MediaLooks Digital Media Blog

Latest news and comments on everything digital media

GPU Acceleration Added to Vision Mixer and Virtual Studio SDKs

September 19th, 2011

This is our first GPU-accelerated product release. With this latest update customers of Vision Mixer SDK and Virtual Studio SDK will experience the following benefits:

- Dramatically improved performance and quality of 3D projections.
- Dramatically improved performance and quality of chroma keying (Virtual Studio SDK only).
- The ability to change view angles (i.e. move a virtual camera).
- Improved deinterlacing algorithm.

Please let us know how this new version is working with your specific hardware (ATI and Nvidia video boards).

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MediaLooks Becomes a Third Party Tools Provider for AJA Video Systems

September 8th, 2011

We’ve just been officially named a third party tools provider for AJA Video Systems. This also means that now we officially support AJA in our Broadcast Automation Platform. The full press release is available here.

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Meet MediaLooks at IBC 2011!

August 29th, 2011

We are attending IBC and, as usual, we are happy to meet up with out customers. If you would like to arrange a meeting, simply let us know.

For the fourth year in a row, IBC News will be subtitled using equipment by our customer Starfish, and that equipment uses our Character Generator technology. Starfish exhibits at 2.C18.

Other customers who are displaying products with MediaLooks inside at IBC:

- Tenka Video at 2.B20 (Utah Scientific)
- Wolftech Broadcast Solutions at 2.A31 (Vizrt)
- Stryme at 7.C28
- Axel Technology at 8.C62
- LiveU at 3.B43

We also suggest that you visit our hardware partners:

- Blackmagic Design at 7.H20
- AJA Video Systems at 7.F11
- Stream Labs at 7.G47

We’ll be on the expo floors on September 9-13. Our number at the show will be +7-968-274-0624.

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Broadcast Automation Platform Adds Video Transitions & More

August 19th, 2011

Earlier this year, we have replaced DeckLink SDK, Playout SDK and Multimedia SDK with a new product: the Broadcast Automation Platform.

In addition to the classic gapless multi-format playout to Blackmagic and other boards, the new product offers several new features and some licensing improvements. Such as:

1) The new Automation module: advanced playlists, clip metadata management and all kinds of scheduling.

2) The new Transitions module: instead of classic gapless switching, use video transitions to make file switching smoother. Here’s a quick look:

3) New Streaming module: receive and stream to RTSP, HTTP and RTP/UDP.

4) New Decoder and Capture packs: the best price you can get for H.264 and MPEG-2. Other video compression formats are available separately.

5) All BA Platform packs now include Character Generator Pro.

6) Both CG Pro and CG Flash are now licensed on a Single Developer basis.

7) Dramatically improved performance and stability.

There are two factors to take into account when considering a sooner upgrade:

1) The upgrade price gets higher with time. Our upgrade formula discounts the price based on the number of months left in your current subscription. If your subscription had already expired, there are certain periods when we provide discounts as well. Please read more here.

2) The earlier you upgrade, the easier to migrate technically. Although we do our best to maintain backwards compatibility, delaying the upgrade decision may result into technical issues when integrating the new components into your application.

If you would like to demo the new SDK, simply contact your sales manager.

BTW, we’ll be available at IBC in Amsterdam in September. Contact us to schedule a meeting!

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MXF Reader Replaces MXF Splitter and Adds Playlists Support

June 18th, 2011

The MXF Splitter we offered earlier is officially out of date. Now we have a better solution: the MXF Reader.

Instead of being just a demultiplexer, the MXF Reader is also a file reader, which positions it as source filter in a DirectShow graph and allows it to support MXF playlists.

The MXF Reader runs perfectly both as a stand-alone DirectShow filter or together with our new Broadcast Automation Platform.

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Stream Labs Hardware Integration

May 17th, 2011

We now officially support selected boards from broadcast hardware company Stream Labs. The currently supported model is the Stream MS2/4-ASI, which is designed for multichannel video logging. We plan to support more boards later.

We are happy to have Stream Labs in our list of supported vendors – together with Blackmagic and AJA.

More information available in our official press release.

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MediaLooks at NAB 2011

April 10th, 2011

Our team is attending NAB Show, which opens on April 11th in Las Vegas.

Learn more about our new Broadcast Automation Platform through face to face meetings with our engineers and management. If you would like to book a meeting, please contact us.

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More Great Features In CG 1.7!

December 16th, 2010

Here’s what you’ll get with the new release of our powerful Character Generator product:

- Tables to display real-time statistics like sports data and stocks.
- RSS feeds as sources of ticker content.
- Linked items for tickers: show a related item together with a crawl.
- XML support to describe complex items’ design and content.
- Auto-trackable XML files for data storage. Files can be updated in real-time.
- Scheduling for item property changes (size, position, content, show/hide).
- Pausing of crawls and rolls at start or end of each logical block.
- Support for several files with auto-tracking in a single ticker.
- URLs as sources for images with auto-cashing if used more than once.

Don’t forget that CG is available as both a DirectShow filter and an ActiveX toolkit. The two options are available within a single installer, which you can download here.

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Character Generator Now Available as Non-DirectShow Toolkit

October 14th, 2010

Our CG engine is now available as an easy-to-use rapid development toolkit that requires no DirectShow skills and almost no programming for some of the popular use cases. This product is the easiest way to turn a PC into a broadcast-quality character generator with the help of just one Blackmagic board with keying support.

Or, you can add quality CG to your live streaming application with the help of WME or FMLE.

Finally, you can use C#, Visual Basic or Delphi to program your own application using the CG COM object.

For more information please visit the Character Generator Toolkit web page.

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Meet MediaLooks in Amsterdam at IBC 2010!

September 7th, 2010

Our team will be at the IBC exhibition from September 10th to September 14th. If you would like to meet up with us, please let us know.

Our numbers at the show (SMS only) will be +7-926-371-3030.

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Try Our New H.264/AVC Video Decoder!

July 24th, 2010

We have released a new product: our own, standard-compliant H.264/AVC Video Decoder DirectShow Filter. The decoder supports Baseline, Main, Extended and High profiles of the H.264/AVC specification and makes use of multi-core architectures and Hyper-Threading.

The decoder can be licensed in two versions: as a separate DirectShow filter or as an add-on to our broadcast automation of vision mixing SDKs.

To read more about the product and download an evaluation version please click here.

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Try Our New Character Generator Technology!

June 2nd, 2010

We have just released our latest product, the Character Generator DirectShow Filter – our new solution for multi-layered titling and overlays, which is to replace the previously available Text & Graphics Overlay and Flash Overlay DirectShow filters.

The new filter is a single component that supports all overlay item types – text, graphics, images and Flash – and implements a generic set of methods to control them. In addition to that it is equipped with a set of advanced features such as support for news tickers and compositions.

New features:

- Generic interface for text, graphics, image and Flash overlay items.
- Built-in support for news tickers (including crawls and rolls) with automatic file tracking.
- Support for item groups & compositions.
- Smooth change of item size, position, transparency, background or view area.
- Item movement, acceleration, fade in/fade out and entrance/exit effects, animation sequences.
- New text and image effects: Shadow, Glow, Motion Blur, Rotation, etc.
- New graphic figures: rectangle, ellipse, triangle, star, etc.
- XML-based configuration.
- .SRT subtitles support.

For more information about the features and editions comparison chart please see the product page.

If you are interested in pricing information or migration details, please contact our sales team.

For the official press release, click here.

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DICOM Reader DirectShow Filter Released

April 9th, 2010

MediaLooks DICOM Reader DirectShow Filter was developed for the needs of medical application developers and is required for DICOM MPEG-2 media files playback. DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine) is a file format standard commonly used in medical imaging. MPEG-2 DICOM format is approved for use in Endoscopy, Microscopy and Surgery.

To enable MPEG-2 DICOM files playback DICOM Reader should be used together with MediaLooks MPEG-2 Video Decoder.

The filter can also be used in combination with MediaLooks SDK solutions that comprise video capture, playout automation, vision mixing and text overlay functionality.

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M-JPEG Decoder & Encoder With Alpha Channel Support Released

September 1st, 2009

Our M-JPEG Decoder and M-JPEG Encoder are available for evaluation download from our web site. A key feature of the two products is ARGB32 (alpha channel) support – something our customers have been requesting from us. The codecs can be licensed either separately or in a bundle.

Motion JPEG is a popular capture format, often used during editing because of its encoding/decoding speed and low compression rate.

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BlueFish444 Boards Supported by SDKs

July 22nd, 2009

We have finally completed adding support for BlueFish444 boards to our SDKs. Currently this affects Multimedia SDK, Playout SDK and Capture SDK. Vision Mixer SDK and Virtual Studio SDK will be updated soon.

We are impressed with the quality of BlueFish boards and their features. Some of them are:

- Dual stream support. The boards can handle two separate simultaneous inputs and outputs. You can use our vision mixing solutions to mix the two video streams and output the mixed stream using a single output.

- Simultaneous capture and playback. With our Playout SDK you can use one of the board’s inputs as a playlist item, and at the same time output the same stream via one of the outputs.

- Keying support. Use our high-quality real-time chroma key technology (available with the Virtual Studio SDK) to separate the key and fill signals from an input stream, and then output the key and fill signals separately. Or, you can use this mode to key text, graphics or Flash animation over the video.

Among other features are RS-422 support, real-time hardware overlay for internal keying, real-time hardware color space conversion and a great selection of input/output connections.

BlueFish444 offers a variety of high-quality boards with various options – feel free to explore their web site. Also, BlueFish usually takes part in trade shows such as IBC and NAB, where you can learn more from the company’s experts.

If you have any questions, please use our new Support System, we are always happy to assist.

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