Generally speaking it’s exactly the same kind of stuff I’d talk about here, though since I was specifically discussing technologies my company creates, I put it there.  Anyway, enjoy it and if you aren’t checking in on Elementals blog, you should do so more regularly, several others, including Sam Blackman, our CEO regularly post there.

Drop by and say hi if you’re at the show and check back here for photos and notes about the cool stuff i see!

I only had the privilege of knowing Neal for about 2 years, but I’ll cherish that time.  As anyone will tell you, Neal wasn’t just a boss; he was a friend to many and always ready to knock back a drink, shoot the bull, or lend a hand with a project.  I shared a love of cars with Neal and the one memory I’ve returned to repeatedly today is the trip he made with me to retrieve an old volvo i’m fixing up.  It was during a period of remission and was a day of fun and activity I’d never gotten to share with him and am now incredibly grateful that I did.

January of 2009 when Neal & I went to Henderson, NC to pick up my heap.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to come see me speak at either post production world or the Adobe booth – you asked some excellent questions and hopefully most of what i said made sense!

See you next year at NAB 2010!

So what is Inlet showing off?

Inlet has a variety of new things to show off, the big ones are:

Live Smooth & Dynamic Streaming

We are the first company to show live streaming video working with Smooth Streaming. We haven’t just announced it, its actually working and we’re showing it in our and Microsoft’s booth! What’s Smooth Streaming? Its a new way of delivery video to consumers online – it makes it easy for the consumer to watch video and ensure the quality of delivery by never pausing or stuttering along as it plays. It was created by Microsoft and plays back through a Silverlight player. Dynamic Streaming is a very similar implementation of by Adobe for Flash. Adobe also recently announced new DVR capabilities and we are showing on both the Dynamic Streaming and the DVR capabilities in our booth as well.

Next Version of Armada

Armada is the new product we announced at NAB 2008 – it is a combination of Transcoding Management, File Analysis, and other Content related tools that allow users to create a fully automated workflow for converting media from one form to another. Well, this year we have delivered on all the various stages we originally highlighted. We’ll be demonstrating a version of Armada that includes file verification (to keep you from encoding bad files), analysis & business rules for sorting media to the right kinds of templates, a whole host of encoding options from mobile to web to blu ray, and quality control steps that catch any errors that might have been created during the whole processing cycle. Its a very technical application, but very cool regardless and a real must have for anybody dealing with lots of content. I’m actually hoping more encoding companies start thinking about adding similar features, because its the right way to think about approaching the problem of video compression (faster encode times only get you so far people).

Talking, Talking, Talking

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ll be speaking several times during the show. Since then, I’ve also been asked to take part in a recording of This Week in Media on Monday night (which I’m guessing will post later in the week). Its been almost 9 months since I was on the show and I’m looking forward to it! I also am trying to arrange a time to chat on camera with Jeff Brooks who is here covering the show for Beet.tv. I’ll post more info about both those when they happen.

In the meantime, I’d best start unpacking agin, before the other Inlet folk start giving me dirty looks!

Inlet Technologies (my daytime job) has a booth in the South Lower level – SL5624 and I will be there quite a bit showing off the new announcement we’ve had.

When I’m not there though, I can be found here:

Adobe Talk

“Encoding Best Practices for H.264″

Booth # SL3320  Mon-Wed at 4pm, Thursday at 1:30pm

The Adobe talk is free to anyone with a show floor pass, so drop by and say hi.

Post|Production World Conference Talks

N249-251 • Monday, April 20  •   11:45 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

N249-251 • Monday, April 20  •   2:00 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.

N256 • Tuesday, April 21  •   10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

The Post|Production World Conference is a paid event, so if you want to attend one of these talks, please visit here for info about signing up.

Book Signing

And finally, I’ll also be signing my book, Real World Video Compression on Tuesday April 21st from 1:30-2pm at the NAB store.

And if you want to keep track of my movements during the show, all you have to do is follow me on the Twitter: @andybeach

Microsoft’s Ben Waggoner has posted some more details about March Madness Online Video and the Silverlight player powering it, including the resolutions and data rates used:

Total Bitrate (kbps)	Video Bitrate (kbps)	Audio Bitrate (kbps)	Video Width	Video Height	Pixel Aspect Ratio
1500	1450	48	784	432	1:1
1000	950	48	512	384	4:3
650	615	32	368	272	4:3
350	315	32	240	176	4:3

Video codec used is VC-1 Advanced Profile. Audio codec used is WMA Professional at 44.1 kHz 16-bit stereo.

All March Madness games are being encoded by MLB.com’s encoding facilities using Inlet Spinnaker 7000 encoders. The Spinnakers were configured based on my own recommendations in order to provide maximum quality at all bitrates.

Normally i don’t talk about the day time job here too much, but this was a big week, so i couldn’t help myself.

On Wednesday, we announced our support for Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming initiative –for both live and on-demand applications. As the very first encoding technology provider to provide this support, we were invited to co-present about Smooth Streaming at Microsoft’s MIX09 event. John Bishop of Inlet and John Bocharov of Microsoft co-presented on the new Smooth Streaming Application.

Link to Inlet press release: http://www.inlethd.com/download.php?mode=getFile&type=99&fileID=525

The presentation got a couple of great blog mentions by key Microsoft evangelists. Note the reference not only to the first Smooth Streaming support, but also the mention that Inlet Spinnaker 7000 is being used to stream all of March Madness on the NCAA.com site!

Here are two great blog mentions connected to the announce:

http://alexzambelli.com/blog/2009/03/19/silverlight-3-iis-media-services-30-olympics-2010-wow-it-truly-is-march-madness/

http://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/Live-Smooth-Streaming-Beta-Inlet-encoderrsquos-and-the-2010-Winter-Olympics/

And as I mentioned earlier, Inlet Spinnaker 7000’s are being used to stream March Madness online.  you can check out the link below – if you are on a good connection to the web, make sure you are on the highest quality stream – looks awesome!

http://mmod.ncaa.com/?source=mktg_09MMOD_hpto3.20

If you use the link above to watch the video, just click on the Launch Player button, and then when the player opens up, click on the button marked, Click to Watch in High Quality.

All in all it sounds like a lot of fun and yes, I for one will be there….

Oh Reuters, you silly goose – there is a difference between being ready for digital and HD.  The USisn’t requiring everyone to switch to HD video, just digital…