These newly functional browsers offer great opportunities in at least a couple of areas to cable operations. But like all new technologies, obstacles and challenges remain.

Read more of the article from Broadband Technology Report written by Carl Weinschenk.

Written By: Mike Horwitz, SVP, Engineering

There are two things on every media owner’s wish list: make videos easier to manage and quicker to publish. But with more and more devices hitting the market, new formatting standards to meet, and a constantly shifting environment, making your workload easier is, well, not so easy. But thanks to a new service from thePlatform, content owners have reason to celebrate. Introducing mpx Accelerate! This new feature removes common bottlenecks in a typical publishing workflow, enabling you to speed up delivery to multiple devices and outlets, while still delivering great viewing experience to your consumers.

What is mpx Accelerate?

mpx Accelerate is a cloud-based service with two key components:
1. Media Library – This allows you store your high-quality mezzanine files near your transcoding services to ensure they are easily accessible.
2. Elastic Transcoding – You can rapidly convert files simultaneously to multiple formats.

Fast Access to Quality Files: Media Library

Media Library allows you to store your high-resolution mezzanine files within thePlatform’s network and quickly access them for transcoding. This reduces the time it takes to transfer your files for processing and results in improved transcoding times – meaning you can make your content available to your audience on more devices, as quickly as possible.

Scale when You need it: Elastic Transcoding

Elastic transcoding allows you to scale your transcoding for peak times. Whether you’re a news organization, needing additional support to quickly deliver content around a breaking story – or your content cycle goes in waves due to special programming or events. There are going to be times when your business needs extra transcoding capacity to ensure your content is available to your audience.

Elastic Transcoding scales with your transcoding needs, ensuring you have the support you need when you need it. Premium transcoding is also available, providing additional concurrent processing for organizations that need rapid conversions of their video for playback on the web and mobile devices.

Learn More

Learn more about mpx Accelerate on our website, or contact thePlatform for more information.

We are excited to highlight our latest partnership with Encoding.com, a market leader in high-speed, massively scalable, cloud-based transcoding. With this integration, our customers can easily leverage Encoding.com’s comprehensive suite of transcoding services including editing and customization features, universal closed captioning support and automated content packaging and DRM capabilities.

“Encoding.com is excited to deliver enterprise-grade transcoding as a streamlined extension of any mpx workflow by offering a dynamic and scalable video processing platform that empowers customers to maximize their audiences across Web, mobile and OTT platforms,” said Jeff Malkin, President of Encoding.com. “By working with thePlatform, we can enable mpx users to easily manage video transcoding, while maintaining the strict business policies required for premium videos from major TV programmers and media companies.”

Encoding.com:

Encoding.com, the world’s largest video encoding service and provider of Vid.ly, the universal video URL platform, powers thousands of companies, including leading brands across media and entertainment, eLearning, retail, telecommunications, lifestyle, and advertising. Blending a flexible SaaS model, using cloud-computing platforms, Encoding.com enables publishers and developers to instantly scale, while eliminating expensive video infrastructure investments. Encoding.com supports all popular web and mobile formats, utilizing its proprietary Encoding Intelligence™ to accelerate processing, reduce errors and optimize video for any device.

Learn More

Contact thePlatform to learn more about our cloud transcoding options and partner integrations. To learn more about Encoding.com, please visit their website.

Read more of the interview here.

With our latest release of mpx, you can deliver on this promise for your customers. You can now manage live events in the same system as on-demand content. From scheduling a new event to applying business rules and presenting high-quality video with timed metadata in a player, all the tools you need for live events can be found today in mpx.

One Console. One Workflow.

mpx becomes your single entry-point for working with live and on-demand content. You can set up live events and live channels in the mpx console thanks to our seamless integration with Elemental Technologies. You can then use all of the familiar mpx tools to add thumbnails, metadata, and business policies, such as viewing restrictions.

When it’s time for your customers to tune in, you can use the Player Service to create a custom hosted player within mpx, and connect it to both your live and on-demand assets. While users are watching, you monitor the quality of your player with our real-time quality of service analytics. And when the event concludes, mpx will automatically convert it to an on-demand asset which will appear in your media library. You can then share to partners, offer it to your customers in a “catch-up” experience, or sell it on your storefront.

Monetizing Your Event

Some live events will already have the necessary SCTE-35 tones necessary to signal ad events. However, often you’ll be receiving an undecorated signal, and you’ll need to detect and signal these ad breaks yourself. mpx provides all the tools you need to do this, using a preview monitor feed from the encoder that displays directly in mpx and the online video equivalent of the “big red button” for signaling the start of an ad.

You can use the same method to “tag” moments in the event and add additional metadata, such as when a goal is scored in a soccer game and what players were involved, or when a special promotional item appears on screen and how long it appears for.

Live to On-Demand

Once your live event concludes, it is seamlessly transitioned to an on-demand asset in your media library. All of the associated metadata, cue points, ad breaks, business rules, and policies that were added to your live event are retained and applied to the on-demand asset.

Learn More

Read our Solution Brief on Live Event Publishing or contact us to schedule a discussion.

Read more here.

One of the most powerful ways of enhancing the viewer experience is by giving people more ways to discover and share content. Our new Player Slates feature does just that.

This new enhancement gives your audience more ways to discover their favorite content and provides easy sharing with friends using built-in social media controls.

What are Player Slates?

Player slates appear when a video ends, and can also be configured to appear when a video is paused. A set of standard slates is provided in a drop-down menu within the solution– such as related videos and social controls. Custom slates can be created and added to the mpx console, allowing technical members of your team to create entirely new in-player experiences.

Content Discovery

Our default slate for all videos is our related items slate, which presents options for your viewers regarding what to watch next. Videos are located and presented based on a feed query that pulls information from video metadata. The query can be easily updated and customized to include additional parameters. Customers can also create their own query that will search any service or feed of their choice – providing the opportunity to customize video recommendations.

Sharing and Social Controls

One of the common ways that individuals discover new content is through friends- by sharing videos through email, social platforms, and popular sites. Selecting our standard social slate makes it easy for your viewers to email or embed links or to share to social sites with one click. Customize your social slate by adding new sharing options or disabling any of the options for your player.

Create a Unique Viewer Experience

Our standard slate list is based on common in-player experiences that the majority of our customers are interested in. But what if you want to create something unique to your company or site? Utilizing our Development Kit, your team can literally create any type of experience you want for your viewership. For example, fashion sites can create links to items showcased in the videos for viewers to purchase. Once your customer slate has been created, it can be added to your mpx console and applied to any player by anyone in your company.

Learn More

Current customers can find more information in our Technical Resource Center (TRC), including a video training on Player Slate creation, or contact thePlatform for more information.

In addition, we’ve extended the bandwidth feature to work with more formats, including Adobe HTTP Dynamic and Akamai HD Network streams. The new control will also leverage our powerful skinning features, so it will always look great in your player.

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