Content producers can publish streaming media once, noted Dave Frederick, the company's director of product marketing. "Then our technology immediately will deliver it across multiple formats, platforms, and devices." A major benefit of this approach is reduced costs. Frederick noted that a traditional streaming media deployment can cost $50,000 or more, but the Generic Media Publishing Service gives content producers the ability to store a master file from which streams are transcoded on-the-fly in only the formats and bitrates users request. That helps publishers control and predict costs, and it helps them avoid spending significant amounts of money up front for formats their users don't need.
Mulitmedia Innovations
Generic Media was founded in early 2000 by Peter Hoddie, the company's CEO, and Angela Lai, vice president of engineering. Hoddie previously worked for nearly a decade on Apple's QuickTime technology. As distinguished engineer and senior QuickTime architect, he played a key role in both the technical and strategic direction of the company's multimedia software. He also helped establish several industry standards, including ISO's MPEG-4, and he holds six U.S. patents in the area of digital media.
"Streaming media has finally evolved into a viable delivery medium," Hoddie noted when he announced the Generic Media Publishing Service at NAB2001, a conference for the converging digital media industries. "While continuing technology advances ensure that it will get even better, they have hindered any stable workflow for creating and delivering streaming content."
Generic Media's approach is designed to provide the "single, consistent streaming platform" that stabilizes the workflow, Hoddie added. The Generic Media Publishing Service automatically delivers a streaming master in new formats, and new versions of old formats as they are released, which saves publishers the time and expense associated with re-encoding.
"Streaming media has finally evolved into a viable delivery medium," Hoddie noted when he announced the Generic Media Publishing Service at NAB2001, a conference for the converging digital media industries. "While continuing technology advances ensure that it will get even better, they have hindered any stable workflow for creating and delivering streaming content."
Generic Media's approach is designed to provide the "single, consistent streaming platform" that stabilizes the workflow, Hoddie added. The Generic Media Publishing Service automatically delivers a streaming master in new formats, and new versions of old formats as they are released, which saves publishers the time and expense associated with re-encoding.
Before co-founding Generic Media, Angela Lai was a principal engineer at Silicon Graphics and core designer of that company's digital media software architecture. Generic Media's staff, which now totals about 30 people, includes many other media pioneers from companies such as Pinnacle Systems, Sun, and Oracle.
Generic Media is privately held. The company has received more than $12 million in funding from SOFTBANK Venture Capital, Sony Corporation, and NTT Leasing.
Three Components
There are three parts to the Generic Media Publishing Service:
- The Generic Media Transformation Engine is a "just-in-time," multiformat processing engine that enables multiple media transcoding operations to be performed simultaneously. The engine performs the resizing, encoding, sampling, and filtering of media content on-demand from a single-source type for various formats, devices, and connections.
- The Generic Media Publishing Manager is a Web-based interface for managing a service account and uploading media files.
- The Generic Media Delivery Manager detects end-users' settings to ensure the best connections with audiences.
Here's how the system works: When a user clicks a link to download a video clip, the Generic Media Publishing Service determines the preferred format and bitrate indicated by the user's settings. "Then, the Generic Media Transformation Engine will locate the single streaming master file, encode it into the appropriate format and bitrate, send it to a streaming server, and save it to a cache file at the same time," said Frederick. "On subsequent requests for the same format and bitrate, the file will play via the appropriate streaming server from the cache file."
Frederick noted that a nice additional feature of the publishing service is its ability to generate media identifications on-the-fly. "Logo images, watermarks, and messages can be applied dynamically without altering the streaming master," he said. To generate the identifications, a Flash file is overlaid onto the video as it is encoded.
Clieints and Partners
Frederick said Generic Media's current clients represent multiple industries and illustrate the wide range of applications for the company's technology. Clients include Sony, Canon DV, Dreamspan, ProMax, R/Com MediaSchool, and Yomiuri Shimbun.
R/Com MediaSchool (http://www.mediaschool.com) is a distance-learning company that uses Generic Media technology to offer virtual seminars and university certification in Web design, video production, music composition, and new media authoring.
Yomiuri Shimbun (http://www.yomiuri.co.jp) is the world's largest newspaper. "As the only media conglomerate with a daily newspaper circulation of over 10 million, we decided to compliment our traditional divisions with the 'Yomiuri News Stream' site," said Motoyuki Uejima, manager of the newspaper's Media Strategy Bureau. "The Generic Media Publishing Service resolves streaming complexities and allows us to focus on making great content. Generic Media supports our need to deliver video over cellular phones and PDAs. NTT Docomo's i-mode phone demonstrates that Japan is leading the wireless Internet age. With Generic Media, Yomiuri is more capable than ever to extend our audience reach."
In another move aimed at extending streaming video to audiences beyond the desktop, Generic Media has developed gMovie Maker and gMovie Player. They're consumer products that let Macintosh and Windows users convert and play back color video, animation, and still images on any Palm OS handheld, including the Palm, Sony CLIÉ, Handspring Visor, and IBM WorkPad. Frederick noted that in the future, Generic Media plans to work with other manufacturers, developers, and content
To enhance the value of online video, Generic Media is already working with Virage, Inc. (http://www.virage.com), a San Mateo company offering technology and services that help organizations manage and index video for online applications. Through the partnership, Virage will offer integration of the Generic Media Publishing Service into custom video solutions, and Generic Media will use Virage as its preferred provider of encoding services. A combination of services from both companies will give clients the ability to make a single streaming master not only viewable on-demand, but also searchable.
"Generic Media's mission is to enhance and streamline streaming media processes and capabilities without forcing techniques and policies that don't fit current customer workflows," noted Peter Hoddie. "We are working with Virage to provide its customers the most complete way to simplify their video encoding and format upgrade processes. By allowing search and viewing of video content from any device, at any bandwidth, regardless of original file content, we're dramatically reducing publishers' time to market."