Harmonic Launches One-Step Multiscreen VOD Ingest Engine

Harmonic announced the ProMedia Capture video ingest engine, which automatically captures files for multiscreen video-on-demand distribution in the desired formats without the need for an additional transcoding step.

ProMedia Capture provides real-time ingest of live and tape-based HD and SD video for file-based production and multiscreen workflows. Slated to ship in late November, the system can be used as a standalone device using 1.3 Terabytes of on-board storage or can be integrated with Harmonic's Omneon MediaGrid shared storage and the Harmonic Workflow System.

Harmonic will demo ProMedia Capture and its other multiscreen video solutions at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2011, scheduled to run Nov. 15-17.

ProMedia Capture is the newest member of Harmonic's ProMedia suite of software solutions and appliances, introduced in August, which supersedes the vendor's MediaPrism family. The family includes HTTP and RTMP streaming-video software that encapsulates and delivers video to a variety of target devices.

The ProMedia Capture system saves time and resources "whether ingesting content that's headed to a nonlinear editor as part of a news workflow, footage that's going directly to connected storage, or programming that needs to be distributed to a TV and a smartphone simultaneously," Harmonic director of product management for multiscreen Moore Macauley said in a statement.

The system uses a Web-based user interface to control two independent ingest channels and video tape recorders. The ProMedia Capture interface also provides an application for handling CableLabs Asset Distribution Interface (ADI) package creation that can be automatically exported to VOD systems.