Grab Networks’ (nee Anystream) Agility 2G (for second generation) can pretty much grab video from anywhere, process and encode it, and deliver it in the necessary format for an expansive range of broadcast and streaming formats. I looked at Agility last year; since then, it’s been completely redesigned from a standalone application to a web based interface that’s obviously more accessible to multiple users from different stations on the network. For example, here’s a screen of the new web-based encoding preview screen.

I spent 30 minutes late in the day looking at a demo of the new system, and it was impressive. I’ll share my major takeaways.

First, the system is very flexible regarding licensing. If you buy a five license system, you can float the licenses over ten or twenty systems as they become available on the LAN, you can just run five instances simultaneously. This makes the system very easy to deploy.

Second, the system does a great job spreading complex encoding jobs over a grid network, splitting complex tasks over multiple systems to get the accomplished as quickly as possible. Impressively, once you ingest a file, you can spread the encoding of that file to multiple formats over a grid; most other systems encode a job at a time on one node.

Third, the company pays attention to the little details that can make or break video quality, for example, implementing motion compensated standards conversion to maximize quality. Fourth, when I say any format to any format, I mean just that. For example, Agility is one of the few systems that can input Dolby E and separate out the necessary channels for processing and encoding.

Fifth, security is a clear priority in the system. For example, you have the ability to control what functions each user performs on a very micro level. Finally, the company has had some major success over the past few months, including encoding all the video for the Beijing Olympics and President Obama’s inauguration.