Archive for the 'H.264' Category

RipCode at SXSW Interactive

Published by
Brendon Mills
at March 12, 2008 in Internet Video, Transcoding, H.264 and Adobe. 0 Comments    Email This Post

Yesterday I participated in a panel discussion at SXSW Interactive in Austin.  The panel was called “Crunching and Streaming: Online Video Distribution Challenge and Opportunity”.  I saw that a few people including Terry Storch and Daryl McMullen have thought enough of the discussion to include a mention on their sites. My fellow panelists included:

Sloan Foster, Armida Technologies
Todd Byant, Netcast HD
Ashley Manning, Adobe Systems
Jeff Kramer, Polycot Labs

The focus was on the challenges and opportunities associated with the evolution of video delivery.  We discussed new video compression technologies available such as H.264 that are improving video quality. It was a really interesting discussion, especially around the licensing of codecs – commercial vs. freeware – and whether royalty-free codecs can provide the same or better compression  than commercial solutions.  We also talked about how technology has finally evolved to enable the convergence of video and the reality of truly ubiquitous viewing.

Overall, I thought it was a good discussion and hope the audience felt the same. I think they’re will be a podcast of the panel session available soon – when it’s live we’ll post a link to it from the RipCode site.  Thanks again to everyone that attended and participated in the discussion.

Mobile TV Experience is Lousy—Quality and Ubiquity are Key

Published by
Brendon Mills
at September 27, 2007 in Mobile Video, Transcoding and H.264. 0 Comments    Email This Post

In a recent post from James Quintana Pearce, MocoNews.net, he referenced a Gartner survey that indicated a lack of interest from Europeans in watching television or video on their mobile phones in the next 12 months. They cite “a lack of consensus on business models, variety of different technologies and shortage of airwaves” as reasons for the low response. He also noted a report from Juniper that indicated consumer interest may not be burgeoning, predicting 120 million mobile TV watchers worldwide by 2012, which will probably be less than 4 percent of the mobile phone user base.

I don’t really blame the survey respondents. Until the video viewing experience on mobile devices can compare to that of Internet video, it’s hard to disagree with their negative sentiment. However, demand is growing for a number of reasons cited in an IDC whitepaper, Internet and Mobile Video: Solutions for the Long Tail, which include better devices, faster networks, rising consumer awareness, price erosion and service bundling as well as the strong adoption of mobile TV and video among youth.

Right now however, the same content that consumers are used to accessing on their PCs isn’t rapidly being extended to mobile video. Why? Well, one reason is the complexity of delivering mobile video increases exponentially due to the variety of end-user devices: each with their own unique screen size, resolution, bit-rate and supported codecs. This generates unique challenges for media companies which are struggling to keep up with the increased amount of transcoding required to re-purpose video for the wide variety video-enable mobile devices on the market.

Take for example the iPhone. When Apple agreed to make YouTube content available via its iPhone, users expected to start searching the vast YouTube library of video immediately. However, all of that content has to be transcoded, or re-formatted to H.264, suitable for iPhone viewing. So slowly but surely all of the YouTube content is being made available to iPhone users. When users have the same ubiquitous access to video content from their mobile devices as they do from their PCs, that’s when adoption will really begin to climb.

As we move toward improving networks and devices, we’re simultaneously moving toward improving transcoding technology which is making viewing ubiquity possible and will vastly change the mobile video viewing experience for the better.

One Set of Codecs to Rule Them All? Not Anytime Soon.

Published by
Brendon Mills
at September 26, 2007 in Mobile Video, Microsoft VC-1, DivX, Internet Video, Transcoding, Adobe, H.264, RipCode V4 and SilverLight. 1 Comment    Email This Post

Just when we all started to think that the video industry was beginning to move towards standardization around H.264, Qualcomm announced that it has licensed the DivX codec technology and will support it in a range of video-enabled chipsets for CDMA mobile devices, ahead of Adobe’s Flash Video. As Peter White of Rethink Research writes, “if Qualcomm stays solely with DivX, then it will mean that the worlds of CDMA and WCDMA telephony will have diverged, and that web sites that can provide video to one type of handset will not be able to be played on another.”

In the Flash vs. Silverlight camp, Bradley Werner concludes that with the addition of Silverlight, Microsoft’s VC-1 video codec is rapidly moving into a position of parity with Adobe’s Flash Media Player and both technologies are in good positions to win in the market. Neal Page over at Inlet concurs.

So are these signs that the industry is in a position yet to move toward a set of codec standards? Will it happen soon? To both these counts, the answer is probably not.

In the recent IDC whitepaper Internet and Mobile Video: Transcoding the Long Tail, IDC estimates that there are close to 100 different types of Internet and mobile video files that the market is currently supporting. This is good news for RipCode because the greater the number of video formats and associated increased complexities means more business. However, because it takes a lot of time and development cycles to successfully support the multiple flavors of codecs on the market even we would like to see some degree of consolidation. However, given the slim chance of this happening anytime soon, we’ll continue to take our cues from our customers (video aggregators, user generated content sites, mobile & internet TV providers, etc.) and drive our development to support their codec requirements. After all, it’s the customers who in the end, will likely determine when and under what codecs the market will unify.

RipCode at IBC: It’s a Wrap

Published by
Brendon Mills
at September 10, 2007 in H.264, Adobe and SilverLight. 0 Comments    Email This Post

The IBC show is about to come to a close here in Amsterdam and it’s been a big week for Internet video. The Adobe announcement regarding their support for H.264 within Flash 9 was the talk of the show among many of the attendees and video operators trying to figure out how to handle Microsoft SilverLight next to Adobe’s MovieStar.

It was also RipCode’s first opportunity for us to demonstrate, for a mass audience, the unique capabilities of the RipCode V4 transcoding appliance. RipCode is coming out of our stealth mode next week and our product and capabilities have surprised many who are first learning about us. The RipCode team is anxious to get back to the U.S. and begin following up on the opportunities and conversations that we’ve begun here in Amsterdam. We’ve taken quite a bit of video from the show. Give us a chance to edit it to a reasonable length, add some commentary and we’ll share it with you soon.

Update: Just saw this coverage of the IBC show by StreamingMedia.com which validates the advancement of and demand for the IPTV ecosystem.

Now Playing: RipCode H.264

Published by
Brendon Mills
at September 7, 2007 in Transcoding, H.264 and Adobe. 2 Comments    Email This Post

Two weeks ago, as widely anticipated, Adobe announced its support for H.264. Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee and Charlie Oppenheimer over at StreamingMedia provided good coverage and commentary of this announcement.

This is a welcomed announcement for the industry, and RipCode will support both Adobe’s Flash Media Server 3 and the updated version of Flash 9, code-named “Moviestar.” Additionally, I’m thrilled that RipCode was selected to participate in Adobe’s Flash Media Solution Provider Program (FMSP) to insure compatibility between media transcoded by RipCode and the Flash Media Server.

In brief, FMSP supports the Flash ecosystem of providers by giving businesses access to the best providers for Flash streaming content—think of it as a consortium of subject matter experts and turnkey solution providers for all things Flash.

We’re looking forward to working with Adobe as we build out our codec support to meet the requirements for their latest Flash media.