Designing the first purpose-built Streaming Media Encoder
[October 25 Update... Hey, I just found out we were awarded the patent on this thing on October 19, 2010. US patent no. 7818442, Streaming Media Encoder with Front Panel Interface. Congratulations to the whole team! //Mark]
One of the things that pleases me most about working at Ambrado is the chance to again work with Mark Fears. In 2005, Mark managed ViewCast’s Niagara product line at a time when a typical Niagara system was a conventional rack-mount file server with an Osprey video capture card installed in a PCI slot. My development team produced software that presented a rather elegant user experience for setting up and running a live video streaming event, cleverly adapted from software we developed for older products to manage Tandberg, Polycom, and other videoconference codecs. The Niagara units were selling, we knew we wanted to be a force to reckon with in the Encoder business, and we started mapping our future in Internet streaming just as we were winding down our video switching products.
Rick and Rob at Fantum Innovations. Note Mark Fear's graphics for the front panel
Like much of our competition, the software defined the product. Encoder hardware still looked like what it was–a file server with audio and video dongles hanging off the back. The front panels surfaced only the usual PC controls– power, disc activity, and little else– making the things completely ho-hum looking. Still, they sold well to folks who liked our industry-leading unified control software (SCX), so when we saw sufficient sales traction to justify a little more investment in R&D, we chose to create a product that looked like it ought to be a Streaming Media Encoder.
The green light to go design this thing didn’t come easy…there was no evidence that such a product would get substantially more traction than our Server-class systems. It’s higher cost was going to be a problem; there had to be real value in the additional features. On February 29 2005, I posted a full-scale color renderings of my concept of front and rear panels in my inside office window, watching for reactions from fellow employees. React they did, almost everyone stopped to ask questions. Mark Fears officed next to me; we asked questions, took good notes, and together we pieced together the key elements– front panel confidence monitor, simple front panel controls with menuing, and some other elements that came to define to a whole industry what a Media Encoder Appliance should be.
Mark quickly created a more graphically appealing design…and the race to a Prototype was on. Since my Hardware team was fully involved on scheduled projects, I worked with Rob and Ann Renner at Fantum Innovations to create the many internal hardware designs. These included some internal video switching and routing logic, a confidence monitor that would switch between the two input channels, audio bargraph drivers, Video Present and System Alarm drivers, etc. Richard Moffit, an extremely capable mechanical engineer I knew from Intecom, designed the chassis and other sheet metal parts. We hired a fantastic System Design guy (Rick Southerland) about halfway through prototype development to make our designs producible. By the start of NAB in mid-April we had five hand-made prototypes –six weeks of working days at ViewCast and nights and weekends at Fantum’s facilities. They were fragile, no two were exactly alike internally,they had cables we made on our kitchen table, they used prototype super-performance (for the day) , temperamental motherboards that were not quite ready for production…. but they worked.
Ann at Fantum, working on the microcode for the front panel control microprocessor
Their fragility prompted Mark and I to rent a van and drive the lot of them to the NAB show in Las Vegas. That road trip is worthy of it’s own blog someday; suffice it to say the five units made it to NAB and were enthusiastically received by the big names in broadcasting….enough interest and commitments to go finish the design.
Finish we did over the next few months, formally introducing the Niagara PowerStream Pro later in the year. It was the start of something big.
//Mark
Me, working on the front panel Audio Bargraph circuit
Rob being....Rob
Production front panel overlay- just in time!
One of the first five prototypes
Ah heady days indeed (I notice you didn’t mention the one GoStream that took up smoking at its first NAB outing
). Looking back on this now it is easy to forget just how revolutionary the Niagara series were.
Although I got to see rather more of the interior of these things than I would’ve liked in the early days, I will be forever grateful for the effort you guys put into designing and building them in the first place.
Cool blog too.
M.
Martin, that was the second Purpose Built Encoder, introduced a year later at the NAB show. I reckon that rather unfortunate experience is worthy of its own post. I should let you offer up the details, it happend during the only 45-minute window I wasn’t at the booth in the entire run of the show…so I have it only secondhand.
I can still recall the smell, though…..