March 2006 - Posts

• Multi-format encoding and streaming video in a box

  I've been working on a live and on demand video streaming project for awhile and have the good fortune of having a lot of people looking at the content we're creating.  There is flip side of that popularity. As more people view this content, it becomes more likely that I will need to support a broader range of desktop operating systems.  When this is the case, rarely is one encoding format and stream rate sufficient to keep everyone happily streaming the best quality video for their desktop platform and connection profile.  So with this problem in mind, I set out to find the simplist solution possible. I met with some folks from Digital Rapds today and got a demo of their flagship StreamZHD system.  I've been really impressed by what I've read about it.  The system can capture, encode, and transcode a variety of sources (HD or SD  connecting through, BNC, or RS422 and 8 channels of AES audio with XLR and RCA inputs).  Using StreamZHD You can capture HD to SD, SD to HD with realtime capture to WM9, MPEG-2, Cineform, AVI.  It can transcode simultaneously to WM9, MPEG, AVC, AVI, MPEG, Quicktime, and Real (here's hoping FMS support is coming soon!). I'm told that using StreamX HD as an origin server I can capture a feed, then ship it off to another edge server for transcoding into multiple formats, saving bandwith in the process and reducing the time required to update remote edge servers.  The video encoding output quality is very outstanding to boot! I'm hoping to see a little more on this sstem soon, especially to get some insight into the details of how this system scales and how content library synchronization is managed.  Posted Mar 03 2006, 06:38 AM by gene with no comments

• My wireless router is driving me nuts

  I have a Linksys WRT54G at home which has just enough power to cover my entire house.  This is important because my house is a sort of shotgun style layout, the living room in at one end and my office at the opposite end.  I never use my laptop in any other room.  To get back to the point, just about every other night, I fire up my laptop, and watch IBM Access Connections work it's magic, connect to the access point, but fail at assigning an IP address.  That red x means I have to get up and walk all the way across the house, unplug the router and plug it back in.  By the time I sit back down, my laptop is connected happily with it's dhcp address.  Now I use this router because it has a built in 4 port switch which I use on my PCs in the office.  These machines are connected to the Internet and working fine when my laptop can't connect.  Tom suggested earlier that I might want to flash the bios and see if that fixes it.  But then again, this trip to the end of the house and back is about the only excercise I've been getting! Posted Mar 03 2006, 06:17 AM by gene with no comments

• What The Font?

  Rob was working with a customer today that wanted to change the color scheme of their site - especially the text in their logo.  But there was a problem.  Their logo was a gif on their homepage.  At least that's the only one they've ever used.  Matching fonts used to be a task for those with photographic memory or extreme patience as one flips through pages of samples.  A couple of months ago I came across a site called www.WhatTheFont.com and it has the answer! All you have to do is upload your text sample (or point the app to a url where the file is hosted) and this thing chops it up, analyzes it, and comes back with remarkably close suggestions. Posted Mar 02 2006, 02:42 AM by gene with no comments