Multi-format Encoding: No Sweat for FlipFactory

Telestream’s new transcoder and media delivery system is limber enough for even the most rigorous multi-format, multi-bit rate workout, but you’ll have to let loose with some greenbacks to get it

By Dee McVicker
December 18, 2001


Encoding in multiple formats at several bit rates each entails the kind of gymnastics best left to an industrial-strength transcoder. There are now several transcoder choices — so which one is it going to be? Intended for the media sweatshop, Telestream's FlipFactory 1.2 is a universal format translator with a job scheduler that converts digital media from one codec format to another, in batch or on-demand, for all kinds of workflows and in all kinds of environments. And, as a software-only transcoder that does not use hardware accelerators, it can just as easily sit on top of a broadcast server as on a streaming server. It’s powerful and flexible — but can it turn the laborious task of multi-format encoding into a routine exercise?

FlipFactory Put to the Test

To find out, we got acquainted with the FlipFactory Pro, v1.2 general release, pre-installed on a Dell PowerEdge 6350/550 server (with dual Xeon 550MHz Pentium III processors and 1GB of RAM) sent to us by Telestream. Immediately, we could see that the software's network capabilities are impressive. FlipFactory can receive and send media via FTP, HTTP or SMTP, and it can generate redirector links for the major streaming formats in metafile format (.ram, .smil or .asx). It can reside on broadcast servers, dedicated streaming servers and content distribution systems. And, given its XML architecture, it can plug into or take a plug-in from workflow environments such as Virage, and even be customized for others (by purchasing an SDK), although we didn’t test this XML extensibility.

The base price for FlipFactory is $10,000 per server license, which includes encoding and processing options for output to QuickTime, as well as all the latest RealVideo, Windows Media (.wmv, .wma, .asf), and MP3 and WAV formats. For another $6,500 you can upgrade to the Pro package, which includes an MPEG output option (MPEG-2 or MPEG-1), plus your choice of one broadcast server transcoder module. Telestream has transport plug-ins for all of the major broadcast servers: Sony, Grass Valley Group (GXF), SeaChange, Omneon, Pinnacle MediaStream and Leitch. Broadcasters can submit transcoded media processed by FlipFactory directly to broadcast servers and integrate transcoding with asset management, content indexing and other media production functions. Naturally, and perhaps more commonly, data can go from broadcast production systems into FlipFactory – it’s the bidirectionality that’s special.

Hardware is not included, of course. The minimum setup Telestream recommends for FlipFactory is a dual-Pentium III Xeon with 2MB of Level 2 cache and 512MB of RAM, particularly if you’re going to set up separate accounts for simultaneous users. We installed it on our Windows 2000, 500MHz Pentium III server, just to try out the installation routine. We barely registered a pulse during installation — it was that uneventful. The only notable event was when we checked to see if we had already installed Windows 2000 Internet Information Services (IIS) on our server (FlipFactory needs these services installed on the server for Web access).

Flipping Out

We ran most of the tests on the pre-configured Dell server sent to us by Telestream. We set up encoding sessions for simultaneously encoding — or "flipping" — a single source file into multiple streaming formats, each with a variety of bit rates. RealVideo 8, Windows Media 8, QuickTime (Sorenson Video 2, with support for SV3.1 expected in January, 2002 at no cost to FlipFactory owners), MP3, DV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 were among our options. We then had FlipFactory cache the files on our server, but we could also have sent them to other destination servers, cache networks or e-mail addresses. We got the hang of FlipFactory terminology right away. The term “factory” is used to describe a session; in our case, simultaneously flipping video into several formats. It helped to think of finished goods coming off a factory production line.

You can start with practically any source, from broadcast-quality MPEG media to archived .rm or .asf files, or digital capture formats used in pro cameras, although we didn’t try them all. We based all our testing on .avi and MPEG sources, and some video and other animation files. You can specify the source at the front end of a session, or at the end while preparing to do encoding en mass. We set up all encoders in one sitting, determining their bit rates and any desired filtering.

FlipFactory v1.2 comes with options for setting frame rate conversion, temporal and spatial quality, color correction and cropping. Also, it includes an overlay option to composite any PNG, JPEG, GIF or other graphic overlay onto a frame, but our attempts to get a JPEG to overlay onto a video frame consistently failed, even after talking to the vendor several times and trying various settings. Apparently, the overlay file needs to share the same network path as the original media, something not mentioned in the documentation (an inconvenience that Telestream claims has been removed from the upcoming FlipFactory 2.0). We tried this, but to no avail. In all fairness, it could have been operator error — or a bug. Automatic redirector file generation (.ram, .asx, etc.) — an important part of comprehensive delivery automation in most scenarios — was facilitated here as well.

All the Factory settings are stored in a SQL 7.0 database for recall at any time. This is not a full-blown Microsoft SQL Server, but a light version for programmers to embed into applications. It worked fine.

One nifty new feature is a split-screen preview showing content before and after processing prior to kicking off a transcoding session. We expected to be able to preview any source file we cared to pull up, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. We could preview only those sources residing on our FlipFactory server itself — though we were able to view those from the Web client. This earned FlipFactory a minor strike against it as a network-friendly transcoder, but Telestream claims this will be resolved in the next software release (version 2.0).

Also, we were told that version 1.2 is 15 to 40 percent faster than v1.1 due to greater optimization of application code. Though we had no way of testing this improvement claim, we were able to test how fast this software-only transcoder can flip. It took a little over a minute for FlipFactory to flip a 16-second .avi animation simultaneously into three WMV bit rates. Since FlipFactory uses vendor encoding libraries, we didn’t dwell on performance much — it’s the vendors and not Telestream that drive software performance where it matters most.

Quirky QuickTime

FlipFactory lost major points when it came to QuickTime. QuickTime frames were sized too big for FlipFactory’s preview screen, but this proved to be a minor nuisance compared to the overall quirkiness of QuickTime settings. At times, QuickTime clips played back blurry when we hadn’t set the blur option, for example. This may have been due, in part, to the fact that FlipFactory installed only Sorenson Video 2 (SV2.0). FlipFactory will be bundled with SV3.1 in the next software release and will include multipass VBR and all the professional features for the encoder, out of the box, at that time, according to Telestream.

One interesting note before we move on: Telestream developed its own DV decoder for v1.2 instead of going with the QuickTime DV decoder used in previous versions. Telestream says that this is intended, in part, to address a growing problem with the different types of DV formats now being used for broadcasting.

In other respects, FlipFactory proved to be very versatile — perhaps too versatile. As we started to take advantage of FlipFactory’s many options, it became more difficult to remember which factory contained which codecs and filtering parameters, and at what bit rates. It helped that FlipFactory provides naming handles so you can name the factory and add a description of that factory in a description field (such as “make three bit-rate files for RealVideo”). But we wonder why some of the pre-processing can't be done at the end of the session instead of at the encoder creation point in the beginning. That way, nuances to media could be more closely matched to the type of job rather than to the type of encoder. As it is, nuances are customized for each encoder and it’s difficult, though possible, to keep track of all the various nuances that may or may not fit a particular job.

FlipFactory offers excellent profiles for formats, so it was relatively easy to define settings particular to each codec. Also, the encoding we did was more than adequately documented by FlipFactory, which proffered up log reports on account activity, flipping times and file destinations. And, when a factory or session failed, it gave a status report including cause of failure — a tremendously helpful feature the few times it was needed.

The Bottom Line

FlipFactory is easy to install, it works reliably, and the true Web client makes remote access ubiquitous and easy, though preview is limited to files actually on the server. We experienced some settings quirkiness with QuickTime encoding and were surprised to find that only Sorenson Video 2 is supported, though FlipFactory version 2.0 will support SV 3.1 if all goes as planned. Meanwhile, FlipFactory 1.2 does support RealVideo/Audio 8 and Windows Media Video/Audio 8.

The number of functionality points that Telestream is addressing in the unreleased 2.0 version may raise a flag for some. But FlipFactory 1.2 does work well, and at a base cost of $10,000, it is still much less expensive than its primary competitor, Anystream (see review). FlipFactory 1.2 is a strong contender for heavy transcoding work, and if the price doesn’t deter you, we recommend trying the demo at www.telestream.net to see if it’s a fit for your shop.