Front Porch Digital's line of digital media management tools allow an organization to both capture, store, and index digital media as well as transcode that media into multiple formats for subsequent delivery including RealMedia and Windows Media. Since the transcoding process can be performed on demand in real-time, businesses benefit because they can capture and store their digital media in a single format while still maintaining the flexibility to provide multiple formats as and when needed. The Front Porch Digital solutions are software based.

On the media encoding side of the equation is BitStorm, which allows for the encoding of multiple digital and analog sources including both live camera and satellite feeds into a compressed format (MPEG1, MPEG2, and the vendor's own IAF - Intermediate Archive Format). Key features of the encoder include the ability to automate encoding tasks via scripts and templates; CBR and one-pass VBR encoding; support for full, half, and quarter screen resizing as well as both 4:3 and 16:9 video ratios; and a back-end indexing architecture allowing for indexing to be accomplished separately from the video capture.

For delivery of encoded media, Front Porch offers the BitScream suite of transcoder tools. BitScream can convert streams stored or delivered in the MPEG1, MPEG2, or BitStorm IAF format on demand in real-time into various formats as needed. Multiple flavors of the BitScream transcoder are available; from the NLE version which is targeted primarily to the automated conversion of video into AVI or QuickTime formats for use in non-linear editing applications, to the PE (Professional Edition) version which supports transcoding to multiple formats including RealMedia and Windows Media. Both BitScream PE and SE (Streaming Edition) support the Pinnacle series of video broadcast servers, and Front Porch states that both additional server support and output formats will be added to the transcoder series.

BitStorm and BitScream are available now; contact Front Porch Digital for further information.

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