TransAct Commander

The RipCode TransAct Commander is a sophisticated software application packaged in a single RU server that manages and controls the On-Demand Transcoding operations and workflows supporting a single or cluster of RipCode TransAct Transcoder appliances. A key element of the RipCode TransAct Platform, the TransAct Commander provides back-end intelligence to route On-Demand transcode requests to available RipCode Transcoder appliances, balancing the workload and ensuring the On-Demand Transcoding application is always available by delivering fail over and redundancy capabilities.

The RipCode TransAct Commander provides customers with a more efficient video transcoding environment that fully optimizes the power of the RipCode transcoding appliance and allows customers to easily scale the processing capacity of the On-Demand Transcoding solution by simply adding more appliances as additional processing power is needed.

Through a patent-pending content caching technique, the TransAct Commander enables recently transcoded content to be retained in cache for subsequent requests. This allows another request for the same video to immediately be delivered to the user without re-transcoding. And, in the event of duplicate requests RipCode’s TransAct Commander will instruct the RipCode TransAct Transcoder to begin delivering multiple streams or downloads even while content is still in the process of transcoding.

In addition, the RipCode Commander can manage the storage hierarchy for caching transcoded files once they are complete, using existing onsite storage infrastructure or offsite through an external content delivery network (CDN).

RipCode TransAct Commander

• Load Balancing and Transcode Management - manages and controls on-demand transcoding operations and workflows, supporting a single or cluster of RipCode transcoding appliances; delivering multiple simultaneous streams
• Workflow Optimization - interacts with TransCode Detector to ascertain a playback device’s best video playing capabilities for optimal transcoding formulation
• Low Latency Delivery While Transcoding - notifies the RipCode Transcoder to immediately begin streaming or progressive downloading a file once the first frame is transcoded
• Content Distribution - once a transcode is complete, provides notification of file availability and stores content as cache for future distribution upon subsequent requests via HTTP
• Application Integration - provides integration with a full set of RipCode on-demand transcoding or third-party applications via intuitive XML-based API

RipCode TransAct Commander Cluster Management Functionality

• Streaming of Transcoded Files for Mobile or Internet - provides streaming workflow management across multiple applications
• Cache Management - manages various types of content including cached transcoded media, partial transcoded media, progressive download and RTSP streaming objects
• Cluster Load Balancing - responsible for balancing workload across all transcoding appliances in the cluster based on demand
• Cluster Workflow Configuration - workflow cluster configuration is easily performed via the Web UI configuration tabs
• Cluster Software Update - provides the capability to update software across a cluster of transcoding appliances
• Cluster Database Backup/Restore - manages backup of the cluster workflow configuration database to a remote FTP server
• High Availability - one or more standby TransAct Commander appliances can be installed per On-Demand cluster providing a warm failover capability