Archive of the Portable Platforms Category

Video over cell phones is one of the hottest topics facing video producers, but most organizations lack the technical expertise and/or capital to make it happen. If you’d like to dip your toe in the water, check out the Mobile Video Managed Service from Vidiator.

Operationally, you upload your videos to the Vidiator site, who transcodes them and sends you a link to post on your web site. Or, you can create your own mobile-phone accessible web-site using Vidiator tools. In the booth, the company captured video from a web-cam, uploaded it to their service, and then transmitted it to a cell phone in the booth where it played with minimal latency and good quality.

I saw the Vidiator folks in a 10×10 booth in the Central Hall, which initially raised my eyebrows, but learned that they’re owned by Hutchison Whampoa Ltd, a $40 billion Hong Kong company. Hutchison developed the cellular streaming technology for in-house use, and is now taking it out of house via Vidiator. Both the service and technology felt mature and well thought out, and at $99/month for 10,000 minutes of cellular viewing, it’s certainly affordable.

While portable HDDs are turning up on HDV camcorders around the show floor, the promise of portable 4K field production came a bit closer with the pending release of Codex Portable from Codex Digital. Now on display in the Band Pro booth, the Portable (scheduled to deliver this June) is shown capturing 1080p, 4:4:4 data from a Sony F23 camera. The lightweight disk recorder– a pricier solid-state version will also be available at some point this year– is about the size of the toaster and records HD, 2K, and 4K from Sony, ARRI, Panavision, Panasonic, Thomson, and Dalsa cameras. more

Harris had its press conference on Sunday. This news is coming a bit late, of course, but that’s probably because the conference was aimed more at broadcasters than content producers, so it’s a bit outside our usual area of coverage. Still, you’ll want to pay attention to this news, as it has implications for the new ways the public will be accessing and viewing video in the next few years.

Among the news about its various broadcast systems (servers, routers, DTV transmitters), Harris also discussed its MPH initiative that it’s undertaking with display manufacturers Zenith and LG. MPH, which stands for “mobile/pedestrian/handheld,” aims to send video to mobile devices via “in-band” transmission — over the air, within the existing digital spectrum available to broadcasters. more

One of the coolest products I saw at the show came to me by chance as I was hurrying across the North Hall, that almost always deserted-as-a-ghost-town hall. Maybe it’s not something a journalist would, or should, admit to, but when walking across such halls I sometimes feel sorry for the companies that have booths there. The booth employees make longing glances at your press badge as you hurry by. I usually find myself mumbling something like “Oh boy, really late again…” as I shuffle past looking for the exit.

(Hey, it just struck me–it might be helpful to someone who has never been to the show that one way to get a sense of it is to begin by thinking of a really huge amount of enclosed space. Okay? Divide that up into three big spaces/buildings, but not evenly: have each one gaining on the next. Good. Now think of these as having personalities. Maybe something from Goldilocks and the three bears could work. For example, North Hall seems a little too quiet at times, but it really is the smallest of the three in floor space, so that fits. Next, move on to Central Hall–yes, it’s laid out right in the middle of the three halls. Central Hall usually seems just about right; whether it’s crowd size, said crowds attendant caffeine levels, or amount of shouting needed to make yourself heard in the hallways, everything comes out about average. But now walk into the last of the three, the very oversubscribed South Hall. Here, just think of those over-crowded, sweaty fairgrounds you’ve encountered, or maybe a dangerously over-packed subway platform, something you might not want to navigate on a regular basis, but with everyone running. Yes, even in Las Vegas too much, it turns out, is really sometimes too much.) more

National TeleConsultants (NTC), the world leader in strategic technology consulting and engineering design services for the broadcast and media industry, presented an exclusive “State of the Industry 2008″ briefing at the 2008 NAB Conference on a series of critical topics facing today’s media professionals. Presented by NTC Chief Technology Officer Eric Pohl, and NTC Consultants Michael Sterling and Joey Faust, the “State of the Industry 2008″ briefing examined seven specific areas, including: the transition to digital cinema, the challenge of metadata collection and usage, the importance of social networking, professional open source media software, the rise of mobile television in the United States, the explosion of digital content distribution formats and methods, and recent advances in high-resolution consumer display technologies. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

Origin Digital, a global video applications service provider, announced its support of video applications on Microsoft SharePoint Server and for applications using Web tools in Microsoft Silverlight. Origin Digital will showcase its Web-based Odaptor solution that seamlessly aggregates, manages, transforms, and distributes digital content and video anywhere, in any format, for any device or screen, in the Microsoft exhibit during the NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 14-17, 2008. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

Blackmagic Design Inc. announced the new Blackmagic Video Recorder, a compact USB video capture product that captures files direct to H.264 files for iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, YouTube, IPTV, Web or full resolution archiving. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

The Digital Content Producer and millimeter bloggers—Editor at Large Trevor Boyer, Senior Contributing Editors David Leitner and Dan Ochiva, and Contributing Writer Jan Ozer—continue their discussion the upcoming show, and the conversation turns to portable media platforms. Listen to the exclusive NAB Show podcast

(music provided by Dead Girls Ruin Everything, Reignition Recordings)

Check out part one

The Digital Content Producer and millimeter bloggers—Editor at Large Trevor Boyer, Senior Contributing Editors David Leitner and Dan Ochiva, and Contributing Writer Jan Ozer—discuss the upcoming show and what they’re looking forward to seeing and hearing more about. Listen to the exclusive NAB Show podcast

(music provided by Dead Girls Ruin Everything, Reignition Recordings)

Check out part two

After a somewhat slow start, MPEG-4 is quietly gaining significant share in a number of strategic markets, including satellite TV in the US (and satellite and cable in Europe), as well as being the codec of choice for mobile devices like the iPod and Microsoft Zune.

Zune is an interesting story, since you know Microsoft would have done everything in its power to standardize on its own format, Windows Media. They really had no alternative but to support MPEG-4, however, since if the new unit couldn‘t play iPod compatible videos, it absolutely had no chance. more