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Company Success Stories - Transcoding
The Dual-Core AMD Opteron™ Processor Helps Digital Media Industry Leaders Dramatically Increase the Efficiency of Transcoding Massive Files of Content
Profile
Transcoding
"We’re seeing dramatic growth in the number of customers choosing the AMD Opteron processor as they recognize the price/performance benefit of the technology,” said Anna Greco, director of product marketing and business development, Telestream - Anna Greco, director of product marketing and business development"
“We have been very impressed by the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor. It will provide us with cost-effective solutions for our time-sensitive customers as well as provide the extra real-time encoding performance for certain critical applications,” Brick Eksten, president, Digital Rapids
“Using Dual-Core AMD Opteron™ processor-based systems, we experienced a 2x increase in database performance, which helped us to more rapidly deliver content. But in terms of raw processing power, with GridCoder™ we experienced over a 6x increase in transcoding speeds,” said Jason Turner, chief executive officer, Agnostic Media
Challenge:
Within the Digital Media Industry, the Media & Entertainment sector is well down the transition path from videotape-based workflows to file-based workflows. However, two key challenges among broadcasters and cable networks remain: 1) exchanging files between incompatible systems along the digital media production workflow, and 2) generating the growing number of formats and compression schemes being used by the expanding distribution channels. Automated transcoding of formats has become a critical function for many of these industry players.
Transcoding companies’ customers include major broadcasters, cable networks, Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service providers, mobile carriers, movie studios and post-production houses which deal with massive volumes of content, created in various formats. Content typically needs to be transcoded—converted into a variety of different formats—in order to be distributed and viewed within different mediums. For example, content can be viewed on movie screens, televisions, PCs, PDAs and even mobile phones—all of which require different resolutions and compression, so the content needs to be transcoded to meet each unique requirement.
The sheer complexity of converting the content into the various formats can be challenging, but at the same time the competitive demands facing media companies
underscore the importance of speed. Given the fact that the content is incredibly
large, the transcoding process can be laborious, slow and sometimes cost-prohibitive.
To resolve these challenges, transcoder industry leaders Telestream, Digital Rapids and Agnostic Media turned to AMD.
Solution:
The results of the companies’ benchmarks consistently found that the AMD Opteron™ processor offered significant productivity gains over systems running on a competitor’s processors. Specifically, each company found the following:
Telestream
Responding to customer demand, Telestream conducted extensive benchmarks seeking solutions that offer its customers the freedom to choose a platform and know the company’s products are maximized for it.
“Our typical customers work with extremely large volumes of data and transcoding that content is extremely CPU intensive. We’re seeing dramatic growth in the number of customers choosing AMD Opteron processor-based servers as they recognize the price/performance benefit of the technology. As such, we needed to ensure our applications are maximized for the AMD Opteron processor, and after finding up to a 30 percent increase in transcoding speeds during benchmarks, we can provide that assurance,” said Anna Greco, director of product marketing and business development, Telestream
Digital Rapids
Digital Rapids began testing the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor due to customer demands for more real-time encoding and faster transcoding. After conducting extensive benchmarks, Digital Rapids found productivity gains in real-time capture and encoding as well as when transcoding between various formats.
Digital Rapids President Brick Eksten said, “We found significant improvements in performance with almost all of the codecs we tested. We saw the most dramatic results with code that was optimized to take advantage of multithreaded processing. For example, when encoding using a standard Windows® Media 9 codec profile, the AMD Opteron processor-based system was approximately 25 percent faster than our current standard solution and when encoding Windows Media 9 at the highest level of complexity, the encoding was approximately 33 percent faster.”
“When we used the Digital Rapids Stream software to encode to multiple formats simultaneously, the AMD Opteron processor-based system showed even bigger performance improvements, with the encoding times being 25 to 40 percent faster. That’s a lot faster when you are talking about a deadline-driven industry,” Eksten added.
Lastly, the productivity gains provided by the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor are opening new doors for Digital Rapids. According to Eksten, plans are in the works to develop solutions based on the AMD Opteron processor that take advantage of the improvements in performance.
AGNOSTIC MEDIA
Agnostic’s large broadcast customers need to transcode content for over 20 networks, working with countless types of data, different channels and different standards. The Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor helps make this daunting task manageable. With Agnostic’s GridCoder™ solution, a video that would otherwise take three-and-a-half minutes to transcode can now be transcoded and distributed in just 34 seconds.
“Using the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor-based systems, we experienced a 2x increase in database performance, which helped us to more rapidly deliver content. But in terms of raw processing power, with GridCoder we experienced over a 6x increase in transcoding speeds,” said Jason Turner, chief executive officer, Agnostic Media. “Transcoding is a time and CPU-intensive process. Our customers are ecstatic because, with a grid of transcoding servers running the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor, we can transcode a two-and-a-half hour movie in just 10 minutes.”
Turner believes that, “AMD’s leadership has clearly been established in the digital media industry. As AMD was the first company to offer dual-core technology, Agnostic embraced the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor, and we saw a great increase in performance as we were able to push many more threads of data than on our previous system.”
Impact:
The productivity gains provided by the AMD Opteron processor-based systems have helped Telestream, Digital Rapids and Agnostic Media experience performance gains and provide enhanced customer service.
“Speed is the name of the game for our clients, whether they are television stations, cable networks or post-production houses. They rely on FlipFactory® to transcode the content and deliver it to the appropriate system or distribution server. Now that we have conducted our tests, with the help of the AMD Opteron processor we can help our customers more rapidly convert and deliver on-demand content to their constituents,” added Telestream’s Anna Greco.
According to Digital Rapids’ Brick Eksten, “We have been very impressed by the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor. It can provide us with cost-effective solutions for our time-sensitive customers as well as the extra real-time encoding performance for certain critical applications.”
“Regardless of whether we are transcoding content for broadband, broadcast, mobile or podcast, we feel we can ensure our customers we are able to convert and deliver the data in the most efficient means available,” said Agnostic Media’s Jason Turner.
About AMD
Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is a leading global provider of innovative microprocessor solutions for computing, communications and consumer electronics markets. Founded in 1969, AMD is dedicated to delivering superior computing solutions based on customer needs that empower users worldwide. For more information visit www.amd.com.
© 2005 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron, and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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