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.

 

I'd like to thank the great folks who run ad:tech for inviting Encoding.com to participate in the Startup Spotlight series and competition.  It was awesome sharing the Innovation Alley with many other interesting and soon-to-be successful startups.

We're also excited and honored to announce that Encoding.com won the coveted Innovation Award for Video.  We showcased some of our work powering video campaigns for amazing agencies such as Tribal DDB's "Bud Light High-Five League" user-generated video (UGV) competition for Anheuser Busch; Firstborn's "Try a New Look" branded video mashup app for iPhones and iPads for Pepsi's SoBe brand; and Creative Asylum's "GLEE Give a Note" campaign supporting music education programs for high schools around the country.  You can view the presentation below.

Special shout out to DOTSTUDIOZ, Addroid and SeaWell Networks for providing stiff competition.  Excellent presentations.  

San Francisco's original "school of rock", Blue Bear School of Music provides music education to kids who want to rock but need some help.  On Friday night, they held their big annual fundraiser event headlined by the legendary New Orleans funkmeisters, the Funky Meters.  Marcus Yelton, head of fundraising for the school, did an incredible job putting together a stellar event starting with scrumptious hors d'oeuvres courtesy of renowned restaurant 1300 Fillmore, a couple of rocking sets from kids in the school (dude, they rocked Phoenix, Guns-n-Roses and then with the Meters), and of course, the Meters. 

Hats off to Marcus and everyone who made it happen.  Can't wait for next year:  Trombone Shorty, the Funky Meters, who's next?

We're very proud here at Encoding.com to have participated in such a great event, and for helping kids acheive the love of playing music . 

"For those about to rock, we salute you!"

Blowing our own horn?  Clearly.

Encoding.com was recently included in Gartner's 2011 "Cool Vendors" in Enterprise Communications and Network Services report alongside some very interesting companies like Twilio, Aryaka, Talari Networks and others.  I'd love to share what they wrote about us but Gartner's report is for subscribers only.  You'll just have to take my word for it... very "cool."  Actually, here's what they said we could write:

"Gartner noted in its key findings that the selected vendors are developing innovative approaches that make the deployment of cloud-based communications and networking services more secure, reliable and efficient and that these vendors offer attractive subscription-based pricing, along with favorable terms and conditions, that are enabling cloud-based services to be cost-effective for emerging communications and networking uses."

My PR folks asked me to promote this inclusion but I'm not sure how to promote something that's not actually publicly available.  Sorry to throw you under the bus PR team -- but, any press is good press... right?  We actually have some more exciting new features to be announcing in the coming weeks.  Until then, just know that Gartner said we're the greatest new service to launch since Pets.com.

We ordered a big batch of super cool American Apparel  Encoding.com t-shirts and want to give them away to all of our Max customers as a way of saying thank you for your business.  If you want a t-shirt and are presently a Max customer in good standing.  Please send us an email with your size request (SMALL/MEDIUM/LARGE.) and a current mailing address.

Thanks again for your continued support!

It’s that time of year again.  Summer’s over, kids are back in school, Jets disappoint in Week 1, and of course, the Streaming Media Reader’s Choice Awards.  Encoding.com was nominated in four categories (thank you) and we’d very much appreciate your support in voting for us if you believe we’re providing a good service.  The PR definitely helps.

We’re nominated in these categories:

1) Best Streaming Innovation 2010
2) Best Online Video Company 2010 – Technology
3) Encoding Software Under $1000
4) Mobile Video Platform

To vote, please click here — should only take a couple of minutes.

We have lots of exciting product announcements coming so keep a look out.

Cheers,

- Gregg and Jeff

We were nominated for the best Transcoding Service provider in Streaming Media’s European Readers’ Choice Awards.  We could certainly use your help so we can bring this award home to California.  If you like our service, please take 30 seconds to follow the link below and give us a nod.  Much appreciated.

Click here to vote for Encoding.com in the best Transcoding Service category.

If you don’t think we’re worthy, we welcome your feedback to help us continue to improve Encoding.com.  Thanks!

The recent issue of Streaming Media magazine entitled, “Editors’ Picks 2010 – The Best of the Best” features Encoding.com as one of the top ten hottest companies in the world of online video.   They wrote, “At the beginning of 2009, it looked like cloud transcoding was about to explode in much the same way that online video platforms had the year before.  But while a handful of others have entered the market, there’s already a clear leader of the pack. Encoding.com — has got everything going for it; the company understands what its customers need — fast, easy-to-use, and reliable transcoding to multiple formats — and has poured all of its resources into doing that better than anyone else out there.”

Wow!  We are so thankful and humbled to be included in a list that recognizes such amazing companies as Netflix, Amazon, HowCast, BoinxTV, Kyte, LiveStream, Visible Measures, Winnov and YuMe.

We’re very appreciative of the hundreds of our customers who continue to share their honest feedback to help us improve, drive and prioritize our product roadmap, and most of all, trust us enough to manage their video encoding requirements and build Encoding.com into their video workflow.

Thank you Streaming Media magazine.  While we appreciate the accolade, now is no time to rest.  With the video format wars heating up, we promise to continue working as best we can to simplify the ever-evolving video technology space so you, our customers, can focus on your core competencies.

Thanks for your continued support,

- Gregg and Jeff and the entire Encoding.com team.

Wow. Thank you very much for helping choose us as a finalist for a second category in the Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Awards: Best Transcoding SaaS.

Winners will be announced at a gala reception at the Streaming Media West show on November 19th in San Jose, CA. Your continued support is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
- Gregg and Jeff