The folks at Media 100 must be the hardest working folks at this week’s National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) trade show in Las Vegas. In addition to a plethora of other announcements, the company has also introduced its newest real-time MPEG-2 encoding systems for the Mac: MediaPress Pro and MediaPress Pro SDI.
Media 100 is providing the industry’s first and only real-time MPEG-2 encoding system with SDI (Serial Digital Interface) data acquisition capabilities for the Mac, according to Charlie Mascari, senior product manager for Media 100. Plus, MediaPress Pro SDI has been endorsed by Apple for use with its DVD Studio Pro, the professional DVD authoring solution. Media 100 will demonstrate how DVD producers can create cost-effective, high quality MPEG-2 programs in real time using DVD Studio Pro powered by the MediaPress Pro SDI solution in the Apple booth this week at the NAB show in Las Vegas, he added.
MediaPress Pro SDI provides DVD professionals “simple, time-saving flexibility” with acquisition for composite, S-Video or SDI, Mascari said in a press announcement. He describes MediaPress Pro and MediaPress Pro SDI as “the fastest MPEG encoding solution available for professional DVD content creators.
MediaPress provides digital and analog VBR hardware encoding and real-time hardware decoding with NTSC monitoring. The products offer real-time VBR (Variable Bit-Rate) encoding and real-time decoding of MPEG 1 and 2. Input options for audio include an AES/EBU Digital Audio (XLR connection) with SDI Option, Sony/Philips Digital Interface (SP/DIF) with SDI Option, and Stereo Analog (Mini Plug) comes with Standard. The MediaPress Pro is available for the SDI by purchasing the MediaPress Pro SDI, which provides SDI, Component Video, S-Video and Composite.
MediaPress Pro SDI offers the same feature set as in the MediaPress Pro, with the addition of SDI for higher quality input for digital video, as well as AES/EBU and SP/DIF Audio for higher quality input for digital audio.
MediaPress Pro and MediaPress Pro SDI require a Power Mac G3 or higher with 128 MB of RAM, a PCI slot for encoding hardware (MediaPress), a PCI slot for decoding (WiredStream), 12 GB external SCSI hard drive, an input device such as a VTR, Mac OS 9.0.4 or later, and a DVD – R or DLT drive for writing finished projects. The products are available immediately starting at US$2,999.
Media 100 also announced an initiative to explore MPEG-4 encoding capability for its Cleaner streaming application platform. The announcement was made today at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) trade show in Las Vegas.
The initiative will see Media 100 working with PacketVideo Corp., which specializes in wireless multimedia, and DiamondBack Vision, a developer of the MPEG-4 video encoding technology, to bring MPEG-4 open standard encoding capabilities to future versions of Cleaner. Cleaner is a camera-to-Web streaming solution (see our Feb. 12 review for details).
“MPEG-4’s ability to deliver very high quality streams in a dramatically reduced file size will have a significant impact on the way people experience streaming media on electronic devices other than personal computers, such as handheld PDAs,” said John Molinari, president and chief executive officer of Media 100, in a press announcement.
PacketVideo and Media 100 plan on collaborating to integrate the standard-compliant MPEG-4 format into the encoding process. Meanwhile, Media 100 will work to bring Diamondback’s ObjectVideo MPEG-4 capabilities to Cleaner user community. The result promises to offer the streaming media industry “the rich capabilities of MPEG-4 technology within Media 100’s industry-standard Cleaner encoding platform, in any streaming environment,” according to Bob Douglass, CEO of DiamondBack Vision.
Meanwhile, Media 100 is also buddying up with Canon U.S.A., a subsidiary of Canon to drive adoption of streaming media applications for professionals, prosumers and consumers. In fact, the two companies today unveiled at NAB icanstream.tv, an online streaming media educational channel. The channel purportedly features a compendium of streaming content from experts in the streaming media industry, as well as detailed information on the tools and technologies required for streaming.
Plus, Media 100 and Canon are offering its customers a digital media application suite for creating and delivering streaming media content. To wit: customers buying Canon DV XL1 and GL1 DV camcorders will receive a free copy of CineStream, Media 100’s interactive streaming media authoring software.
CineStream, the next evolution of the content creation solution, EditDV, is built on Media 100’s flagship Streaming Media Workflow model, which enables the development of video programs specifically designed for the interactive nature of the Internet.
Available for both Mac and Windows platforms, Media 100 CineStream enables users to capture video content directly from digital video (DV) sources, edit video content, author interactive elements into the editing timeline and encode the final product in all major streaming media formats, including QuickTime, Windows Media, RealSystems, and MPEG-1.