Vivo Software Announces New Version of VivoActive Producer
Streaming Web Video Post-Production Tool Now Brings Enhanced Productivity to
Webmasters
WALTHAM, Mass., November 12, 1996 — Vivo Software today announced the
newest version of its VivoActive Producer, a Web video post-production
tool that enables Webmasters to easily produce and integrate streams-based
video into their Web sites. VivoActive Producer 1.5 includes productivity
enhancing features that help Webmasters manipulate and process vide o clips
into their Web sites more quickly and easily. Available for both PC and
Apple Power Macintosh platforms, it will be delivered initially on the
Power Mac, the most popular development platform with most Web site
designers today. A beta version of the VivoActive Producer 1.5 is
available at Vivo,s Web site: http://www.vivo.com
The initial version of the VivoActive product family, launched in September,
already has generated considerable market momentum. More than 190 Web sites
feature VivoActivated streaming video, including CNN, C/Net, MSNBC,
Hewlett-Packard, Intel and NCR; and some 500,000 copies of the VivoActive
Player Web browser plug-in have been downloaded by PC and Power Mac users.
Designed to integrate seamlessly within the working environments of
Webmasters, the new VivoActive Producer 1.5 features greater integration with
Apple,s QuickTime environment, allowing previewing and manipulation of
QuickTime video clips before they are added to a Web page. It also allows
customized batch processing of video clips, so that multiple video clips
can be
converted to the VivoActive streaming format without user intervention,
significantly enhancing the ability of the VivoActive Producer to generate
large volumes of content for active Web sites.
The VivoActive Producer also processes video in little more than the time
necessary to view the clip. This not only allows quick changes to Web site
content, but also can cut hours off the process of preparing lengthy video
clips for posting.
For new corporate intranet applications, VivoActive technology can leverage
existing video resources and help to quickly deploy them. Organizations can
now create browser-based applications for internal audiences and use the
VivoActive Producer to easily add video clips of product demonstrations,
training and corporate information directly into these pages.
&To fully realize its potential, Web video must be as easy to produce as it
is to watch,” said Dr. Staffan Ericsson, chairman of Vivo Software. “People
want instant accessibility. That means streaming video on-demand for viewers,
without lengthy waits for a file to download; and it means fast and easy
processing of video clips for posting to the Web. That’s precisely what
VivoActive delivers.”
Enabling the Web Video Revolution
The VivoActive product family is comprised of the VivoActive Producer and the
VivoActive Player. VivoActive Player is a Web browser plug-in that enables PC
or Power Mac users to view videos from any VivoActivated Web site. VivoActive
Player can be downloaded free from http://www.vivo.com.
By using the HTTP protocol and supporting standard Web servers, the
VivoActive
software family makes video a natural component of the Web environment. This
contrasts with other approaches to video on the Web, which treat video as an
adjunct or add-on, requiring additional hardware or special modifications to
established Internet/intranet infrastructures. VivoActive Producer and Player
software eliminates the need for dedicated video server hardware, and
conserves
network bandwidth, enabling faster, more widely accessible video on-demand
over
the Web.
VivoActive technology differs from other Web video solutions in several key
dimensions:
* It requires no dedicated video server hardware or software, so there is no
incremental infrastructure cost for Web site operators
* It uses Vivo’s patented compression algorithms, which compress video and
audio signals at ratios of greater than 200:1 to maximize precious network
bandwidth
* It uses HTTP, so video is transported like any other common Web data type,
enabling video to pass securely through firewalls and wherever standard Web
traffic goes
* It works with established, popular Web video formats, such as QuickTime/AVI
files, making VivoActive software complementary to existing video resources
The VivoActive Producer 1.5 is available in special demo version for Power
Macintosh free of charge directly from Vivo,s Web site at
http://www.vivo.com. It requires a Power Macintosh with 16MB of memory and
4MB
of disk space. The full-release version will be available in December at a
suggested price of $795 and can either be downloaded from the Vivo Web site or
ordered directly by calling (800) VIVO-411.
About Vivo Software
Vivo Software, Inc. (Waltham, MA) is a leader in enabling the Web video
publishing revolution. Founded in 1993, by a team of
internationally-recognized experts in video and audio signal processing
technology, Vivo develops and markets VivoActive software, the only
commercially-available solution for producing and viewing low-bandwidth,
on-demand streaming media (video and audio) over the World Wide Web using
standard Web servers. Vivo’s patented compression technology also is licensed
to PictureTel Corp., which uses it as the basis for its PC-based
videoconferencing products.
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