It looks like Teradek's VidiU live video encoder is a winner

In January, I wrote about Teradek's new $699 (U.S.) VidiU, a palm-sized portable video encoder that supports 1080P or 720P video at 5 Mbps maximum, and has built-in WiFi connectivity and a USB port for plugging in a 3G/4G broadband modem. The VidiU connects "out-of-the-box" with Ustream and Livestream, and can also connect to any streaming service that supports RTSP. Although Teradek and Ustream announced the VidiU in early January, the device is just now shipping to reviewers, and the company will start fulfilling customer orders later this month.

Streaming Media Magazine's Jan Ozer has posted a "first look" review of the VidiU. I strongly suggest that you read his review for all the details, but here are some of the highlights:

• The VidiU has a free iOS controller app that makes configuring the encoder and monitoring its output very simple. (Presumably, an Android app is in the works.)
• The VidiU can test the broadband connection and propose an optimal encoding rate to support the available bandwidth, and it also provides adaptive bandwidth management to optimize the encoding rate as available bandwidth changes.
• Two simultaneous streams are outputted by the VidiU: One goes to the streaming services provider, and the other goes over WiFi to an iOS device for monitoring.
• At the top quality rate for 720p video (2.2 Mbps,) Ozer reports that the video looked very good. You can see all of the videos that he recorded on Livestream by clicking here. Even at 446 Kbps, the video quality is impressive.
• Ozer reported some faint audio distortion on all of his recordings, which he described as making them sound as though they had been recorded underwater. He used two different camcorders to try to isolate the problem, and determined that the distortion was in the audio from both camcorders--meaning that the VidiU was the most likely source. Ozer wrote that the distortion could only be heard with headphones, but it was sufficient to prevent him from rating the VidiU a "must-buy." It's likely that whatever is causing the problem can be fixed with a firmware upgrade, but so far, Teradek hasn't confirmed that the problem exists.

Assuming that the sound problem gets fixed soon, the VidiU will become the low-cost live video encoder to beat. I'll look at the VidiU myself next week at NAB.

Livestream announces new family of production switchers and a new trend: The DIY switcher

Two years ago, Blackmagic Design threw a grenade into the broadcast production switcher market with its repackaging and aggressive repricing of Echolab's Atem switchers, along with its introduction of the $995 Atem Television Studio. Since then, other switcher vendors have been trying to figure out how to respond; some have lowered prices or introduced new products, while others have ignored the competition, in the hope that it'll go away.

Now, there's a new trend that promises to drop prices even lower while increasing flexibility. For lack of a better term, I call it the "Do-It-Yourself," or DIY, switcher trend. You may recall that last year, Livestream announced a switcher, portable computer and display integrated into a single box, called the HD500, priced at $8,500. The HD500 combines custom-designed switching software written by Livestream with off-the-shelf audio/video I/O cards from Blackmagic Design. Then, earlier this year, Livestream unbundled its switcher software into a $1,999 package that requires a fairly powerful Windows PC but can work with any Blackmagic Design video capture cards and devices--it can even drive the company's Atem switchers.

Today, Livestream dramatically expanded its product line, starting with the $6,999 HD50--a switcher in a mini-PC chassis that uses Blackmagic Design Decklink Quad and Decklink Studio video cards to provide essentially the same functionality as the HD500 in a smaller package, without the built-in display. The HD50 competes directly with Newtek's $4,995 Tricaster 40, but the HD50 has a big advantage--all of its inputs can be HDMI or HD-SDI, while the Tricaster 40 is limited to component and composite inputs. In addition, Livestream launched two new rack-mounted switchers, the HD900, priced at $14,999 with 9 inputs, and the HD1700, priced at $24,999 with 17 inputs. The HD900 and HD1700 are based on rack-mounted PCs with off-the-shelf Blackmagic Design video cards and Livestream's proprietary software.

Livestream isn't the only company that's playing the DIY game: Telestream, whose Wirecast software has been used for several years for low-end, inexpensive switching solutions, has partnered much more closely with Matrox, and supports the Matrox family of video cards and devices in much the same way as Telestream does with Blackmagic. Finally, Blackmagic recently released an API that allows anyone to write software that drives its Atem switchers.

We're on our way to switchers that start as nothing more than tower PCs. They'll make it simple for groups of inputs to be added by inserting video capture cards. Need five more inputs? Drop in another video capture card. Need more functionality? There's an app store where you can buy add-ons from the switcher vendor or third-parties. What we don't have yet is a good selection of third-party switcher control surfaces, but they're likely to start showing up soon, possibly as early as next month's NAB conference.

There will always be a market for integrated switchers, especially in smaller sizes that are easy to connect to a notebook computer via Ethernet. However, for the middle ground between the huge switchers used in the largest studios and production centers, and the small, portable, integrated switchers, there's a lot of room for PC-based, easily expandable switchers.

Teradek and Ustream do Livestream one (or 2.7Mbps) better

This week has primarily been reserved for consumer electronics news from CES, but video pros got something to smile about yesterday when Teradek and Ustream jointly announced a new portable video encoder, the VidiU. Physically, the VidiU is very similar to Livestream's Broadcaster, which pioneered the low-cost portable video encoder market, and by all accounts has been very successful at bringing new customers to Livestream. The Broadcaster is small enough to fit on top or beneath a camcorder, compresses 1080i or 720p video over HDMI into H.264 video at up to 2.3Mbps, and sells for $495. There's a new version of the Broadcaster in the works that adds a built-in 4G modem for Verizon's LTE, but Livestream hasn't yet announced the price or release date.

Teradek's VidiU looks a lot like the Broadcaster--about the same size, similar display and controls, and similar connectivity options (wired Ethernet, Wi-Fi and 3G/4G broadband via USB modem)--but it's black instead of the Broadcaster's red. However, unlike the Broadcaster, which can only be used with Livestream's streaming video service, the VidiU comes configured out of the box to support both Livestream and Ustream. In addition, the VidiU has a generic RTMP interface that works with a variety of other streaming services, including Brightcove and Ooyala.

The VidiU also supports 1080p or 720p at up to 5Mbps. So, it's faster and more flexible than Livestream's Broadcaster, but what's the downside? The VidiU will sell for $699 when it ships next month, so it'll cost $204 more. But why the buzz about Ustream if the VidiU can work with multiple streaming services? Ustream clearly needs something comparable to the Broadcaster to compete with Livestream, so it's partnered with Teradek to make Ustream the standard, out-of-the-box streaming connection for the VidiU. In addition, it appears that free Ustream service for a limited period will be bundled with the VidiU.

If I were deciding between the Broadcaster and the VidiU, I'd probably buy the VidiU, even for using it with Livestream, because of its added flexibility and performance. I give Teradek a lot of credit for not locking the VidiU to a single streaming vendor.

Livestream jumps into the production switcher business with the HD500

Earlier today, Livestream announced its first entry into the portable production switcher market. The HD500 is targeted directly against NewTek's Tricaster 455, at about half the price--$8,500 (U.S.) vs. $15,995 for the 455 without a control surface. Shipments will begin on October 15th. The HD500's features include:

• Live video mixing for multi-camera productions (1 M/E bus)
• Live audio mixing
• Graphics overlay and titling (2 graphics & titling channels)
• Digital video recorder (DVR) and player (two sources, 10 hour capacity at 1080i 100Mbps MJPEG AVI)
• One-click live streaming in HD multi-bitrate to Livestream's service
• Integrated multiviewer and 17" 1920 x 1200 display
• 4 HD/SD SDI inputs with live video out; 5 inputs when configured for streaming or recording
• 5 video outputs (HD/SD SDI, HDMI, Component, Composite and S-Video)

The HD500 is based on a portable workstation running Windows 7 that's small enough to be brought on-board airplanes as carry-on luggage. It's got an Intel Core i7 3.2 GHz six-core CPU, integrated 17" display and multiple PCI slots--all of which are taken up by the display controller and off-the-shelf Blackmagic Design DeckLink cards for video I/O. The software was written by Livestream's own development team.

According to Max Haot, Livestream's CEO and co-founder, the HD500's design was based on input from Livestream's own in-house video production team, which produces hundreds of live streamed events each year for clients. The team has used a variety of production switchers over the years, including Tricasters and Blackmagic Design's ATEM 1 M/E and 2 M/E. They wanted a highly portable, all-in-one production switcher that would be simple to use.

The HD500 leaves out some of the features in the Tricaster 455, such as virtual sets, because Livestream's production team found that it never used them. In addition, there's no dedicated control surface available for the HD500, although Livestream may offer one as an option in the future.

Livestream's goal with the HD500 is to make it easier and less expensive to produce live video events, which will draw in more clients and revenues. To that end, the company plans to unbundle its switcher software in Q1 2013 and make it available to its customers for free. A paid version will support streaming services from competitors. Haot also believes that the HD500's price and features will appeal to companies using other streaming services--its internal encoder is dedicated to Livestream, but even with an external encoder, the package cost will still be below that of the Tricaster 455. Haot also made clear that the HD500 is only the first in a family of hardware switchers planned by Livestream.

One concern I have is Livestream's plan for product repairs. The company offers phone support seven days a week, 12 hours a day, but if a problem with a customer's HD500 can't be resolved by over-the-phone troubleshooting, the entire device has to be shipped back to Livestream's manufacturing partner for repair. There's no field repair option and no local dealers to contact for an emergency hardware loan. Livestream doesn't want users to open up the switcher to attempt their own repairs, and only two months of phone support are included in the purchase price. If a HD500 breaks down at a live production site, shipping the switcher back for repair won't be an acceptable option.

Another concern is the quality and reliability of Livestream's switching software. NewTek has been making Tricasters since 2005; that gives them a lot of time to have worked out the bugs. By comparison, this is Livestream's first go at a broadcast-quality production switcher. It's inevitable that features will be missing or poorly implemented, and that there will be bugs in the software. Those issues will get worked out over time...but do you want to be the one who first runs into them during a live production? If I were in the market for a switcher, I'd probably let Livestream's software mature for 6 to 12 months before I'd buy.

The HD500 is a compelling all-in-one switcher--but there are an ever-increasing number of options for buyers. More than ever, it's important to clearly understand how you're going to use your switcher, how you're going to connect it to cameras, the rest of your video chain, and (for streaming) the Internet, and which streaming service (or services) you plan to use, before you buy.

NAB 2011 Part 3: Wireless ENG Backpacks, POV Camcorders, Thunderbolt and Final Cut Pro X

In this third and final installment of highlights from NAB 2011, I'll cover some of the interesting new trends and product categories, and finish with a quick look at Final Cut Pro X.

• ENG Trucks-in-a-Backpack: LiveU pioneered the category of putting encoders and broadband wireless transmitters into a backpack for field use, but there are now many competitors and a variety of approaches. The "traditional" backpack approach was demonstrated by LiveU, TVU and Streambox. These devices take the video output from a camcorder (analog, Firewire, HDMI or SD/HD-SDI), compresses it and sends it to a receiver over the public Internet using multiple USB broadband modems and WiFi adapters (anywhere from seven to fourteen, depending on the manufacturer). The receiver (located at the television station or head-end) takes the various bitstreams sent by the modems and WiFi interfaces, reassembles and decompresses them into a single video output for streaming or broadcast. Each manufacturer has their own approach:
  
  
  • LiveU uses a conventional PC running its proprietary software as the receiver, while both TVU and Streambox have their own dedicated receivers.
  • LiveU and Streambox use channel bonding between the multiple connections in order to get the needed bandwidth, while TVU uses channel aggregation with forward error correction, somewhat similar to the technology developed by Digital Fountain and now sold by Qualcomm, which it claims provides better quality at lower bitrates.
  • TVU and LiveU both use H.264 high profile compression, while Streambox uses its own proprietary codec.
  • Streambox's hardware receiver can support one transmitter at a time, while TVU's can support as many as ten transmitters simultaneously.
  • Streambox offers a "cloud" option for the receiver--customers can transmit video to Streambox's cloud and receive bonded, decompressed video without a local receiver.
  • All three systems are priced in the $30,000-$40,000 range (U.S.) for a single HD transmitter/receiver combination.

• Teradek demonstrated its Cube, a wireless HD H.264 encoder and transmitter about as big as a pack of cigarettes. Unlike the backpack models, the Cube can only transmit via a single WiFi or wired Ethernet interface, or a single USB port that currently works with Verizon's 4G LTE Modem. It's designed for video monitoring on-site and lower-bandwidth ENG applications, but its small size and weight may make it less visible, and certainly easier to move around, than the backpack systems.
  
  Teradek's various Cube models come with HDMI or HD-SDI inputs. They're paired with wireless decoders that are just as small as the receivers, and they can send directly to Livestream's streaming service for broadcast over the Internet. When using Livestream, no local receiver is necessary. Prices for the transmitters and receivers range from $1,490 to $2,190 depending on inputs and interfaces, and they're also available in matched sets for from $2,682 to $3,942.
  
• Comrex showed a working prototype of its Liveshot, a video compressor and transmitter designed to be mounted on ENG camcorders. The Liveshot Portable has two USB ports for broadband or WiFi modems, and HDMI, HD-SDI and analog video inputs. The Liveshot Studio is the receiver. Both devices support intercom/IFB headsets for two-way communication. Pricing hasn't been finalized, and Comrex doesn't expect to ship the Liveshot until late 2011.
  
• POV Camcorders: This was the year that low-cost POV camcorders were accepted by broadcasters and filmmakers. POV camcorders are being used to shoot athlete-perspective footage for skiing, surfing, skateboarding, car and motorcycle racing and skydiving. GoPro's booth was jammed when I was there; the company was selling its HD Hero models that are normally priced at $299.99 for $200, for delivery after the show. GoPro's 3D Hero system, which gangs two HD Heros together in a single waterproof housing and is priced at $99.99, was also a hot seller and one of the least expensive ways to capture 3D action footage. Contour was also exhibiting, showing its ContourGPS and ContourHD POV camcorders, as was V.I.O., with its POV.HD model.
  
• Thunderbolt peripherals: A few companies showed peripherals compatible with Intel's and Apple's Thunderbolt high-speed interface, now available on Apple's MacBook Pros. Matrox will be building Thunderbolt ports into its MXO2 line of video capture and conversion devices starting in July, and it's making available a box that connects Thunderbolt to its existing host interface for MXO2s purchased and shipped before July. The converter box will be priced at $299, with a discount if purchased with an MXO2 device.
  
  LaCie was showing prototypes of its Little Big Disk, the first model that will ship with Thunderbolt interfaces. The Little Big Disk holds 2 SSD or hard disks, and comes with a total capacity of 240GB or 500GB (SSD), or 1TB (7200 rpm hard disk). At NAB, LaCie had four 1TB Little Big Disks daisy-chained together on Thunderbolt as a RAID 0 array, and they claimed that they were getting better throughput than a comparable Fibre Channel array.
  
  Promise Technology's 4- and 6-bay Pegasus disk arrays were displayed in a number of booths, and it appears that Promise is the first company actually shipping Thunderbolt peripherals. As I reported yesterday, Blackmagic Design displayed its UltraStudio 3D video capture and display device with Thunderbolt, priced at $995, for July delivery.
  
• Final Cut Pro X: I didn't attend the FCPUG SuperMeet on Tuesday night, and there are plenty of other reviews of what Apple previewed at the event on the web, so I'm going to limit myself to a few points. First, the new FCP X demonstrates that Apple has been very serious about improving Final Cut Pro; there are many performance improvements (including 64-bit support and GPU acceleration) and new features. Apple also says that FCP X should work on any modern iMac, 17" MacBook Pros and Mac Pros running OS X 10.6 or greater; Thunderbolt isn't necessary (although it will make editing much faster.) In addition, the $299 price through the App Store was a shocker--right before NAB, Avid announced that FCP users could buy Media Composer for $999, which looked like a great price until the SuperMeet.
  
  At the same time, it's important to keep in mind that the version shown in Las Vegas was the same version shown to a small group of outsiders by Apple in February, and the final version isn't scheduled to ship until July, so a lot of work on the product remains to be done. In addition, Apple said nothing about Motion, Color, Soundtrack Pro or Logic, what (if anything) is being done to these programs, whether Apple will still offer a bundle, etc. There's a lot that we still don't know.

Busting the DAM (Distribution/Attention/Monetization) Problem

No matter what kind of media you're producing, if you're looking for a financial return, you have to accomplish three things:

1. Distribution: You have to get your book, music, movie or video to the people who are likely to be interested in it.
2. Attention: You have to let your audience know that your media is available and get them interested in reading, listening to or watching it.
3. Monetization: You've got to figure out a way to get your audience to pay for your efforts.

That's the DAM problem, and you have to solve it in that order. You can't monetize media that your audience doesn't know about and can't find. You can get your audience excited, but if there's no way for them to get your work, you've wasted your effort.

It used to be that as a creator, all you really needed to do was solve the distribution problem. If you could get a record company to sign your band, a publisher to publish your book, a movie studio to distribute your movie or a television or cable network to distribute your video, you were golden. The distributor would take responsibility for getting your work into stores, theaters or networks, promoting your work, and getting paid for it. (Actually collecting money from the distributors has been, and remains, an ongoing issue.) However, getting a company to distribute your work could take years of effort, and you might never get past the distribution stage.

Today, distribution is the easiest part of the problem to solve. If you're an author, you can easily self-publish your books in print or electronically, through companies like Amazon and Lulu. If you're a musician, you can distribute on CD or electronically through Amazon, CD Baby and many other companies. If you've produced a movie, Amazon will distribute it on DVDs or electronically, as will Netflix and many others. And if you've created a video, from a two-minute short to a two-hour epic, you have many distribution choices, including YouTube, Vimeo, Livestream, Ustream, Kyte, etc. In most of these cases, it costs little or nothing to get your work into distribution; you pay a portion of your revenues when it's sold.

The real price for doing your own distribution is that there's no big company to handle the attention and monetization parts. You've got to figure that out yourself, and do it without the big budgets that the "old media" companies have for advertising and promotion. Movie studios spend hundreds of millions of dollars promoting blockbusters like "MacGruber" (and see how well that went?) You'll have to get out the word using social media, local events, and whatever guerilla marketing tactics you can use to get attention without spending much money.

The monetization part of the problem is also going to be your responsibility. If you're working with Amazon, for example, it'll process and fulfill orders for you, but you may be limited in where and how you can sell your work outside Amazon's network. Apple is also an option for electronic distribution and monetization, but only for its population of devices and software. Netflix doesn't fund production and does limited revenue sharing based on the number of copies of your movie or video that its subscribers view; it may bring in some money, but not much.

Your distribution and monetization options for video depend a great deal on what you're doing. If you're producing a series, and you're very talented (and somewhat lucky,) you can do what Felicia Day and Kim Evey did and get Microsoft to underwrite production and distribution of "The Guild," what Mark Gantt did and get Sony's Crackle to do the same for "The Bannon Way", or what Illeana Douglas did in getting Ikea to sponsor "Easy to Assemble." (Please note that these are extremely unlikely outcomes.) You can also produce a video for a site like Funny or Die, in order to get exposure. In this case, your video is a stepping stone to other opportunities. (This is also fairly unlikely, unless you're Zack Galifianakis.)

I realize that I haven't solved the attention or monetization problems at all, which is why it took me three attempts to write this blog entry. My point (and I had one, at least when I started writing) is that distribution is now the easiest problem to solve. Standing out from the crowd. and especially, making money from your efforts, are the real problems.