SAN JOSE, CALIF.: Harmonic announced the release of the ProMedia Xpress file-based transcoder, the newest addition to the company’s ProMedia family of software and appliances.

ProMedia Xpress uses Harmonic’s H.264 codec and its new MicroGrid parallel-computing technology. MicroGrid’s use of multi-core computing eliminates the bottlenecks associated with traditional transcoding approaches. Combined with the ProMedia Package stream packager, ProMedia Xpress allows multirate H.264 assets to be encapsulated for target ecosystems including Apple HTTP Live Streaming, Microsoft Smooth Streaming, Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming, and MPEG-DASH. Because ProMedia Xpress and Package separate the transcoding and packaging processes, users can transcode an asset once and package it multiple times, thereby reducing repetitive processor-intensive tasks and easing the need to accommodate changing delivery standards and protocols.

Tight integration between ProMedia Xpress and Harmonic’s Omneon MediaGrid shared storage system allows content to be stored and accessed on the network at high speed, eliminating the latency associated with copying content to the transcode nodes before transcoding, and instantly making available transcoded content for downstream operations such as QC, distribution, delivery or archive.