Archive for September, 2007

Why the Name RipCode V4?

Published by
Brendon Mills
at September 28, 2007 in RipCode V4. 0 Comments    Email This Post

Names are certainly important and the team has been so busy leading up to this week’s launch that I ought to take a breather and retrace our steps to explain to those of you asking, “Why RipCode V4?”

The short version: Frankly, because it looks cool.

The longer story: First, we like simple names here at RipCode. Second, we feel that our brand should focus on the company name, RipCode, rather than the individual products. Based on these two simple tenets, we added the “V” for video, not version. And like any good product name poised for growth, we wanted to add a number. V1 or V2 made sense until someone pointed out that they were respectively the first German guided missile used in WWII and first ballistic missile launched into space by Germany. V3 sounded chunky and not impactful.

So, in all, there was no magic science to the name RipCode V4 other than it is simple, easy to pronounce, and it looks cool when it is spelled out. (And yes, car enthusiasts have pointed out to me that the V4 four-cylinder engine is what first comes to their minds.)

Mobile TV Experience is Lousy—Quality and Ubiquity are Key

Published by
Brendon Mills
at September 27, 2007 in Mobile Video, Transcoding and H.264. 0 Comments    Email This Post

In a recent post from James Quintana Pearce, MocoNews.net, he referenced a Gartner survey that indicated a lack of interest from Europeans in watching television or video on their mobile phones in the next 12 months. They cite “a lack of consensus on business models, variety of different technologies and shortage of airwaves” as reasons for the low response. He also noted a report from Juniper that indicated consumer interest may not be burgeoning, predicting 120 million mobile TV watchers worldwide by 2012, which will probably be less than 4 percent of the mobile phone user base.

I don’t really blame the survey respondents. Until the video viewing experience on mobile devices can compare to that of Internet video, it’s hard to disagree with their negative sentiment. However, demand is growing for a number of reasons cited in an IDC whitepaper, Internet and Mobile Video: Solutions for the Long Tail, which include better devices, faster networks, rising consumer awareness, price erosion and service bundling as well as the strong adoption of mobile TV and video among youth.

Right now however, the same content that consumers are used to accessing on their PCs isn’t rapidly being extended to mobile video. Why? Well, one reason is the complexity of delivering mobile video increases exponentially due to the variety of end-user devices: each with their own unique screen size, resolution, bit-rate and supported codecs. This generates unique challenges for media companies which are struggling to keep up with the increased amount of transcoding required to re-purpose video for the wide variety video-enable mobile devices on the market.

Take for example the iPhone. When Apple agreed to make YouTube content available via its iPhone, users expected to start searching the vast YouTube library of video immediately. However, all of that content has to be transcoded, or re-formatted to H.264, suitable for iPhone viewing. So slowly but surely all of the YouTube content is being made available to iPhone users. When users have the same ubiquitous access to video content from their mobile devices as they do from their PCs, that’s when adoption will really begin to climb.

As we move toward improving networks and devices, we’re simultaneously moving toward improving transcoding technology which is making viewing ubiquity possible and will vastly change the mobile video viewing experience for the better.

One Set of Codecs to Rule Them All? Not Anytime Soon.

Published by
Brendon Mills
at September 26, 2007 in Mobile Video, Microsoft VC-1, DivX, Internet Video, Transcoding, Adobe, H.264, RipCode V4 and SilverLight. 1 Comment    Email This Post

Just when we all started to think that the video industry was beginning to move towards standardization around H.264, Qualcomm announced that it has licensed the DivX codec technology and will support it in a range of video-enabled chipsets for CDMA mobile devices, ahead of Adobe’s Flash Video. As Peter White of Rethink Research writes, “if Qualcomm stays solely with DivX, then it will mean that the worlds of CDMA and WCDMA telephony will have diverged, and that web sites that can provide video to one type of handset will not be able to be played on another.”

In the Flash vs. Silverlight camp, Bradley Werner concludes that with the addition of Silverlight, Microsoft’s VC-1 video codec is rapidly moving into a position of parity with Adobe’s Flash Media Player and both technologies are in good positions to win in the market. Neal Page over at Inlet concurs.

So are these signs that the industry is in a position yet to move toward a set of codec standards? Will it happen soon? To both these counts, the answer is probably not.

In the recent IDC whitepaper Internet and Mobile Video: Transcoding the Long Tail, IDC estimates that there are close to 100 different types of Internet and mobile video files that the market is currently supporting. This is good news for RipCode because the greater the number of video formats and associated increased complexities means more business. However, because it takes a lot of time and development cycles to successfully support the multiple flavors of codecs on the market even we would like to see some degree of consolidation. However, given the slim chance of this happening anytime soon, we’ll continue to take our cues from our customers (video aggregators, user generated content sites, mobile & internet TV providers, etc.) and drive our development to support their codec requirements. After all, it’s the customers who in the end, will likely determine when and under what codecs the market will unify.

IBC Show: RipCode Video File

Published by
Jacqui Galow
at September 24, 2007 in Transcoding and RipCode V4. 0 Comments    Email This Post

We shot some video at the IBC show in Amsterdam and thought we’d share it with you.  Here is just a little bit of the total footage.  Enjoy!

Online Video Viewing Exceeds 9 Billion in July

Published by
Brendon Mills
at September 21, 2007 in Mobile Video, Internet Video and Transcoding. 1 Comment    Email This Post

We’ve talked in previous posts about the explosion of Internet and mobile video, but this recent report from ComScore really puts this into perspective.  Their Video Metrix report revealed that nearly 75 percent of U.S. Internet users watched an average of 3 hours of online video during the month of July, accounting for more than 9 billion videos viewed.  Given that the average online video duration was only 2.7 minutes, this means that people are watching a lot of short form video content - approximately 66 online videos in one month.  Consumers are voting by way of their viewing habits and I fully expect future ComScore reports will show even larger numbers.

The rise of the consumer as content creator has led to an explosion of user generated video, making it increasingly difficult for UGC sites to keep up with the transcoding needed to publish the growing amount of online video.  To continue to meet increasing consumer demand, high volume video sites have to re-think the way they approach transcoding.  There is opportunity to get ahead of the transcode transaction problem, before these growing pains become a real barrier to growth.

Green IT & Joining The Green Grid

Published by
Brendon Mills
at September 19, 2007 in Green IT, Transcoding and RipCode V4. 1 Comment    Email This Post

There’s been a lot of talk recently about “Green IT” and data center energy efficiency.  Treehugger dedicated a channel to environmentally friendly technology, and blogs like earth2tech, GreenBiz and InfoWorld’s Sustainable IT have all tackled the issue.

As they’ve pointed out, there are many reasons for companies to go green.  Most companies realize that energy consumption from information technology is a major contributor to global warming; others find that a green data center can save actual green dollars.  We thought a lot about both in creating the RipCode V4 appliance.

Here’s the problem: Until now, video transcoding happened via software running on general process servers.  With the explosion of transcode transactions, content providers are forced to add servers at an exponential rate just to keep up with the growth in online and mobile video, and those server farms consume a lot of energy and dollars!

Our solution: Consider that one RipCode V4 appliance replaces about 10-20 general purpose servers and uses a mere 165 watts of energy at full capacity, thereby creating substantial energy and cost savings.  It just makes sense.

To continue our efforts in the area of “Green IT,” RipCode has joined The Green Grid, which today announced a collaboration agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy.  The Green Grid, a global consortium of information technology companies and professionals seeking to lower the overall consumption of power in data centers around the globe, will  work with the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) to collaborate and improve energy efficiency by educating IT managers on both the technical implementation of a greener data center and the associated financial benefits.  

Check out the RipCode web site for more details on our green transcoding technology.

RipCode’s Launch!

Published by
Brendon Mills
at September 15, 2007 in On Demand Transcoding, Mobile Video, Internet Video, Transcoding and RipCode V4. 1 Comment    Email This Post

Explosion of Transcode Transactions

Published by
Brendon Mills
at September 15, 2007 in Mobile Video, Internet Video, Transcoding and RipCode V4. 6 Comments    Email This Post

RipCode at IBC: It’s a Wrap

Published by
Brendon Mills
at September 10, 2007 in H.264, Adobe and SilverLight. 0 Comments    Email This Post

The IBC show is about to come to a close here in Amsterdam and it’s been a big week for Internet video. The Adobe announcement regarding their support for H.264 within Flash 9 was the talk of the show among many of the attendees and video operators trying to figure out how to handle Microsoft SilverLight next to Adobe’s MovieStar.

It was also RipCode’s first opportunity for us to demonstrate, for a mass audience, the unique capabilities of the RipCode V4 transcoding appliance. RipCode is coming out of our stealth mode next week and our product and capabilities have surprised many who are first learning about us. The RipCode team is anxious to get back to the U.S. and begin following up on the opportunities and conversations that we’ve begun here in Amsterdam. We’ve taken quite a bit of video from the show. Give us a chance to edit it to a reasonable length, add some commentary and we’ll share it with you soon.

Update: Just saw this coverage of the IBC show by StreamingMedia.com which validates the advancement of and demand for the IPTV ecosystem.

Now Playing: RipCode H.264

Published by
Brendon Mills
at September 7, 2007 in Transcoding, H.264 and Adobe. 2 Comments    Email This Post

Two weeks ago, as widely anticipated, Adobe announced its support for H.264. Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee and Charlie Oppenheimer over at StreamingMedia provided good coverage and commentary of this announcement.

This is a welcomed announcement for the industry, and RipCode will support both Adobe’s Flash Media Server 3 and the updated version of Flash 9, code-named “Moviestar.” Additionally, I’m thrilled that RipCode was selected to participate in Adobe’s Flash Media Solution Provider Program (FMSP) to insure compatibility between media transcoded by RipCode and the Flash Media Server.

In brief, FMSP supports the Flash ecosystem of providers by giving businesses access to the best providers for Flash streaming content—think of it as a consortium of subject matter experts and turnkey solution providers for all things Flash.

We’re looking forward to working with Adobe as we build out our codec support to meet the requirements for their latest Flash media.