Sonic Foundry Releases New Line of Mediasite Recorders
Jun 23, 2005 8:00 AM
Sonic Foundry has announced the release of the Mediasite 440 series of rich media recorders. Debuting at InfoComm 2005, the expanded Mediasite line now includes a newly designed mobile Mediasite ML440 recorder, the rackmountable Mediasite RL440 recorder, and an entirely new addition: the Mediasite VL440 videoconferencing recorder. With the Mediasite 440 series, Sonic Foundry continues to drive the evolution of rich media communications with the industry’s most complete offering of recording and publishing solutions to address a variety of organizational requirements for rich media.
Pioneering the Rich Media Industry
Whether capturing multimedia presentations, meetings, or videoconferences, each Mediasite rich media recorder is optimized for distinct applications, giving organizations and system integrators maximum flexibility to build the types of rich media communication environments that precisely fit their needs. Mediasite rich media recorders seamlessly integrate with existing AV, presentation, and videoconferencing technologies to immediately expand any organization’s rich media communication possibilities. In addition, Sonic Foundry added a number of powerful capabilities, including the ability to quickly edit content captured with Mediasite, advanced automation, and expanded browser support for playback.
As the inventor of the rich media recorder, Sonic Foundry now releases its fourth generation of simple, yet sophisticated, Mediasite solutions. The Mediasite system is based on the industry’s first realtime, rich media capture appliance, allowing organizations to easily record all presentation audio, video, and supporting visuals with the touch of a button. Rich media content is instantly published without time-consuming, complex, and expensive authoring or postproduction processes.
Rich Media Content Lifecycle Management
With the recently released Mediasite LX rich media server, any Mediasite 440 recorder is expanded into a powerful, rich media communications platform to significantly reduce the time and resource costs associated with managing and distributing rich media content across the organization. The Mediasite LX server adds interactive live broadcasting and Web publishing for on-demand viewing. System administrators benefit from the Mediasite LX server’s full suite of centralized management tools, which allow them to secure content access, monitor and report on system usage, and customize Mediasite presenter and viewer experiences. With its robust, database-driven architecture, the Mediasite LX server platform ensures a scalable infrastructure capable of easily expanding to accommodate enterprises’ growing rich media content volumes.
“During the past few years, rich media has rapidly evolved from a curious anomaly to a proven, everyday communication tool,” said James Dias, senior vice president of marketing and business acceleration for Sonic Foundry. “As the demand for rich media expands and matures, Sonic Foundry continues to lead the market with the industry’s most reliable, comprehensive solutions, … unmatched in terms of breadth, customer installations, technology partners, and a worldwide channel presence.”
The Rich Media Era has Arrived
Sixty-seven percent of organizations that have more than 2,500 employees now deploy online communications events and presentations, according to a Q4’04 survey of 1,201 corporate executives conducted by Interactive Media Strategies, an Arlington, Texas-based market research firm.
“Almost half of the firms using rich media to enhance communications have only begun using the technology within the past two years,” said Interactive Media Strategies’ Research Director Steve Vonder Haar. “As companies new to online multimedia gain experience with the technology and incorporate it even more extensively in their day-to-day activities, rich media publishing will play an increasingly important role in the corporate communications process.”
In the three years since it was first introduced, Mediasite has set the standard as the premier automated rich media system in the industry for the capture, management, and delivery of presentations and meetings for live or on-demand viewing. With a customer base of more than 300 corporations, higher education institutions, health-care organizations, and government agencies, Sonic Foundry is changing the way organizations think about and use rich media. Mediasite enables these enterprise customers to enhance their education and communications programs by extending reach, improving efficiencies, and increasing frequency for more effective enterprise communications, Web-based education, online training, product marketing, and related applications.
As a demonstration of the recorders’ broad market acceptance, the ICIA—an AV communications industry association providing education, exhibitions, and information services—uses Mediasite to deliver Web-based professional development training sessions through its InfoComm Academy OnDemand.
Mediasite VL440 Rich Media Recorder:
Mediasite VL440 represents a major industry breakthrough by enabling users to record, share, and reuse any visual and audio content from a videoconference with convenient live or on-demand, browser-based access. A significant addition to the Mediasite rich media communications platform, the realtime recorder extends Sonic Foundry’s solutions into videoconferencing applications. Optimized for tight integration with the Mediasite platform and leading videoconference solutions from Polycom and Tandberg, Mediasite VL440 continues to expand the award-winning Mediasite line to provide unmatched ease-of-use in the capture, management, and delivery of multimedia meetings, presentations, and conferences.
Mediasite ML440 Rich Media Recorder:
The newly redesigned Mediasite ML440 is a portable, lightweight version of the popular rich media recorder used to automatically capture and publish multi-source rich media content. Ideal for trade shows, conferences, and offsite events, the compact, rugged Mediasite ML440 features a built-in 17in. LCD screen, sleek new design, and a complete set of easily accessible analog and digital interfaces that allow for setup in less than 10 minutes. Like all Mediasite solutions, this mobile recorder captures, encodes, synchronizes, and indexes audio and video with visual content without any pre- or postproduction.
Mediasite RL440 Rich Media Recorder:
The award-winning Mediasite RL440 rackmountable recorder simplifies integration into AV-ready facilities, such as presentation rooms, briefing centers, and lecture halls. Mediasite RL440 supports the Mediasite Control Interface Protocol (MCIP) for programmable control with leading AV automation systems. Presenters can conveniently access and control the Mediasite RL440 from Crestron or AMX touchpanels.
For more information about the Mediasite line of rich media recorders, visit www.sonicfoundry.com.
