatically transcode your source video into 24 different video formats and create 5 thumbnails.  When processing is complete, we deliver a short url and embed code via email or a XML http post.  When the embed code is rendered within a HTML page we use browser or device detection to deliver the appropriate video format (H.264, Ogg, WEBM, or a Flash fallback)   If a mobile device visits the  short url directly we will use a powerful device detection to deliver the best quality viewing for experience for thousands of feature phones, popular tablets, and all major smart phones.

4 great reasons to use Vid.ly:

1. Implement an advanced mobile video strategy:  

Today's commercial online video platforms typically transcode your source video into only 3-4 formats to cover popular smart phones.  This least common denominator approach saves your video provider a lot of money in storage and transcoding costs but alienates a huge percentage of your mobile audience.  Vid.ly transcodes your video into 24 different formats and uses powerful device detection to deliver the correct video to 6000 smart phones, feature phones, and tablets.

2.  HTML 5 video strategy simplified

The simplicity and elegance of a  HTML 5 video strategy is attractive at first glance however upon deeper review requires a significant amount of preparation.  Each of the HTML5 video compatible browsers  support a different video codec (Safari/H.264, Chrome/WEBM/, Firefox/Ogg) and those that don't support HTML5 video (Internet Explorer) need a Flash fallback.  Vid.ly simplifies all of this by automatically transcoding your video into the necessary HTML5 video formats and handles all necessary browser detection.

3. QR Code direct to mobile video
QR Codes are an innovative way to seamlessly integrate online media with offline print campaigns.  If your QR codes link directly to static web pages your are losing yours audiences attention by forcing them to read text on a mobile device.  If your QR code links to a standard video player you are delivering a less than optimal video experience for all of the tablets, feature phones and smart phones.  If you send your QR codes to vid.ly short links you can rest assured that the majority of your audience has a high quality full screen viewing experience of your content.

4. Because vid.ly includes advanced features you didn't even know you needed:
Vid.ly includes Apple's iOS Advanced HLS Streaming:  When a compatible iOS devices visit your vid.ly powered video we do not simply serve up a single bitrate iOS compatible video file.  Vid.ly prepares your video for both an iPad and iPhone adaptive bitrate stream.  Apple's HLS Streaming prepares your video into 4 bitrates each in 10 second segments and will dynamically serve the bitrate most appropriate to the bandwidth of the individual client.  This means that if a user has a high bandwidth environment they can enjoy beautiful high bitrate video content on their iPad and if another user is trying to watch the same video on a 3G connection they will have a smooth video experience watching a lower bitrate version instead of the dreaded stuttering and stopping.
 

A future proof your mobile device strategy:  New smartphones and tablets are hitting the market at a rapid pace. When the vid.ly universal video service is deployed you can sit back and rest assured that we will automatically update your vid.ly library to support popular new devices.  Anyone spend the holiday season transcoding your video library into the Kindle Fire's optimal format?  Don't worry vid.ly has you covered.

Your CDN Choice: Vid.ly supports both the Amazon CloudFront CDN service as well as the Akamai CDN, you can chose which CDN you want to use on a per video basis.

Additional charges apply when using vid.ly see our pricing table for more details.  Vid.ly usage charges will appear on your Encoding.com usage invoice on the first day of each month for usage during the previous month.  Vid.ly is also available as a standalone API based service

The leaves are starting to change around the country and summer is coming to a close.   When we are not out taking pictures of the Aspen trees we are building new features for you.  This month was all about edge case bug fixes but we still managed to squeak out a few cool features  within our September release.

Async Audio Correction
Some of you have experienced some audio sync issues especially when your source had variable framerates, or had its own timescale problems.
You can now utilize a simple new feature in the API to resolve this problem: <audio_sync>1</audio_sync>
When used, we will adjust the output audio stream to match the source timestamps in # of samples per second.    Watch the infamous video engineer Markus Peek talk about Async in his short vid.ly video   

Fade IN/OUT for Audio and Fade IN/OUT to Black for Video
With our simple fade_in and fade_out parameters you can now add a dissolve during the encoding process.  Specify the start time of the dissolve and well as the length of the dissolve and we will automatically add this effect during the encoding process.  Great for a little post post product clean up work.  See our KB article on the topic for more details.

Advanced Roku Presets
5 Brand new Roku presets that have been tested and approved by Roku video engineers for optimal playback on the Roku set top box.  Roku HLS (multi bitrate adaptive http stream) and Roku 800kbps, 1200kbs at 640x480 as well as 1800kbps and 2700kbps at stunning 1280p.  We have watched ( I mean tested) all of these outputs on the new Roku2 and the results are unbelievable, definitely worth a try.  See our API docs for the specific Roku preset name.  

Almost As many bug fixes as leaves fell in my backyard
Optimized WebM default settings,  Fixed a bug where Apple ProRes source fails with rotate feature, RS Cloud Files as destination error, Apple ProRes encoded to fl9 error, iPad / iPod Streaming optimization, VP6 + rotation errors, logo parameter fixes with VP6, Noise reduction + 3gp - media's duration increased, Fixed errors with cropping that only appeared in AWS West DC, Sub user account permissions in UI, Rotate feature set to "if necessary" by default  from "no rotating" as previous default.  Turbo speed optimization for Apple HLS presets.

Our development team is busy working on features for you, here are all the new things we made available to you (free of charge) in our August 2011 platform release.

Support for H.264 Smooth Streaming and the Wowza Streaming Server.
We love the Wowza Streaming Server and so do our customers so we went ahead and created two optimized output profiles.  The first preset is designed for single bitrate streaming and can be sent to the destination of your choice or directly to your Wowza Streaming server.   The second multi bitrate preset utilizes Microsoft Smooth Streaming and will generate multi bitrates, the SMIL index file as well as the streaming manifest file for each bitrate.   Both presets are tested and approved by the Wowza support team so no need to fiddle with encoding settings again. Read our KB article on both presets.

Clive is a media omnivore, he will ingest almost anything. Now we can decode: VC1, Quicktime DV, and SWF and many more.
We have upgraded one of our encoding engines and  with it comes a bunch of new features as well as a ton more PAL/NTSC decode support.  For example we can now ingest a lot of new Quicktime codecs: DV, DVVCPro PAL 25/50, DVCProNTSC 25/50.  Two versions of SWF: On2VP6 and Sorenson H263, MXF: DV and MPEG2 (IMX 30/40/50 & OP1a) as well as VC1 PAL/NTC in a WMV wrapper.  See out KB article on complete supported input formats.

Roku Preset
Roku has built a fantastic piece of hardware.  A few of us swear by them at home and we are starting to get questions about Roku video around the office so so we created a Roku preset so you can load up your content on Roku and not worry about researching supported video specs.  MPEG-4 part 14 (.mp4)  Chose "Roku" from the web interface, watch folders, or API to give it a try.  Read more.

Direct S3 Source Encoding
Sometimes little things make big difference and sometime we don't always do things right the first time.  Now we have an option to encode your source video hosted off of S3 directly from your bucket as opposed to copying the file to our S3 bucket before processing.  This small change yields good speed improvements.  Simply add ?nocopy to the end of your S2 source video path within the watch folder or API.  Read more. 

Maintain Audio Parameters
If you want to process your videos with us but don't want our system to touch your pristine audio settings chose <audio_codec>copy</audio_codec>  and we will maintain all audio parameters during the transcoding process.  Read More.

PNG with alpha channel as logo source
If the logo file you want to use on your video's watermark is a PNG file with an alpha channel we can now maintain the transparency.  Set  logo_mode equal to 1, to make it happen.   Read More. 

We just finished cooking up a nice little release and pushed it to production on July 1st.  Here are the highlights of what is new:

The Give and Get Referral Program.  Now you can send 10GB of  free encoding to your friends and colleagues and we will reward you with 10GB (Up to 100GB total) of encoding for spreading the news.  If you are on a Monthly Plan you can store these credit away so that you never have any overage fees and if you are on a PrePay Plan the credit will be added to your current account balance.  And the best part is earned GB never expire.  To access the program simply login to the Encoding.com and client interface and click "Earn Free GB" and use our nifty viral tools to get the word out and start "giving and getting"

Specify AWS Processing Regions.  On a per API call basis you can force processing on either the AWS East Coast data center or the AWS West Coast Data Center.  We will soon be rolling out support for AWS's Asian and European Data Centers.  See the latest changes section of the API to see the new API tags.

Turbo and Twin Turbo are now available in the Watch Folders.  Previously our two blazing fast turbo encoding options were only available to API users, now both are available as manual flags within the client interface.   These optional turbo options will send your jobs to a dedicated 8 core machine with multi threading enabled to deliver a staggering 6-8X processing time improvements over our standard jobs and a 2-4X improvement over our standard turbo for encoding into all modern codecs (H.264, WEBM, Theora etc)

Added Custom Presets to Watch Folders Creating and managing custom presets is now available in the Watch Folder.

New API calls, RestartMedia, RestartMediaErrors, RestartMediaTask  We have used these API calls for some time internally and just opened them up to the public to help automate your workflow in the event a job does not process successfully the first time.  RestartMedia restarts the entire job including all output tasks.  RestartMediaErrors will restart only the output tasks that resulted in an error within a job and RestartMediaTask allows you to specify a specific output task to restart.  Visit our API Docs for more details.

More Speed Improvements to iPhone Streaming Now we are using 10 parallel upload streams to delivery the large volume iPhone streaming segments to your destination.  This change produces a 100% reduction in delivery time.  For example in our tests a iPhone Streaming output with 586 files with a total size 256MB took 330 seconds to upload before the optimization an 150 seconds after the optimization.

Fixed a variety of  edge case problems in which we were incorrectly reading the timescale and duration of source Quicktime files.

Big thanks to John McIlwain from Alum Rock Software for building this nifty iPhone/iPad app for monitoring your encoding.com queue on the go.  Simply download and install the FREE app on your iOS device, plug in your API user ID and API key and take your encoding queue with you. Compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad version 4.2 or later.