Sonic Foundry's MediaSite Live

Streaming presentations made easier.

Even the most technologically inclined people find streaming-media content creation tricky; there are compression algorithms, data-rate optimization procedures and challenges in posting and integrating content and video from different systems on the viewer's desktop display.

Sonic Foundry's goal with its MediaSite Live appliance is to make producing live or on-demand rich media as easy as possible for presenters and for network or content managers - with or without a professional video producer nearby. When a producer is available, he can focus on the video composition, not the technology processing, assembly or delivery of components.

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Even the most technologically inclined people find streaming-media content creation tricky; there are compression algorithms, data-rate optimization procedures and challenges in posting and integrating content and video from different systems on the viewer's desktop display.

Sonic Foundry's goal with its MediaSite Live appliance is to make producing live or on-demand rich media as easy as possible for presenters and for network or content managers - with or without a professional video producer nearby. When a producer is available, he can focus on the video composition, not the technology processing, assembly or delivery of components.

MediaSite Live 2.0b is exceptionally well-designed - it is presenter-friendly and suitable for corporate networks. By virtue of smart technology in the "capture workstation," the finished content it produces meets (and in some cases exceeds) expectations of the most demanding Web-based business audiences. For these reasons, the product receives a World Class Award.

Simple setup

The MediaSite Live system includes a capture workstation (an appliance with a 1.8-GHz Advanced Micro Devices processor and 512M bytes of RAM running Windows XP Professional), an end-user application and administration software. The appliance is full of video and audio capture, image capture and output interfaces. The customer adds one or more video and audio sources (cameras and microphones) and one or more content sources (DVD player, S-VHS VCR, LCD projector, desktop computer or laptop) via a scan converter, the built-in VGA capture interface or the auxiliary S-video or composite capture card. A professional video camera, camcorder or a video-mixing switch with multiple cameras will work as long as the device has an S-video or composite (standard RCA) interface. USB and FireWire interfaces are not supported in Version 2.0b, but Sonic Foundry says these would be included in future releases.

It took us about 15 minutes to install the MediaSite Live box in a meeting room and get a presenter to begin capturing and streaming an event to audiences. This installation time is possible only if you have a Web server, FTP server local to the Web server, a directory for storing captured images, Windows Media Services (as a part of Windows 2000 Server or Advanced Server with Service Pack 2 or later), and that you have installed Sonic Foundry's Auto-Registration Service on the video server. Because MediaSite Live also has these components built in, presenters can operate it as a stand-alone, archiving device. And by using the administration tools, the presenter or content manager can publish to the enterprise or service provider network later.

In the unit we tested, the administration tools were on the capture appliance. In a production environment, the administration tools are installed on a Windows 2000 Server running the Internet Information Server services. Because the tools use XML-based field formatting, one instance of the tool set manages one or more workstations. Via a Web browser, a content manager or presenter can fill in presentation-specific details, choose the level of interactivity and pick the presentation mode - live broadcast, archived local content or download for on-demand playback later. For live presentations, the audience can provide feedback, send questions or respond to a preconfigured poll. You can also build new streaming profiles or load prebuilt profiles via the administration interface.