Harmonic has announced the release of the ProMedia Xpress high-performance file-based transcoder, the newest addition to the company's ProMedia family of software and appliance solutions engineered to optimize video production workflows for high-volume multiscreen video-on-demand (VOD) applications.
ProMedia Xpress uses Harmonic's market-leading H.264 codec technology to deliver excellent video quality without impeding transcoding speeds, thereby improving video workflows for content owners and service providers, enabling them to deliver a significant increase in content hours while adhering to processing timetables and video quality targets. Facilitating cost-effective, faster-than-real-time transcoding of broadcast-quality content for multiscreen VOD delivery to mobile devices, PCs, and connected TVs, ProMedia Xpress allows operators and media companies to launch new services efficiently without compromising on the quality of their offering.
ProMedia Xpress employs Harmonic's new MicroGrid™ parallel-computing technology to achieve a dramatic improvement in transcoding performance. MicroGrid's video-centric approach for exploiting multi-core computing environments eliminates the bottlenecks associated with traditional transcoding approaches. By employing all available processor core capacity, ProMedia Xpress can scale effectively to provide remarkable transcoding performance without the need for custom computing hardware.
Part of the ProMedia suite of multiscreen products, ProMedia Xpress is a critical component of a complete file-based multiscreen workflow that scales from several to hundreds of nodes and provides the operational integrity required in demanding 24/7 VOD environments.
When combined with the ProMedia Package stream packager, ProMedia Xpress allows multirate H.264 assets to be encapsulated with the utmost speed and flexibility 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. In addition, 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.
ProMedia Xpress is expected to ship in the third quarter of 2012. Further information is available at www.harmonicinc.com.
