Adventures in Consumer and Business Multimedia
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The Great Gig

I’ve been offline on my blog for a couple of months given that I have taken on a new position at my company, as the Product Manager of a very sexy and successful multimedia platform.  Since joining a team of very sharp and bright folks, the work has been non-stop.  In less than two weeks I wrote over thirty user stories and probably double that many wireframes.  Agile and so organized, our developers are spinning out new requests into our QA environment every few days.  And, I’ve moved to a nice view overlooking Times Square, so I’ve got going for me, which is nice.

Unfortunately, my job has indirect association with our own Online Video Platform in-house, so I have stopped reviewing third-party OVPs for the time being.  It was an important realization when some big OVP providers recently contacted me for help on how different OVPs compare.  Instead, I’ve been pouring everything I’ve got into the next version of our platform, which is due at the beginning of December.  It is sure to wow our customers and its only getting better.

October 31, 2011   Comments Off

Five Video Editing Apps For The iPhone

Since getting my iPhone I’ve enjoyed creating short clips and posting them on my Facebook account, but never really did any editing on the device.  So, I blew some cash in the App Store to try out video editing apps for the iPhone and post my findings here.  Like many, if not most App Store junkies, I download based on positive feedback (no fewer than 3 stars), and secondly, on the screenshots – UI design is very important to me.

With all that in mind, I downloaded five apps that are all very slick and easy to use.  I have categorized these five based on the level of editing and features you may be interested in: Simple (few features, speedy rendering), Intermediate (additional features but not what I would call feature-rich), and Advanced (deep mobile editing, feature rich, offers more tools than the previous two categories).
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June 15, 2011   4 Comments

Online Video Platform Test Drive – Limelight Video Platform

Limelight: http://www.limelightvideoplatform.com

In 2010, Limelight acquired Delve Networks, and with that acquisition came an OVP (now known as their LVP – Limelight Video Platform) whose content manager platform has been described as, “Apple in front, and Google under the hood.”  As I mentioned in my earlier post when covering Streaming Media East, Limelight was certainly one of the sexier, more colorful exhibits because of its flashy platform.  I wasted no time speaking with a Solutions Engineer and we got into talking about Delve, some of its 100+ customers, and how it has kept most of its personality since the $10 million acquisition last summer.

Such an acquisition is a natural fit for a Content Delivery Network such as Limelight, however they still continue to offer Akamai as an alternative CDN provider for their existing customers (couldn’t find out if new customers have Akamai as an option).  They offer many of the standard OVP options like on-demand and live-streaming (though live-streaming is not available for all accounts and needs to be enabled by contacting Limelight), metadata management, customized players, and playlists (also called Channels).  And, like many of their OVP competitors, Limelight offers a 30-day trial of their platform that will give you access to upload, publish, and analyze the results of your video content.  The following is another OVP overview based on the vendor’s 30-day trial.

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June 2, 2011   4 Comments