Streaming Media - October 2008 - (Page 80)

review ViewCast Niagara GoStream SURF ViewCast’s Niagara GoStream SURF is a portable system that requires a bit of at-home tweaking before going on the road. Price: $10,995 By Tim Siglin For more information, contact: ViewCast www.viewcast.com ViewCast launched its Niagara GoStream product at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show a few years ago in an attempt to entice broadcasters to use its rugged and relatively small encoding device. Both dockable and portable, GoStream has the ability to be plugged in to a rack mounted system in a dual-device configuration (two units side by side) and to be used as a stand-alone portable encoder. The GoStream met with some interest and was eventually replaced by the GoStream Plus. Both units still had traditional S-video and RCA composite connectors, plus unbalanced audio, which wasn’t exactly up to broadcast specifications. The new Niagara GoStream SURF version, however, adds professional BNC connectors and balanced XLR audio, has approximately 100GB of data storage free (it has other storage on the machine, but this is reserved for maintenance and operations), and is based around the Osprey 240 card. I ran SURF through its paces over the last few weeks and have come away impressed, as always, by the quality of the encoding the unit is capable of producing. It’s a ViewCast encoder through and through, meaning it leverages Simulstream to allow for simultaneous encoding in Windows Media, Real, Flash, and MPEG (H.264) with ease. Unfortunately, there’s also a significant amount of work to be done on the user interface, both on the LCD screen and on the web. Here are a few of my main observations from using the unit. Back Panel SURF intentionally moves up to broadcast-level connections, including three BNC connectors for component video (Y, P-b, P-r). The component connectors also double as the Y/C (S-video) and composite video connectors with one BNC being used for composite and the other two BNC connectors being used for Y/C. ViewCast includes— and notes in its operations manual—two BNC-to-RCA converters for the Y/C connections, an odd choice given the fact that most S-video to dual composite converter cables typically have an S-video female on one end and two BNC connectors on the other. Fortunately, I keep a stash of odds and ends in my lab and was able to test with Y/C outputs as well as component connectors. ViewCast may have been thinking about nonbroadcast professionals in the placement of the three BNC connectors, as they chose to separate them from each other, perhaps to avoid confusion regarding which connector is used for composite video and which ones are used for Y/C video. But with the myriad of component encoding systems that currently exist and that stick to the three-in-a-row BNC or RCA connectors, users are already familiar with the differences between composite, Y/C, and component connectors. This would, at the most, be an aesthetic issue if the sole USB connector on the SURF’s backplane wasn’t located directly between the first and second BNC connectors (see Figure 1). This odd placement means that the USB connector cannot be used to plug in a flash memory drive—one of SURF’s key features for downloading content from the internal drive—since the component cable’s sheathing would interfere with or damage many second-generation flash drives. Boot-Up Time From the time I plugged in and powered up the SURF to the time I could access any of the buttons to start encoding, approximately 90 seconds passed. This is a Windows box, so it’s not an instant-on device like some Linux-based encoding systems. In fact, on the first time through or after a factory restore, you’ll be forced to spend about 3 minutes inputting the date, time, and NTSC/PAL choice before being able to use even the preset encoding options. However, SURF is also capable of encoding a few flavors of streaming media that Linux has difficulty with. 80 STREAMING MEDIA October/November 2008 http://www.viewcast.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Streaming Media - October 2008

Streaming Media - October 2008 Table of Contents Standard Time Technology and Business Trends by the Numbers Encoding for Screencams Meeting the Enterprise Video Distribution Challenge Pulling Back the Curtain on Level 3 The 2008 Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Award Winners The Ultimate Guide to Creating Online Video Content That Works, Part 1 Brave New Platforms Video From the Democratic National Convention—Both Official and Unofficial—Made Clear That It’s No Longer Politics as Usual Creative Suite Turns 4 The Future of Internet Radio Decoding the Truth About Hi-Def Video Production Educating the Next Generation of Online Media Makers ViewCast Niagara GoStream SURF The Past and Future of Online Video: I’m Not Dead Yet!

Streaming Media - October 2008

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