Envivio Launches 4Forum™, the First Interactive Industry-Standard MPEG-4 Webcasting System for the Enterprise
Enables Unlimited Number of Viewers; Perfect Synchronization Among Video, Audio, and Collaborative Material; and the Production of Self-Contained Presentation Files
Atlanta, GA – June 3, 2003 – Envivio, Inc., a leading provider of MPEG-4 broadcast and streaming solutions, today announced 4Forum™, a turnkey system for broadcasting, managing, distributing, and playing MPEG-4 multimedia presentations over enterprise networks. Envivio is demonstrating 4Forum, along with video over IP MPEG-4 systems, this week at SUPERCOMM 2003 in Atlanta, GA.
4Forum is the first and only industry-standard, all-in-one corporate communications solution in the enterprise marketplace that uses MPEG-4 as a single technology for synchronized video, audio, and collaborative material. It is an integrated ‘plug-and-play’ and easy-to-operate system with optimized hardware, streaming software, and rich media authoring tools. The system works on existing IP infrastructures, and content can be delivered over terrestrial, satellite, or wireless networks in multicast and unicast modes. Recipients can view the content on all major media players, including Windows Media, RealNetworks, and QuickTime players, on any device, including PCs, TVs, and PDAs.
With the 4Forum system, presenters can use their own laptops for data-sharing and presentations without the need for special software; they simply plug their VGA cable into the system, as they would do with a projector, to share their screen with attendees. With 4Forum’s easy-to-use and simple-to-manage user interface, administrators can start, stop, publish, and easily manage live and on-demand broadcasts remotely over the web.
During live streams, the delay between the source and play back can be as low as one-half second, making it easy for viewers to interact in real time with presenters via the web. In addition, since the system uses the industry-standard MPEG-4 format, an entire multimedia presentation consists of a single file – or scene – that can be customized and branded, and can contain MPEG-4 graphics, vector-based animations, and interactivity.
“By using the Envivio 4Forum corporate communications system, customers can stream both offline and live content over IP networks,” said Guillaume Cohen, Director of Enterprise Solutions, Envivio. “Because the streams are in MPEG-4 format, individual objects can be synchronized within scenes, allowing true interactivity. This cannot be done with MPEG-1, MPEG-2, or hybrid HTML-based webcasting systems.”
As opposed to typical webcasting systems using hybrid HTML+JavaScript+Windows Media+JPEG components, every element of the 4Forum presentation is treated as an MPEG-4 object of a same scene, to enable perfect synchronization of the MPEG-4 object streams (video, audio, collaborative material), easy scaling of the number of users by using multicast or simply adding extra streaming servers, and sub-second latency on private multicast networks. After the live event, the rich media presentation is automatically published into one single MPEG-4 file that contains the entire presentation, making distribution and scalability easy.
The 4Forum system consists of Envivio Live Broadcaster real-time MPEG-4 encoder, Envivio MPEG-4 Streaming Server, the 4Forum web-based control and publishing application, and EnvivioTV™ plug-in for Windows Media, RealNetworks, and QuickTime players.
With Envivio 4Forum, a presenter can use a laptop PC running any computer application for the presentation; the entire screen is encoded, with the application running in it, as an MPEG-4 video stream. A web administrator can remotely manage the presentation with controls such as start/stop, on-the-fly index insertion for easy navigation in the recorded presentation, and on-demand publishing functions to instantaneously make the presentation available for later review.
4Forum comes with interactive templates, or customers can purchase Envivio Broadcast Studio to create their own custom MPEG-4 interactive templates or repurpose existing content.
“4Forum brings many benefits, including reduced costs of communications in terms of travel, content creation, and lower bandwidth; improved productivity; and expanded reach and effectiveness of presentations on a global scale,” said Cohen. “4Forum is the ultimate business communications solution. Applications include morning calls, executive messages, corporate news channels, sales and partner training, product launches, marketing events and seminars, HR announcements, and other forms of corporate communications.”
About Envivio
Envivio is a leading provider of complete MPEG-4 solutions, which consist of a rich set of integrated streaming media tools and systems including high-performance audio and video, two-dimensional graphics, and animation. The company has established itself as the most experienced creator of high-quality MPEG-4 solutions that enable broadcasters, network operators, content developers, and the enterprise to build new revenue streams and use the efficiencies of delivering content to the full range of MPEG-4 capable devices. The Envivio solution includes various components to create, encode, protect, distribute, and view MPEG-4 content.
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4Forum and EnvivioTV are trademarks of Envivio, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. All trademarks used herein, whether recognized or not, are the properties of their respective companies.
Media Contact:
Envivio
Barry Strauss
(650) 243-2718
bstrauss@envivio.com
