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February 2007 Internet Broadcasting Brings Local News Online for Major Broadcasters with Digital Rapids DRC-Stream Encoding Systems
either targeted toward the consumer or professional video editing markets, neither of which met our needs as a company focused on publishing professional-quality Web video.
We chose the Digital Rapids cards because of the quality of the video, the reliability of the card, the wide and ongoing format support, and the incredible flexibility of both the hardware and the software. Not only did it meet our needs in terms of video capture, it also provided us with a solution to the problem of transcoding into multiple video formats quickly and easily. Our video capture and transcoding is performed by largely non-technical editorial staff, and the Stream software makes the often tricky transitions between inputs, capturing, and transcoding easy. The DRC-Stream hardware’s on-board processing really makes the cards stand out in terms of quality. The pre-processing and de-interlacing are phenomenal, and being able to capture several different streams simultaneously with almost no CPU overhead is incredibly useful. We use the DRC-1500 cards with Digital Rapids StreamPro software, along with the Sorenson ACE and On2 VP6 (Flash 8 video) plugins, and have deployed approximately 40 of these systems.
Integration and Workflow
 One of our biggest challenges has been dealing with the radically different technologies and resources available at all the TV stations we support. The Digital Rapids workstations have been the "Swiss Army knife" that allows us to integrate into virtually every environment. Some of the workstations may simply have a single SDI feed with embedded audio; others may be attached to an analog router feed (composite video and balanced audio), a DVCAM deck (via the DV input), a PVR (component video and unbalanced audio) and a VCR (S-Video and unbalanced audio) all at once. We've employed virtually every possible combination of inputs across our network to meet the requirements at each station.
On the software side, we've integrated the Digital Rapids systems into digital NLE environments by dropping files directly from editing booths onto the workstations, then using the Stream software to transcode into multiple formats. In some of our installations, Watch Folders are used to start the transcoding as soon as the files arrive on the
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