Telestream Inc. - David Heppe


(click thumbnail)David HeppeQ. What kind of products or services does your company offer for broadcasters?

A. Telestream provides world-class encoding-based media workflow solutions. Our products enable broadcasters, service providers and enterprises to access, transform and exchange video, audio and metadata on the desktop and across the network. For broadcasters, these products streamline operations and enable them to generate more revenue with their content. Telestream products include powerful workflow automation applications, scalable craft encoding applications, ingest and delivery solutions and plug-in components. Our multiformat solutions provide cross-platform compatibility, interoperability between systems and fast, efficient, all-digital media workflows.

Q. What’s new that you will show at NAB2007 and that broadcasters should look for there?

A. Telestream’s new Episode Series media encoding applications for the Mac offer speed, quality and scalability. It provides extensive support for current and emerging video and audio file formats and hands-on control of the encoding process. This scalable suite of desktop and server-based applications quickly and easily transforms content into a broad range of SD and HD formats. Episode Series allows Telestream to expand its encoding solutions for mobile, Web TV, podcast and streaming markets. Targeting media enthusiasts, post-production professionals, and new media departments at broadcast and other media companies, Episode’s optimized codecs, extensive filters and fine-tuning compression capabilities enable users to generate excellent picture quality with fast conversion speed. With the explosion of new media distribution outlets, customers were also asking us to reach beyond transcoding solutions. Telestream’s new FlipFactory MetaFlip technology helps customers capitalize on new revenue opportunities by transforming metadata along with video and audio files for submission to content aggregators and distributors. MetaFlip meets the unique data requirements of iTunes, RSS and CableLabs VOD workflows. Support for other major providers will soon follow. MetaFlip is available as a standard feature with FlipFactory Mobile and as an option for all other FlipFactory workflow automation applications.

Q. How is your new product offering different from what’s available on the market?

A. The Episode Series is unique in that it provides scalability from an individual desktop application to a server-based workgroup solution. Multiple clients can be configured to access media in a central server or a clustered server network to meet increasing, high-volume needs. All the components and options work together seamlessly to provide speed, performance and reliability. Episode codecs are universal and optimized for the new Apple Intel Xserves for ultimate performance and speed. Episode codecs also offer high quality and performance, because we’ve written many of them from the ground up on the Mac OS.

Q. Where are you based, and how many employees do you have? Anything else we should know about your company?

A. Telestream is based in Nevada City, Calif. And, as a result of our acquisition of compression specialist Popwire in August 2006, we now have a development center in Stockholm, Sweden. The company has close to 100 employees worldwide. Telestream has experienced strong growth in all market sectors, including broadcast, Web, mobile and asset management. Our encoding-based workflow solutions range from plug-in components, to craft encoding and enterprise-class workflow automation applications.