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November 2009 Digital Rapids StreamZHD Forms Cornerstone of File-Based Service Offerings at Visual Data Media Services
www.visualdatainc.com
by Tim Rollenhagen, Director of DVD & New Media Services, Visual Data Media Services Inc.
"Digital Rapids offered the best solution for our encoding and transcoding projects and workflow..."
"In our opinion, Digital Rapids is the leader in this type of technology."
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 Visual Data Media Services (www.visualdatainc.com) is a full-service post production house offering a complete range of editing, encoding, disc authoring, duplication, closed captioning, subtitling, document translation and video description services under one roof in our Burbank, California facility. Our motto is “Your Image is Everything”. We pride ourselves on the very high level of technical expertise, project execution and client service that we offer. We are very adaptive to the quickly changing technical landscape around us, and work hard to offer our clients cutting-edge yet economically sound technical solutions.
As Director of DVD and New Media Services, my department is responsible for all DVD and Blu-ray mastering, duplication and replication services. I am also spearheading the company’s move towards file-based workflow services and solutions. We have developed a number of new services based on such workflows, leveraging our expertise in a wide variety of file-to-tape and tape-to-file I/O processes. Additional services include VOD encoding and transcoding; high-speed file delivery; and Digital Cinema Packaging. We use Digital Rapids StreamZ and StreamZHD encoding systems as the foundation for these services.
One of our systems is an HD/SD StreamZHD unit with an additional standard-definition DRC-Stream card and the format expansion bundle for maximum codec flexibility. Our second system is a StreamZ unit with two standard-definition cards. Both systems are running version 3.1 of the Stream FE software, and are connected via Fibre Channel to a multi-terabyte SAN for shared storage. The systems reside in our machine room and are connected through a video router, enabling us to source from and master to all professional SD and HD tape and file formats.
We originally purchased our StreamZ systems – bought through reseller Key Code Media – to encode and transcode reference-quality MPEG .MOV files from tape or file-based sources. These files are provided to our localization department for use in producing Closed Captioning and Subtitling templates. Daily uses now also include transcoding with Closed Captioning or Subtitle insertion; encoding for DVD and Blu-ray; production of mezzanine source files for Digital Cinema Packaging; VOD encoding and transcoding; and a variety of ingest and output services.
We selected Digital Rapids systems after researching all of the major players in this field. We felt that Digital Rapids offered the best solution for our encoding and transcoding projects and workflow. In our opinion, Digital Rapids is the leader in this type of technology.
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