Customer Case Studies

A great technical overview of who uses encoding.com and how they do it.

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Web-original content

About

Revision3, an Internet video pioneer and leading special interest video network, creates and produces all-original weekly and daily episodic video programs for over 23 million viewers per month. All of its video content is 100% HD and can run from a minute to over an hour.  Focused originally on content targeting a techie base, Revision3 has recently expanded into the gaming, political and entertainment verticals. Popular shows include Diggnation, the Young Turks and Tekzilla.

Encoding Challenge

Producing high-quality HD video across the web and mobile platforms is an imperative for the production team at Revision3. The team is responsible for 28 shows each with one or more episodes per week. To maximize viewership, Revision3 generates multiple output renditions per source video so fans can watch their favorite Revision3 content anytime from any device: web, mobile or set-top box. And, as new distribution channels and formats become available, Revision3 needs an encoding solution that can adapt quickly as the technologies continue to evolve.

How do they use Encoding.com?

Revision3 generates seven output renditions for each source video: four .mp4 files ranging from 1280 x 720 down to 160 x 90, a .wmv rendition, a custom MPEG2 rendition for TiVo, and one audio only.  With output quality a critical requirement, Revision3 takes advantage of our advanced MPEG2 settings including closed GOPs, inserting b-frames and other geeky controls that only video production guys could love. Speed is also important and Revision3 is able to meet their time requirements by utilizing our Turbo feature to light up multi-core, multi-threaded servers. 

“Working with Encoding.com has enabled our Production team to focus its energies on generating superb quality output while eliminating the cost and headache of managing encoding infrastructure in-house,” said Jim Louderback, CEO at Revision3. “Their team has been very responsive to our needs and continues to build out new features to meet our evolving requirements.”

iPhone/iPad Streaming

About

Hurley makes kick-ass clothing and accessories. They believe that “music and art are the common threads that bring us all together.” Hurley is a lifestyle company influenced by surfing, fashion, skating, snow sports, music and art. The one thing they’re not… is a video encoding company.

Encoding Challenge

Hurley recently launched their new iPhone application called U.S. Open of Surfing including lots of very cool videos. Apple now requires all iPhone applications that contain video to adhere to their proprietary HTTP Streaming technology. If you don’t know, preparing videos for this format is very complex. Good thing the Hurley team came knocking.

How do they use Encoding.com?

Encoding.com has made the complex process of converting video to HTTP Streaming incredibly simple. Apple requires that videos be segmented into 10 second chunks with each segment encoded into four different bit rates. And, the lowest bit rate rendition must be audio only with still images. Ouch. Hurley is able to leverage the Encoding.com iPhone Streaming preset to pull videos from their Rackspace cloud storage, encode into the Apple recommended multiple bit rates, and deliver the full package (encoded segments and .m3u8 stream instruction file) directly to their CDN for streaming.

For more specific info on our iPhone Streaming features, see here.

Premium Content

About

MTV introduced us to the world of music videos and reality TV. Everything they do is video.

With 150 channels worldwide, MTV Networks owns and operates favorites including MTV: Music Television, MTV2, mtvU, MTV Tr3s, VH1,  VH1 Classic, VH1 Soul, CMT, Logo, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Noggin, The N, COMEDY CENTRAL, TV Land, Spike TV, Atom, AddictingGames.com, Shockwave.com, GameTrailers.com, Harmonix, Neopets, Quizilla, Xfire, Y2M as well as MTVN International.

Encoding Challenge

Let’s be real, MTV has one of the largest encoding farms on the planet. Why would they use Encoding.com? In one specific use case, MTV must ingest music video content from music labels around the world. However, MTV’s workflow is designed for content produced in-house. Not only were they looking for a solution to manage the various formats they receive from the labels, their preference was that content coming from outside never “land” on their servers.

How do they use Encoding.com?

Encoding.com enables MTV to manage all the crazy video formats thrown at them by its label partners — and never has to touch these videos.  MTV has integrated the Encoding.com API into its workflow. The record labels send us high-resolution videos in MPEG2 format. Using a single API call, MTV creates 6 .mp4 renditions at multiple bit rates and frame sizes, and generates thumbnails in 3 different sizes every ten seconds. Encoding.com delivers the encoded videos directly to Akamai for streaming. Very cool!

Future?

Our hope is that MTV looks to Encoding.com to help with user-generated content initiatives.

iPhone/iPad Streaming

About

For 35 years, millions of Americans and citizens of the world have turned to MacNeil/Lehrer Productions for the solid, reliable reporting that has made the PBS NewsHour one of the most trusted news programs in television. And, averaging over 1 million unique visitors each week, the site features Extra, an interactive current events site for students and teachers that includes more than 150 lesson plans for bringing current events into the classroom. We are huge fans here at Encoding.com.

Encoding Challenge

The PBS team approached us to produce an iPhone/iPad friendly version (in segmented mpeg2 transport streams) of their show every night. Of course, with news reporting, the rapid turnaround of content is an obvious imperative. Case in point, a leading cable news channel who shall remain nameless, spends millions of dollars on its encoding infrastructure each year to ensure fast and high-quality global ingestion and delivery of video content for all devices.

How do they use Encoding.com?

For PBS NewsHour, we’re able to help them with their workflow requirements for slightly less than millions of dollars. Specifically, the show is chopped into 6-10 MP4 segments each requiring transcoding into Apple’s proprietary HTTP Streaming format.

As they said, “We’re really thrilled you guys offer this service, because we do an enormous amount of video processing in house, and this new Apple requirement might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

As we like to say, “Let us manage the encoding so you can focus on creating content.”

Video Training/Education

About

Macmillan is the new face of a company with a rich history in the publishing industry. Since 1843, they have published works from Lewis Carroll, William Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, and Henry James. Its prominence in trade publishing continues to this day, but it also has great strengths in the educational and scholarly fields including Nature magazine, widely considered the world’s leading scientific journal. A main focus today is on educating leaders and thinkers of tomorrow with its college and academic titles, and magazines and journals.

Encoding Challenge

When a college student buys a textbook published by Macmillan, they also get a subscription to additional content and services online. Excellent. The Macmillan guys decided to take it further and launch a video annotation service where professors could add text comments to informational and user-generated video content. “And as you can see, here is where the sperm cell penetrates the egg.” With the source video content coming from many different sources, managing all the various formats was a steep hurdle to overcome. And, Macmillan would like to role this out to over 1,500 courses!

How do they use Encoding.com?

Macmillan recognized quickly that soon they will be managing the ingest and conversion of thousands of videos in many different flavors. They have integrated the Encoding.com API such that the workflow is the following: end-users upload videos to a Macmillan storage location, we then download and encode the videos, we deliver to a Limelight (CDN) directory and Macmillan then adds the specific annotations which are attached to keyframes. Since video quality is important, all encodes utilize a 1600k bit rate and the x264 library for H.264 output.

Audio Only Conversion

About

Giant Realm, Inc. is a rapidly growing media company that helps marketers reach the coveted and elusive 18 to 34-year old dude online. Exclusively representing a publisher group of more than 70 premium destinations, Giant Realm delivers authentic content and caters to communities across a variety of popular entertainment categories. The company focuses on video game communities, film, television, sports, comics, humor and lifestyle and reaches 60 million guys worldwide every month and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Burst Media Corporation.

Encoding Challenge

Giant Realm works with many publishers who provide video content in lots of different flavors. It’s Giant Realm’s responsibility to process and convert these videos quickly, and optimize the videos for quality and download speed. As their business is rapidly growing, it’s extremely important for them to have an automated video workflow that can support many formats, deliver high-quality output, accelerate turnaround time and scale huge.

How do they use Encoding.com?

“Advertisers rely on Giant Realm to provide access to cutting-edge content that attracts and engages the savvy young male audience. This audience of influencers expects the highest quality online experiences on their leading-edge display devices,” said James Green, President of Giant Realm. “Integrating Encoding.com’s transcoding service into our video production workflow ensures we deliver production quality video, and has improved our turnaround times as well as reduced our costs.”

Specifically, Giant Realm creates five output tasks for each source video: three MP4 video files at various bitrates and frame sizes, and two thumbnail images at different sizes from the same point in each video. The Encoding.com team works closely with the Giant Realm team to continue optimizing their workflow.

Mobile Device Coverage

About

Focusing on the needs of scientists, Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is a publisher of high-impact scientific and medical information online and in print. Online, Nature.com attracts over 5 million visitors per month. And, Nature Education’s Scitable.com is a rapidly growing site that provides a free science library and personal learning tool concentrating on genetics, the study of evolution, variation, and the rich complexity of living organisms. I feel smarter just writing that.

Encoding Challenge

Nature’s mission is to make its content available to EVERYONE. To accomplish this mission in the mobile phone space is very complex with the multitude of OS platforms and phone specifications including supported video and audio formats, screen sizes, recommended bitrates, etc…

How do they use Encoding.com?

Nature provided Encoding.com with a list of target mobile devices including iPhone, iPhone Streaming, Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and popular feature phones from Nokia and Samsung. Since Nature had already integrated our API, they asked us to go one further and provide them the XML profiles for each of these platforms / devices. We’ve since created presets for many of these which you can now utilize.

Online Video Platforms

About

vzaar, an online video-hosting platform, provides an end-to-end professional online video service for media companies, marketing agencies, corporate communications, e-commerce and web applications. They recently acquired their 1,000th customer!

Encoding Challenge

vzaar offers a robust video platform that enables its customers to create their own video players, deliver video in any size, and drive and convert online sales with a suite of e-commerce features. vzaar customers expect their videos to look good and don’t want to concern themselves with properly formatting their videos. As vzaar’s business is growing quickly, the engineering and operations team clearly has a lot on their plate to manage. Scaling a video platform is expensive, disruptive and complex — especially because video encoding usurps so much of the available computing resources.

How do they use Encoding.com?

By utilizing Encoding.com to do all of its video encoding, vzaar can not only focus on providing amazing video player and e-commerce functionality, it can also offer a more robust video format feature set.

vzaar has fully integrated the Encoding.com API into its hosted video platform. vzaar customers upload their video to an Amazon S3 cloud-based storage location, and then vzaar sends an XML request to our API. The files are then encoded into multiple formats based on the customer’s desired output parameters and delivered to another S3 bucket.. This cloud-based solution gives vzaar total automated scalability. During this process, vzaar requests (via the API) progress updates which it then caches locally and publishes for its customers to view.

“Integrating our video platform application with Encoding.com was made easy by the robust and well documented API. Before we settled on Encoding.com we thoroughly tested their service and other leading services and Encoding.com came out on top in terms of encoding speed, video quality, customer service and their commitment to emerging formats. As a video hosting platform the encoding process is a critical part of our solution. The integration with Encoding.com gives us peace of mind and the confidence to focus on the front end of our business,” \ said Ian J. Snead, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, vzaar.

Video Training Integration

About

Autodesk has over 10 million professionals in 185 countries using its products to save time and money, gain competitive advantage, and change the way ideas are brought to life.  It ain’t just about AutoCAD anymore.  Whether you’re designing a building, prototyping new products or producing movies, Autodesk has software to help you design more efficiently, sustainably and with more innovation. 
With powerful tools such as Autodesk products, it’s often easier and more useful to show video screen casts to help users better utilize the software than just writing out best practices and tips.  And, for end users requiring specific help, it’s easier to capture the steps leading to issues via a screen capture tool so they can upload to the community for help, rather than trying to describe the issues in text.  With this in mind, Autodesk recently launched the Autodesk WikiHelp site to leverage the community and resident experts to help end users better utilize Autodesk software.  Currently, the site offers support for 20 products with plans to grow to 120 products in multiple languages over the next year.

Encoding Challenge

Autodesk wants to make it very easy for anyone (expert or novice) to be able to upload videos to the wiki community.  Since these videos come from many different sources (heterogeneous content), the video platform must be able to ingest a variety of popular and not-so-popular video formats.  And, Autodesk has big plans to expand the WikiHelp to many countries across all its products… good luck with that!

How do they use Encoding.com?

The good folks at Autodesk understand that with the instant popularity of the WikiHelp along with user-generated video content, they will need to support thousands of videos in many different flavors each month.  And, that new formats appear every quarter (new mobile phones, new cameras, etc…).  The WikiHelp video workflow looks like this:  end users upload video to the AWS S3 cloud storage location, Autodesk then pings the Encoding.com API to initiate the download and transcode, Encoding.com converts each source into a Flash 9 ready format, and then delivers the output videos back to an S3 directory for streaming.  The great news is that all this video never has to touch an Autodesk server, and by utilizing S3 for storage, Encoding.com is able to process these videos in the same data center removing any latency or additional bandwidth costs.  It’s a win-win for everyone.