Welcomed by Kevin Shively, TVWorldwide

Streaming Media East 2010 – the day after report:  What is it about technology conferences that makes them so exhausting?

The exhibit floor this year was smaller then last years and I heard from the exhibitors that real “customer” presence was light, but of course for my purposes… that doesn’t really matter.

Selfishly I have to say, I am only interested in technology innovations that are easy to integrate or deploy, that are affordable and of course, that actually work.  There was a lot of discussion around scalable technology, SD to HD workflow transitions, adaptive (bit rate) streaming… and of course, highest on the list is the promise of “unified systems” (as it is referred to in the Enterprise) or single [video] signal transmission to multiple devices, something along the lines of TVEverywhere type availability of broadcast content, but specifically one feed that can play back on any device (i.e. Mobile, Desktop, Set top box, etc.).

That’s a lot to think about, but I was able to pin-point my priorities and focus on putting together a package that would work for me and my budget… and here is that journey.

The conference took place at the New York Hilton, as it has for the last several years.  Upon arrival to the show floor, one flight up via escalator, one was greeted by Kevin Shively at the entry and his A/V crew set up & ready for live interviews (you can view the replays here).  I couldn’t help but notice that this year Kevin and his trusty A/V crew (Pete) were equipped with the NewTek Tricaster TCXD850, this is the model that supports HD workflow (and will easily plug & play SD so you can ease in as you upgrade equipment and peripherals).  The Tricaster still runs on XP OS and I was a bit concerned about Microsoft’s recent announcement that they would no longer support Windows 2000 and XP O.S.

TriCaster™ TCXD850

In light of this concern I made sure my first stop on my updated workflow mission was to hit the NewTek booth and ask a guru.  I interview Will Waters, a NewTek Systems Integrator who was doing live demos on the show floor, and he assured me (*party line*) that NewTek is working with Microsoft to ensure support, however the unit is released to market on Windows XP.   This does concern me for the long term, but if one needs a workflow solution now I believe the Tricaster is the “best” studio in a box for the buck.  Of course, I would recommend not using it as your live encoder while producing a live webcast nor would I recommend going on the road with just one (I would prefer to have a back-up unit or solution like having a UStream.tv account with their UStream ProducerPro which is switcher ready and is pretty inexpensive for what you get.

On a side note, the Tricaster comes configured with UStream presets, however when I asked Will about this he was quick to redirect and position the product as being more “ubiquitous” so I suspect that relationship may have changed somehow, at least “politically”.   Just an interesting note. (And I did not see anyone from UStream.tv present at the conference, so… do the math!)

NewTek TriCasts™ America: Varsity Tour. From May 11-June 9, 2010

NewTek was plugging away at the capabilities of the mobile unit and their up-coming “Varsity Tour” (vehicle seen in the picture to the right), of which they boast:  NewTek will visit multiple cities to host live events, inviting audiences to check out the benefits of a giant live HD TV truck that fits in a backpack.

The strategy is this, they know that the trick to keeping their products relevant is attracting talent and expert users of their products, so they are hitting the Education trail to get kids hooked on their products early!  Makes sense…

At this point I have myself a nice little plan, Tricaster with a UStream.tv backup/failover plan… now I needed to figure out what to do with my transmission and how to send it out to the world.

My eyes usually glaze over and mind fog sets in at these events, I was lucky enough to run into Lisa Larson-Kelley (follow @lisamarienyc on Twitter) who was on her merry way to the A105: HTML5 and Web Video Standards session, moderated by Tim Napoleon, Co-Founder, President, Alldigital with panelists:

Jennifer Taylor, Director, Flash Content Creation and Distribution, Adobe Systems, Inc.
Monty Montgomery, Director, Xiph.Org Foundation
Greg Harris, Chief Creative Officer, Daily Interactive
Justin Eckhouse, Senior Product Manager, Video and Mobile, CBS Interactive

A105: HTML5 and Web Video Standards

The session was packed, standing room only!  It turned into (or tired to turn into) an Open Source vs. The Man type of debate that didn’t really go anywhere.  Here is how I read the session:

CBS = We wait & see to drive innovation

Adobe =”Hello, my name is Adobe & Flash is a CPU hog” “Welcome Adobe” – The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem [and, scene!]

Daily Interactive = I don’t remember anything this guy said, and I wasn’t even drinking yet.

Xiph = Stop talking & Just do it! [or something like that! You know, something really Open Sourcey and philosophical....]

Bottom line, I am looking at the HTML5 specification and it’s really no harder than HTML/XML but it has a fancy number – did you know the the number 5 is the most graphically desirable number since it contains both curve and straight line and it also represents my favorite Mambo?

The technology that really caught my eye this year is the ever affordable, pseudo non-political, ubiquitous, codec agnostic product engineered by team Wowza.  Their party line:  Wowza Media Server is the world’s first platform that lets you stream from one H.264 encode simultaneously to multiple players and devices. It unifies the multi-protocol, multi-player H.264 streaming into a single workflow, eliminating the need for multiple player-specific encoders and servers. And Wowza Media Server 2 delivers all that at an unbeatable price — 75% less than the single-protocol Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server (FMIS) or Microsoft Windows Server® with IIS.

Wowza Media Server demo - live streaming video to an iPad

I spent quite a bit of time with the fellas from Wowza trying to figure out what their party line is, we even broke bread… So, maybe I came close to drinking the cool-aid but the fact of the matter is simple:  I said it had to work.

FACT:  I was able to view their demo on the floor and they went in depth into how they used the VLC player as an encoder to get the video off of the server (running on an HP laptop) and over their “lab” network were able to just play back the url in the browser on the iPad.  I could “see” it working and accept the fact that this was just a demo.  They were honest about that.  Good.

FACT:  I really think the benefit of their product is in the price-point and ease of deployment, as Alex Dobrushin, Chief Marketing Officer, walked me through the set-up on say… An Amazon ECS account… the CMO described how all I have to do is take the Wowza pre-configured server image and load it up to my ECS instance.  Wowza offers a free demo that I plan to download from their site in order to build out my first Amazon Wowza media server.  This right here is the foundation of what a CDN is.  Of course I don’t want to be a CDN, I just like to stream the media to the people!

I did a round of interviews with A.M. Arno of Bandwidth Bastard fame and will be editing some clips of my exploits for your viewing pleasure shortly.

Last Word:  I got what I needed out of this conference and I hope that you got something out of this post, now go brush up on your motor skills and get some exercise!

I avoided Twitter as long as humanly possible, but of course one can only hold off on participating in the tech trends for so long without turning into some kind of geek prude.  It started just about a month ago when I was bored on a train ride out to D.C… and there it was… Twitter.

I created my profile and eased into the whole process of pushing out itty-bits of chars to define the otherwise frenetic moments of a working day.  Trends, projects and articles whiz by in twitter time and suddenly one is propelled into a world of conversations that, as it turns out, the entire world is listening in on.

Recently the library of congress announced they would “archive” every tweet that passed through the twitter gates, an archive of our global manic need to be heard (or read as it were) – which makes being a part of Twitter feel like impending immortality!

Big Brother Is Reading!

On a more sinister note, I recently felt the true power of  ”The Twitter” as I innocently complained about my Time Warner Cable service and it’s shoddy delivery.  Instantly a “Tweet” came my way from Time Warner Cable:

@nicomclane Both of these issues may be related to signal interference. Would you like me to take a look at your equipment? ^BP

Not for nothing, I was impressed that they are in fact “tuning in” to what end users are saying about their service/products… and then it happened again!  I had started playing the ole’ FourSquare game and “Checked In” to a PCRichards on a working shop trip and next thing I know, I get a Tweet from PCRichards:

@NicoMcLane Thanks for checking in! Were you able to find what you were looking for?

In and of itself, if Twitter does nothing more than act as an agent of  Global eavesdropping, one can only hope it leads to better service, instant solutions and a brighter future!  Of course this means one must be much more careful about what we “Tweet”, in a strange way it is reassuring to know someone is always listening… and again, it tells us Big Brother is Reading!

AS I am watching the “Pseudo Live” launch video on Adobe.com for the CS5 suite, I can’t help but think how great everything looks in the pre-recorded video.  Great production value! There are hundreds of Tweets on the subject as we all listen in for our specialized area of interest…. I heard nothing about transcoding video from Premiere or what the status of the Adobe Media Encoder is, which are the applications I use the most as a streamer of media, followed closely by good ole’ Dreamweaver.

Video looked great, Adobe Mobile Video looked great on the innocuous ”Mobile Device” they featured (ahem, iPhone?)… As far as you can tell from a video they produced and mastered in their Adobe CS5 suite… especially with all those “easy to use effects” in Adobe After Effects.  Everything was great…

And then, the live launch video ended.

Whoa!  Just now,  I went to “view more video at Adobe TV” I find that the entire “tv.adobe.com” website is down… Which tells me there is a lot of interest in the new features, more so than the site can handle, and also this tells me that it is possible that Adobe Video is not ready for prime time, the site went down after all.  All speculation & circumstance as this announcement bridges on the Adobe Anti-Apple news we have been reading about all over the web, on the heels of the big #Nabshow in Vegas.

As they say avid reader, “May you live in interesting times”… Indeed.

I smell a big political storm a’brewing… and I can’t wait to see if the site going down was from a lack of planning/load balance/fail over OR, better yet… If the site was attacked by a large corporate “black opps” unit that was hell bent on bringing down the whipper-snappers at Adobe?

By the way, everyone speaking in the Adobe CS5 launch video was very well groomed and rehearsed.  Good on ya’

IIS Live Smooth Streaming

David Nelson takes us on a walk through of IIS Live Smooth Streaming now in Beta.   IIS Live Smooth Streaming enables adaptive streaming of live events to Microsoft Silverlight clients and is an extension for Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 – it delivers compelling, uninterrupted live video streams that allegedly instantly adjust quality (bit rate) to match changing network and CPU conditions at the client.

I am very curious to see how this is going to work when Enterprise end users hit on an IIS 7 video that is Smooth streaming – fat live video pumping over HTTP into a locked down network, sounds like the kind of bandwidth consumption that could bring systems down… especially when systems are cloaked, how is the intelligence of the smooth streaming going to work for video coming in to the Enterprise from the outside?

The following prerequisites must be fulfilled to install IIS Live Smooth Streaming – Beta:

• You must use IIS 7.0 running on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista® with Service Pack 1 (SP1).
• To manage IIS Live Smooth Streaming using the IIS Manager user interface, the IIS Management Console for IIS must be installed. You can install the IIS Management Console role service for Web Server (IIS) in Server Manager.

The following options are available for installing IIS Live Smooth Streaming - Beta:

• Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta
• Web Platform Installer 1.0
• Windows Installer files (for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista SP1 operating systems)

The “Installation Notes” section of the IIS Live Smooth Streaming – Beta Readme contains detailed instructions for each of these installation options.

Read the entire post

Here is an interesting thread from the WMTALK LIST:

For Live Smooth Streaming today, you've got just three products announced.

Inlet Spinnaker (with a forthcoming update) ENCODES
Windows Server 2008 (with Live Smooth Streaming module for IIS7) HOSTS
Silverlight 2+ CONSUMES

A live encoder basically pushes the same chunks the server would deliver to the
client to the server, with some extra metadata and stuff.  So the file format is
still Fragmented MPEG-4.  Supported codecs are:
        VC-1 and WMA 10 Pro for Silverlight 2+
        H.264 and AAC-LC for Silverlight 3+

Ben Waggoner
Principal Video Strategist, Silverlight
Microsoft Corporation

Compression Blog: on10.net/blogs/benwagg/
Compression Classes at Stanford and PSU: tinyurl.com/benwaggclasses

-----Original Message-----
From: WMTalk [mailto:WMTalk@DISCUSSMS.HOSTING.LSOFT.COM] On Behalf Of Harry
Emerson
Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 7:32 AM
To: WMTalk@DISCUSSMS.HOSTING.LSOFT.COM
Subject: Live Smooth Streaming: Goesinto & Goesoutta

Hi All,

I've read a bunch now about Live Smooth Streaming, and there's chatter about
mpeg4, H.264, etc., but I'm still confused about who does what to whom. If
anyone can help put the pieces together, that would be nice. What I'd like
to understand better right now is the goesinta and goesoutta formats for
each piece

WME9
EE2 SP1
IIS7
WMS/2008
Silverlight Player
WMP (v11?)

Starting points:
EE2 SP1: what input formats does it accept? What will it output to IIS7
(e.g., native mpeg4, a proprietary format, etc.)? What will it output to
WMS/2008? Will it output directly to a Silverlight player (and if so, in
what formats)? Will it output directly to a WMP?

WME9: we're probably familiar enough with input formats, and we know it will
output to WMS/2008 and to WMP 11 in a proprietary ASF format. Will it output
to an IIS7 publishing point? Will it output directly to a Silverlight
player?

IIS7: for a Live publishing point: what input formats will it accept (e.g.,
only a proprietary format from EE2?)? What are the output formats (e.g.,
only the .ismv chunked up smooth streaming file format?)?

WMS/2008: I'm guessing there's not much change. I assume it will accept
input from EE2, but not EE2 smooth streaming?  I also assume the output is
the same (wma/wmv in an asf wrapper that can be digested by Silverlight or
WMP?)?

Silverlight: I think I understand that it can receive a million little
chunks of a video as miniscule progressive downloads from IIS7 Live Smooth
Streaming. Can it also receive that from WMS/2008? Will it accept other
input formats like mp3, mpeg4, etc. (I mean, in native mode, not in
programmer-hell mode -- meaning, can I just point an mp3 stream at it?)?

Maybe some of these answers should be obvious to me.... I'm also hoping to
learn of interplay between these systems and the broader ecosystem out
there.  In particular streaming live and on-demand audio and video to the
wealth of smart phones that don't support Windows Media, the iPhone in
particular. For me, reaching that market is mandatory.

Thanks,

Harry

Harry Emerson
SurferNETWORK

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A word of warning:  To all those who dabble in the world of streaming media, I recently installed VLC Media Player on to my desktop and discovered that it became the default player for ALL MEDIA content in Fire Fox and destroyed my gorgeous embedded Windows Media video content’s functionality…  We are totally dependent on the reliability of players and plug ins in this game and when Windows Media Player embed tags stopped working completely, I discovered that the only fix was… Uninstall the VLC Media Player…

VLC is great, but if you work in multiple formats/players/embed tags, BEWARE…  It’s a MIME type hog in FF…  Anyone have a better fix for this yet other than this for the VLC Media player ?  Of course, if you use OBJECTY in your tags, maybe you can skip all that pain, but if you can’t change the tags… You know what to do!

Happy Streaming, Suckers!

from wikiHow – The How to Manual That You Can Edit

If you are looking for a program that can convert FLV to AVI, maybe using Open Video Converter developed by Digitbyte Studio will help.

Steps

1. Download Open Video Converter. Launch Open Video Converter.

2. 

   Open Video Converter.

3. Click the “Options” button from the main interface, then press “Browse” button to select a directory where you like to save your output file in your pc, or change the default output file name; As you know, you can also set Resolution, Frame rate, Resize mode, Video Compressor and Aduio compressor in their properties dialogs; The app sets Microsoft ADPCM as the default audio compressor. Press OK icon when all settings are completed.
4. Then come back the main interface, Click “Open Video” button, select a directory in your computer where the FLV file is stored, change “Files of Type” to “All Files” from the menu drop-down list, and select a FLV file you wish convert, then click the Open icon.
5. Now, you have loaded the FLV file in the program, you can preview your FLV file by clicking “Play” botton to make sure this app working well.
6. At last, click “Convert” button to start the process of converting FLV to AVI.

Tips

• FLV Definition: FLV stands for Flash Video, FLV streaming media format is a new video format developed by Macromedia, it is a good streaming media solution. Because its higher compression ratio and superior download speed, any video/audio files can be compressed or converted to Flash Video format, and then FLV can be played in websites.

Warnings

• Before your converting Flash Video to AVI, there is an additional requirement, please install “Combined Community Codec Pack” to your pc, just search in google and find it out.

Things You’ll Need

• DirectX 9.0 or later
• Trp Converter

Related wikiHows

• How to Convert Mod to Avi Mpg Wmv Mpeg With Aiseesoft Mod Converter

Sources and Citations

• http://www.008soft.com/converter-flv-to-avi.htm

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Convert FLV to AVI Using Open Video Converter. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Today was an especially productive day – I sent the final draft of an article I wrote for Streaming Media Magazine on The “search” for real VSEO…  to the editor.

It was an exhaustive journey into the realm of SEO.   I spent a lot of time in WebEx sessions and engaged on my own traveling the paths of the end user to discover video on-line.  I asked myself a lot of questions, went a step further and really tried to listen to some experts for guidance.  I’d like to thank Mark Robertson publisher and founder of ReelSEO for his patience and enthusiasm, Accordent Technolgy’s for being my Enterprise go-to guys/gals and EveryZing that let me get inside their product and their minds!

Here is just one of the fascinating revelations passed down to me from Tom Wilde, CEO of Everyzing :

There are many tools that can be used to help users select keywords that result in good positioning for Google results; such as Google Insight for Search.

Google Search Insight provides... Insight

Google Insight reports that over the last 90 days, searches with the keyword video outnumbered keywords searches for sex, god, and Obama. So what do the numbers on the graph mean? According to Google Insight for Search, “The numbers on the graph reflect how many searches have been done for a particular term, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. They don’t represent absolute search volume numbers, because the data is normalized and presented on a scale from 0-100; each point on the graph is divided by the highest point, or 100. The numbers next to the search terms above the graph are summaries, or totals.”

In practice, simply adding the word video to a site makes it more likely to come up in a search, but there are also 3.38 billion other results for the keyword video on Google, so the competition is tight. The trick is to find the magic combination of keywords that eliminate the competition and push results for your content to the top of the list. You must take the same route one would take to Carnegie Hall, “Practice, practice, practice.”

When asked, “What makes for good VSEO,” Wilde points back toward the fundamentals of “old school” SEO: “Optimize the video’s presentation page using standard SEO techniques; this is also true for videos uploaded to sharing sites. Logical file naming schemes, site structure, use sitemaps and relevant keyword usage throughout the landing page will result in good VSEO.”

If you upload a video to YouTube, you will see how often it is viewed in different geographic regions as well as how popular it is relative to all videos in its market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of a video, determining how long it takes for it to become popular and what happens to video views as popularity peaks. (figure 2) YouTube is also rolling out paid search, a new feature that enables video distributors to buy keywords in YouTube on a pay-per-click basis. Currently, this is only available to agencies.

It’s faster to get a video indexed when uploaded to YouTube or an existing site that is already in Google and the other major search engines. When a site is submitted manually, it takes at least 90 days to begin showing up in search results, but YouTube, MySpace, and other established sites can list the same site in less than 24 hours. Just make sure you don’t rely soley on an up-load of your video, but create a full “channel page” for your videos, those weigh more in Google and others. Make sure you clearly indicate the link back to the site you want end users to go to, include links in the channel pages, and include a lower-third graphic in the video itself with a text advertising your site.

*************  End of Excerpt ***  To read more, you will have to subscribe to Streaming Media Magazine or check out StreamingMedia.com for possible a digital version

from wikiHow – The How to Manual That You Can Edit

VLC is arguably the best media player out there.
It’s free, runs on almost any operating system, plays almost all video and audio files natively, can stream audio and video over networks using a myriad of different protocols, can be controlled remotely through a web browser and much, much more!
These are instructions on how to get your VLC to stream a multimedia playlist to another single computer on your network.

Steps

1. Download VLC media Player (Videolan)
2. Install
3. Run VLC
4. Click File, then choose Open File or Disc, depending on what you plan on streaming. For this example, it’s an avi file. The Directory option does not allow Stream/Save.
5. Click the Browse button at the top right of the Open dialog box that opens. Choose the file you would like to stream and either double click it or click Open.
6. Now check “Stream/ Save” in the bottom left corner, and click the Settings… button.
7. You will be greeted by the Stream output dialog box. Check the Play Locally box if you want the file to play on the computer you’re setting up. Click the UDP box, fill in the IP address of the computer you are going to be streaming to, and leave the Port as 1234.
8. Click OK to go back to the file open dialog.
9. Click OK again to begin the streaming. Depending on if you chose to play the file locally, the video may or may not begin playing on the local machine.
10. Go to the computer you are streaming to. Install VLC (if you haven’t already) and run the program.
11. Click File, then choose Open Network Stream. Don’t change any settings and click OK.
12. If everything has gone right, the file should start playing on the remote computer after 10 seconds or so!

Tips

• You need to get your IP address from the computer you are using to receive the files. On Win XP, go to Start, Run, type cmd in the text box, and then Enter. When the new window opens, type ipconfig after the > . The first number should be the IP address of the machine you typed ipconfig on.
• If you’d like to stream more than one item, get the first one streaming and then open VLC’s playlist editor (Ctrl+P for XP) on the streaming computer. You can easily add files to the list from there. Alternatively, you can choose more than one file (using the control and shift keys) when initially opening one to stream.
• VLC can be controlled via web browser, so no having to run between computers. On the streaming computer, click Settings, Add Interface, Web Interface. Now, just type the address of the streaming computer plus the port numbers :8080 into your browser’s address bar. Mine looked like this: 192.168.1.103:8080 . Now you can add files or almost anything else from right inside your browser!

Warnings

• You probably won’t be able to stream anything of very good quality over the Internet. Because of the bandwidth video files demand, the average home internet connection probably won’t work well enough, although you can probably stream music nicely. You need a good upload speed to send the files out at the speed they need to play smoothly.

• Don’t use IPChicken or Whatismyip or a STUN server to get your IP address for this. This method depends on your Local Network IP address, which is somewhat different from the public IP address used for the Internet.

• If you are streaming over the internet you should use IPChicken or Whatismyip or a STUN server to get your IP address for this. This method does not depend on your Local(private) Network IP address, which is somewhat different from the public IP address used for the Internet.

• Make sure you use UDP and keep the port numbers the same. This makes it very easy to just click, click, click in VLC on the computer receiving the files.

• If you are behind a firewall you need to create a rule to allow this type of traffic on the port you select to go through it.

• If you are behind a router, you will need to create a port forwarding rule for the port you choose for it to work correctly. Logging into your router is normally achieved by placing your gateway’s IP on your browser (i.e. http://192.168.1.1).

Related wikiHows

• How to Capture a Macromedia Flash Object from a Web Site
• How to Copy or Burn a CD Using Windows Media Player
• How to Access Your Music from Any Computer
• How to Change the Music in Computer Games

Sources and Citations

• VLC media player
• VLC FAQ

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Use VLC Media Player to Stream Multimedia to Another Computer. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

There is a lot of noise lately regarding how video content and SEO work together – there are many companies evangelizing their ‘wares to the hungry marketers of such video property; however, I don’t believe any of it for a second – it’s not working as advertised.

Recently I sat through a demo of a product that promised enhanced search-ability for video content that was essentially “tagged” by their product.  At the end of the demo, I asked if we could examine how the tagging impacted the SEO of the client sites we looked at, using organic keywords that pertained to the video content we had just reviewed.

They proceeded to “plant” ordered keywords into Google to show how their tagged video appeared magically – with a rigid set of keywords that no human would “organically” input for a search.  Having said that, the tagged video did not come up first nor did it come up as a prioritized web asset with more or less relevance than any other web page that pertained to the keyword set they used.

The tagged video appeared third and had no special indicator that this was a link to video enhanced web content.

On Google the special video category is relegated to video content originating from YouTube, so many of the products and “specialists” out there on VIDEO SEO are just going to post clips on YouTube and point back to the client website – so save your money and do it yourself.

Google search for interviews with Madonna

Here is an example, if I do a search for keywords “interviews with madonna” on Google, I get the quick drop down from the homepage that tell me there are over 4 million results that have relevance.

The results themselves reveal a great deal about the subjectivity of Google search and how video relevance relates to the results – YouTube video posts are the only featured video posts on the results page.  The irony is that the official Madonna website did not rank in this search, even though it has plenty of video and News from Madonna.

Google results for Interviews with madonna

Of course this is an exaggerated example, but I think it speaks to the topic and gets the point across quite elegantly.

Where is the proof of the secret sauce I hear so much about?  I for one know there are no short cuts or freebies in good SEO.  It takes a substantial investment in financing or time; daily nurture and care to get up in the rankings and stay up there… Especially since companies like Google are capable of pushing out updates to their platform and without telling you – the only way you would know there are changes to analytics or adword services is often to actually log in and check for updates.

Regardless, I am taking a journey and inviting the VIDEO SEO guru’s of the world to SHOW ME THE SAUCE and help me, and the readers of Streaming Media Magazine (Article on Video SEO – due for April 2009 Issue), to uncover the truth.

Resources:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&pwst=1&q=interviews+with+madonna&start=0&sa=N

http://www.reelseo.com/video/seo/

The newly released Accordent Multicast In-stream Technology is a “breakthrough that enables large organizations to leverage multicast-enabled networks to deliver high-quality streaming video with synchronized slides and graphics as a single, compressed stream. “ I was contacted by the team at Accordent and led through an early demo with my old pal Mike Lorenz, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer (& fellow streaming media All-Star)!The premise is simple, in the Enterprise environment resources are stretched and pushed to the limits – conservation and optimization are key words on every IT leaders hot list. This latest release appears in the Accordent PresenterPro (Accordent CaptureStation release expected in the next two weeks or so) is a huge value-add to the Enterprise conservation effort.

Accordent PresenterPro Workflow

The first thought that crossed my mind when I heard about this release, is that we would be doing a tour of new Silverlight functionality; however, this product is totally 100% Enterprise friendly and is built from the Microsoft Windows Media SDK. In fact, the encoder Mike used for this demo was the Windows Media Encoder 9 and the end user need only have their correctly configured Enterprise Windows Media Player installed on their workstation.

This technology is HOT!

The workflow has not changed – the only addition that is visible is within the Accordent Encoder Controller’s Windows Media tab – you will be easily able to customize bitrates that are now exposed for optimization which includes, in addition to the standard ‘script’ stream we are familiar with, a field that can be customized for the actual slides to transport.

This feature is obviously ideal if you are in a multicast enabled environment but it works just as easily with unicast streams.

The real magic happens when you start up the webcast and push that first slide. Mike graciously exposed the player properties as we went through the demo and this is how it went…

It looks like a normal webcast

What Mike had described as we observed the statistics on the windows media player was quite simple – a slide was pushed from the PresenterPro, and as we watched the statistics, a very graceful bandwidth peak occurred according the the bandwidth limits we set in the Encoder Controller (in real time) and then they went back down to the a/v streaming bandwidth.

It sounds so simple but it is brilliant – the ROI in an Enterprise can be measured easily if you do some simple math and of course, the larger the audience the greater the ROI.

In short, one slide is passed through the same multicast stream to the 15,000 audience members rather than 15,000 calls to a webserver for a jpg to load in the users browser. If that still doesn’t make sense and you are interested in the technology, read this.

Properties of the windows media player reveal the local cache call

The slide is sent directly into the local cache of the windows media player from within the single multicast stream.

The call is sent in real time, so if you change a slide or need to make updates, the slide will be pushed at that time – and I am assuming here, but it seems to make sense that would be the case.

Of course, there must be one draw back…

Enterprise player deployment & management IT will need to ensure the local cache options on the windows media player are enabled (depending on which version of the player is deployed) and everyone will need to remember to clear their caches once in a while, especially if they have a lot of live webcasts going on!

Enable Cache Options & Clear Regularly for a healthy Media Player!

All in all this is a fantastic release and I am very excited to see it in action and look forward to the ROI figures as they are calculated in actual use cases.

The official Press Release from Accordent will be posted here