Sonic Foundry upgrades Mediasite Live

With only one product line to focus on since selling off its software tools division this past summer, Sonic Foundry is making the most of its time with a new update to its Mediasite Live system. Mediasite comes into formats: a rack mount unit and a portable unit (that includes a LCD screen, keyboard and mouse). For those not familiar with the product, Mediasite Live creates rich media presentations by combing audio/video with data from a laptop (slides, documents, images). The audio and video is encoded in Windows Media 9 format while the data portion is displayed in a standard Web browser. The Live portion is a bit a misnomer. The product can be used for live presentations, but the majority of content is delivered on-demand either via the Web or on a CD.

This latest release adds a new Windows-based administration console for managing multiple Mediasite devices in a corporate network from a central location and a category manager for better organizing the content created. Also, Sonic Foundry re-architected the product using the Microsoft .Net 1.1 framework to help enhance performance. One downside to consider is the product is not meant for post-production editing, only the capture of a real-time presentation. Sonic Foundry does provide a bulletin that outlines some basic “heads and tails” editing that can be done to the completed material.

Pricing starts at $25,000.