Viewcast encoder taps into power of MPEG-4

ViewCast has introduced its next generation of Niagara SCX encoder management and monitoring software for Niagara Streaming Systems and Osprey Video capture cards, the Niagara SCX Pro. The new SCX Pro features MPEG-4, Part 2/H.263 and MPEG-4, Part 10/H.264 live streaming encoding.

The H.263 streaming format is required for legacy cell phones while H.264 is the next-generation format not only used for video on cell phones, but also designed for high-data rate streaming and widely used in IPTV deployments. 3GPP and 3GPP2 are media container formats needed for delivering MPEG-4 content over cellular networks.

With Niagara SCX software, users can set up and control streaming systems throughout an enterprise or over the Internet with a single interface for multiple encoding and streaming formats, including uncompressed AVI capture-to-file, Flash capture-to-file, and Windows Media and RealVideo capture-to-file and stream. Niagara SCX Pro features the same capture-to-file and streaming codec support as Niagara SCX, while adding MPEG capture to provide file and live streaming capability.

Niagara SCX and Niagara SCX Pro software products are designed for broadcast engineers, corporate/enterprise communications professionals, content producers, Web/multimedia designers, and media consultants. Niagara SCX is also an ideal video-capture workflow management solution for ViewCast’s installed base of Osprey Video capture card users.

“With Niagara SCX software, the user has the ability to control and manage one or many media ingest systems remotely and stream in the most commonly used formats, thereby accommodating a wide variety of applications and end viewers,” said Dave Stoner, president of ViewCast. “To achieve the format support and control capabilities of SCX, a facility would need to use multiple encoding applications with varying user interfaces, an unwieldy alternative that would make management of a large array of video edge devices on a widely deployed network simply infeasible.”

Niagara SCX software can be combined with Osprey SimulStream software for multiple streams from a single channel input, allowing the encoding of digital or analog video signals into multiple formats, resolutions, and bit rates. Niagara SCX software configures the video pre-processing, scaling, and cropping for each encoding session. Other configuration settings include deinterlacing options, VBI data extraction, writing closed-captioning to XML files, gamma controls, color-space conversion, and video format settings.

Niagara SCX Pro software is preinstalled on Niagara GoStream™ and Niagara Pro encoding appliances, and Niagara SCX is preinstalled on all other Niagara integrated solutions with SCX Pro software as an option.