Sonic Foundry Set to Unleash New Mediasite Recorders, Server

Those looking to record, broadcast, and archive online video presentations have nearly 100 new reasons to consider Mediasite, according to two executives from Sonic Foundry, Inc.

The company, which released the original Mediasite in 2003, will be rolling out Mediasite EX Server 5.0 later in the summer and the next generation of its Mediasite RL and ML Recorders in mid-July. "I think it definitely raises the bar, particularly for rich media capture," says Sonic Foundry founder and CTO Monty Schmidt. "Some of these other things are really going to make it easy for people to just drop [video] in and get what they want out the other side with really minimal intervention."

Serving It Up
The Mediasite EX Server 5.0 will feature a number of upgrades, including the ability to maintain multiple catalogs for organizing content, the addition of RSS feeds to the catalogs, and new reporting features. Sonic Foundry technical product manager John Pollard said the reporting enhancements include the addition of graphs of key viewing trends and the ability to export data in Excel or XML format.

"The ability to prove the value of the content is just raised exponentially," Pollard said. "We’ve always had reporting. It’s been solid reporting, but in terms of how robust that reporting is now, it’s truly going to be a godsend to a lot of our institutions."

Further additions include navigation, usability, and cosmetic changes to the Mediasite Player, the ability to link to a specific point in a presentation while watching it, and vCal support to add Mediasite events to Microsoft Outlook calendars.

Capture and Edit
Chief among the additions to the new Mediasite RL and ML Recorders are the ability to pause live or on-demand recordings and to move high-motion video into the video pane while still capturing high-resolution images, according to Pollard. He said the former enhancement will allow presenters to keep streams live during a pause and the latter will improve navigation and video quality.

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