Flipping for FlipFactory

Put your company's video content professionals back behind their cameras where they belong.

Producing corporate video content for the Web is a bit easier than it was in the mid-1990s, when streaming media was first introduced as a desktop application. But now expectations are high. Your company's marketing and corporate communications staffs have tons of messages they want to enhance with video, and they want it done yesterday. Meanwhile, your audience members (end users) all want to see MTV-quality on their desktops.

Despite what Jeff Goldblum will have you believe in Apple's iMac/iMovie commercials, there are some difficult steps in the media production process. Publishing to a streaming-media content delivery network for global reach, for example, is fraught with conflicting and complicated path names. And resource bottlenecks remain.

One of the bottlenecks is converting digital video/audio media from one format - a high-quality, low-compressed or uncompressed original, (such as from a digital video editing system) - to another format suitable for IP-based streaming (or from one format to multiple data rates and formats). Industry-leading solutions for performing these conversions (most notably Media 100's Cleaner Pro and Avid's ePublisher) are designed for a dedicated video producer's workstation and have many sophisticated features that require considerable training. The same person who edits, titles and "polishes" the content to meet corporate communications guidelines typically will be involved in the conversion to Web-ready/streaming format (also known as encoding).

Many media professionals spend hours bent over a keyboard and mouse in an editing bay, followed by more hours at a terminal managing the intelligent compression of the media to its optimum viewing experience. Once the settings are known, a consistent video experience may be obtained by reusing the same parameters. Those who work with video content as just another means to an end - communicating - can now avoid learning all the nuances associated with compressing in different data formats and data rates.

Telestream's FlipFactory Publish 1.1 is server-based software so simple that anyone with a Web browser can use it, yet so powerful that enterprise content professionals can trust it to consistently publish video for the Web. If you're an IT administrator, you'll like FlipFactory because it's Windows server-friendly, and has a light footprint and secure access through password protection - and the price is right, too.

Keeping it simple

We were impressed with how FlipFactory simplified media conversion in different scenarios. A set of wizards lets you establish a publishing workflow. In each step, FlipFactory eliminates irrelevant options and forces the selection of key parameters when you create media "factories."

Factories consist of encoders and destinations. Encoders are possibly the most complicated element, but Telestream lets you choose from a half-dozen data rates, and at least 10 video and audio coder/decoders, via pop-up menus. The categories that need to be selected are based on the outcome the user wants and the format of the file the encoder begins with. FlipFactory's encoders can begin with practically any digital source: from a broadcast-quality file on a media server (usually in MPEG); an archive in a streaming format such as Real's .rm or Microsoft's .asf; to advanced authoring or editing languages (such as Avid's); or digital video, a digital capture format used in semiprofessional cameras. Once the encoders are created, the end user no longer sees all the options. An account may have an unlimited number of encoders, but going too far down this path increases complexity and defeats the purpose of FlipFactory Publish. The important parameter for success is to have filters set, if necessary, and the correct encoders for a particular destination or application.

Destinations - the task you want the software to perform following the compression or transcoding - are even easier than encoders to set up. Your options include keeping the results on the local server, e-mailing the results to the account contact (or anyone else), or automatically pushing the files to a server (or servers) via FTP.

Factories can produce as many "products" (defined by Telestream as one encoder and one destination) as needed. We found it was difficult to manage more than four products in one factory, because each product needed a nickname and keeping them straight required a naming scheme. When submitting a file to a factory, we could FTP the file from another server or e-mail the original as an attachment to FlipFactory's automated e-mail client. Although we didn't test this second option, it could be an important way to prioritize bandwidth around a server: Those with urgent needs could be authorized to transfer a file for immediate conversion, while lower-priority requests could be sent via e-mail and held in a queue.

For users managing factories from a Web browser, Telestream offers a number of preprocessing options. Although the impact of processing cannot be previewed in the system, any preprocessing that might need to be done on media (such as deinterlacing/interlacing, frame rate conversion, temporal or spatial interpolation, color correction or watermarking) is performed automatically before a factory begins its task. Preprocessing filters could add value to the users of Telestream's technologies beyond the desktop "personal" media conversion products, similar to how Kai's image filters added value to Adobe's Photoshop.

Installation

FlipFactory comes on a CD, but can also be downloaded from Telestream's Web site. The software doesn't require a high-end server to operate, but if you're going to create accounts for more than a few simultaneous users, Telestream recommends at least dual Pentium III Xeon processors, 2M bytes of Level 2 cache and 512M bytes of RAM. As long as you've got Microsoft's Internet Information Server, installation is trivial. An installation wizard (a new feature in Version 1.1) helps you selectively install program options if you want more than the Flip Engine and default components. For example, the package comes with what it calls base-level encoding and decoding formats. These are popular formats, such as Real Media, QuickTime, Windows Media, MP3 Audio and WAV Audio. All are the original manufacturer codecs available at no charge from the respective manufacturers' Web sites, but Telestream made it convenient for administrators by including them. Additional broadcast-specific encoders and decoder options include proprietary technologies Telestream licenses or has written for use with FlipFactory, such as DV Encoder, MPEG1 System Stream and several MPEG2 Program Streams (up to 50M bit/sec).

The program also includes the Microsoft Data Engine, a minimal version of SQL Server 7, that FlipFactory uses as its database.

Stability, security and administration

We were concerned the product didn't behave consistently in diverse client environments. For example, the console display and operation appeared different on two networked clients we tested.

On the system set to display large fonts, each time we selected options from pop-up/drop-down menus, the frame would anchor back at the top of browser window, creating the need to scroll down to the next setting in situations where the number of options was longer than appeared on the first screen. When we created a new encoder, destination or factory in either client, the cursor did not default to any particular field, requiring an extra step to point and click when creating a text insertion point.

Another risk with a server-based application is it could be used by someone other than the account's owner to perform unnecessary tasks or to send media to destinations outside the corporation without authorization. When users connect to the Flip Engine, they see a logon and password page. Once their user name has been accepted, they will see only the details of their account. FlipFactory's console session remains active as long as the user is making requests, but the session expired after 20 minutes of inactivity. This is an important security feature, but in one case we lost some work because the changes to the database were not saved.

Also, the destination creation process could be improved. When we chose a destination that was on the same or another local server, it only let us type in a host name and path to a specific directory. Offering a "browse to" button (found in most application interfaces) would reduce human error. Furthermore, because most servers are secured against user tampering, it makes sense to have a logon name and password field when creating a destination.

Because many people can use the server-based FlipFactory at the same time (there is no limit to the number of accounts that can be created), each account has uniquely defined encoders, destinations and factories. For example, from the destinations interface, you can create, modify or delete a destination. Modifications are contingent on an element not being in use by any other factory. When we used an encoder in one factory, the database detected its use and prevented us from changing the parameters on the codec. Unfortunately, it failed to offer a solution for releasing the encoder from its factory.

Performing administrative tasks on the server running FlipFactory is relatively routine. Detailed log files are available, and any errors that occur during a particular step are noted. Also, the server's automated status messages can be e-mailed to the user or to others, as well as to a LAN administrator.

Support and documentation

Telestream's technical support team was helpful during product testing and provided valuable insights into underlying technology. This said, consulting on multimedia network design is outside the company's scope. Given the company's product and the range of possible implementation scenarios involving caching servers, firewalls and proxies, these questions will probably come up, and a $1,750 maintenance and support agreement is required with each server software license sold.

The documentation is well-written and comprehensive. Online help is included on the server. Product and documentation are not available in other languages, and the company doesn't have plans to offer non-English versions.

The price is right

FlipFactory Publish software costs $10,000 per server (recently reduced from $19,500). Telestream charges extra for professional output format options (MPEG1, MPEG2 and DV). A $5,000 enterprise integration package provides software APIs for database submission of jobs. New companion products using the firm's proprietary MDML, the Media Delivery Protocol (which controls, negotiates and monitors media delivery) and Flip Engine are expected later this year. Even at this price, the benefit of enabling dozens of dispersed (Intranet- or extranet-based) users to encode or transcode their own content for reuse in specific streaming applications on a common platform will produce a positive return on investment.

Conclusion

While you shouldn't give everyone a video camera, abandon all personal video-encoding stations and issue hundreds of accounts for automatically publishing video to any Web site. FlipFactory can reduce the headaches that come from performing time-consuming, delicate but repetitive tasks. The feature set and cost makes this product a good value for companies that plan to have more than 20 people around the globe produce an aggregate of more than four hours of new all-digital content each day. With FlipFactory Publish, you can save some time for your users who review and approve corporate content.

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