Telestream®, the leading provider of digital media tools and workflow solutions, today announced a Microsoft Windows-compatible version of Switch – the multiformat media player that provides professionals with everything they need to play, inspect, and correct their media in one, easy-to-use professional tool. Already available for Mac OS X, Switch version 1.5 will be demonstrated on booth 7.C21 at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam September 12-16, and will be available for purchase in Q4 2014.
Recognizing the need for a visual inspection tool that goes beyond simply playing all professional media formats, Telestream developed Switch to be an indispensable tool for anyone in the media industry. With the ability to play native file formats such as MXF, AS-03, AS-11DPP bundles, as well as transport streams, HEVC files and captions, Switch is truly unique in its abilities. Even more notable is the fact that the basic player and inspection functionality is free of charge. Customers can purchase Switch Pro if they wish to “switch” or transcode their media into a different format, view advanced application-specific metadata, or modify parameters and metadata.
“With the release of version Switch 1.5 we will have a multi-platform tool that should reside on every media professional’s desktop,” said Barbara DeHart, vice president of desktop business at Telestream. “Switch gives anyone dealing with the production, distribution, packaging, or QC of content everything they need to play it, check it and switch it."
Telestream is known for solving the challenges associated with creating and distributing media in today’s digital environment. As the number of resolutions, compression algorithms and formats increases, so does the need for tools to be able to open, play, inspect and correct the growing number of media files available. Media professionals today resort to using a collection of tools including players, inspectors, analyzers and converters, to do their jobs. Switch brings all those tools together into a single, easy to use, cross platform software application.
“The IBC Awards Ceremony uses around 15 or 20 video clips from lots of different sources, at different resolutions, encodings and formats. I needed something that would let me quickly check each clip for content and quality, and if necessary convert to the house format. At the show these clips are shown on a huge digital projection screen, so quality is critical. Telestream Switch is just perfect for the application, even covering the latest 4k formats. It’s fast and very easy to use,” commented Dick Hobbs, independent writer, producer and consultant.
In addition to switching formats, Switch also enables packaging and distribution of content to media platforms, such as iTunes. With Switch it is easy to create packages ready for distribution to the iTunes store. Users can create an asset-only iTunes package – including the media content, .scc and iTT (iTunes Timed Text) subtitles, secondary audio files, chapter information, and an XML file.
“For professionals producing content for distribution to the iTunes store, Switch will save them a huge amount of time, by automatically pulling together all the necessary assets for their .itmsp files, including the required XML file,” said DeHart.
Play it – QC it
Switch supports high-quality playback for all major formats including MOV, MP4, MXF (including AS02, AS03 and AS11 with DPP metadata), GXF, HEVC, MPEG-2 Program Streams and Transport Streams, and more. The player includes standard navigation controls including fast forward, rewind, slow motion, as well as single-frame forward and back, for all file types making it an excellent QC tool. Users can group disparate files together for playback such as MXF Op-Atom files with separate audio and video files.
Check it
Switch also displays all the relevant information about a media file. Video track display includes codec, bitrate, frame size, frame rate, interlacing format as well as aspect ratio and aperture information. The audio track inspector displays audio tracks and channels, speaker labels, and encoding format information.
Switch it
By switching to export mode users can modify settings and export a new file. Switch allows users to specify a new file format; a new video or audio codec; trim, scale or crop the video; add metadata, and insert chapter markers. A complete set of audio tools is available as well, to rearrange audio tracks and edit speaker assignments.
Switch is built on the same technologies Telestream developed for its professional transcoding tools, which power the digital media ecosystems of 95% of top US broadcasters, 80% of Fortune 100 companies in the US, thousands of media professionals, and millions of consumers.
Playback and basic inspection is available for free in Switch Player. Switch Pro ($295) adds additional format support, playback and inspection of advanced application-specific metadata, and the ability to export or change file properties. Switch version 1.5 with support for Windows will be available in Q4 2014.
