September 3, 2008 — Markham, Ontario: Digital Rapids — a leading developer of solutions for bringing television, video and movie content to the latest generation of viewing devices — has released a powerful new version of the Digital Rapids Broadcast Manager enterprise-class live encoder management software.
Digital Rapids Broadcast Manager provides robust management, monitoring and fault tolerance for multiple live streaming encoders. New features in version 1.3 — the second significant update this year — include :
* Enhanced failover flexibility with control of third-party video routers, enabling video input sources to be automatically re-routed when backup systems take over in the event of primary encoder failure
* A new ‘control room’ view provides mosaic-style, multi-channel live video confidence monitoring, allowing operators to see scaled-down streams from multiple encoders in a single screen with audio VU meters for at-a-glance verification
* Rich scripting capabilities, enabling programmatic, scheduled automation of custom tasks with support for a variety of popular scripting languages. Similar scripting capabilities are also available in a new version of the Digital Rapids Transcode Manager high-volume automated transcoding software, being released concurrently.
“Digital Rapids Broadcast Manager delivers the robust monitoring and control toolsets that ‘traditional’ broadcasters have long depended on, and adapts them for the latest generation of distribution platforms from IPTV to ‘over-the-top’ services such as Internet TV,” said Brian Stevenson, Director of Product Management at Digital Rapids. “Content providers worldwide have relied on Broadcast Manager for some of the year’s highest-profile online events with great success, and the new features in version 1.3 enable even greater operational efficiency and ease.”
Supporting Digital Rapids’ acclaimed StreamZ and StreamZ Live encoding systems, Digital Rapids Broadcast Manager simplifies operation with centralized scheduling, remote control and individual and group resource management, while bolstering reliability with automated failover and alerts. Advanced scheduling capabilities offer the flexibility of using of a different set of encoding parameters — including different compression formats — for each scheduled task, while a Web Services interface enables developers to directly integrate Broadcast Manager into their own custom applications and management systems.
The complete line of Digital Rapids products will be showcased at the IBC Conference and Exhibition, September 12-16 in Amsterdam, in stand number 7.G41. For more information on Broadcast Manager and other Digital Rapids products, please visit our web site at www.digital-rapids.com.