The Leading Global Provider of High-Quality Audio and Video Communications Products

Niagara SCX Pro andNiagara SCX Standard

www.v iewcas t . com | 3701 W. P lano Parkway , Su i te 300 | P lano , Texas 75075-7840 | 972 -488-7200 | 800 -540-4119

OUTPUT FEATURES

Niagara SCX Standard

File Formats • Uncompressed AVI • Adobe® Flash® • RealVideo® • Windows Media®

Streaming Formats • RealVideo • Windows Media

Niagara SCX Pro

File Formats • Uncompressed AVI • Adobe Flash • MPEG-4 • H.263 (MPEG-4, Part 2) • H.264 (MPEG-4, Part 10) • RealVideo • Windows Media

Streaming Formats • MPEG-4 • H.263 (MPEG-4, Part 2) • H.264 (MPEG-4, Part 10) • RealVideo • Windows Media

Container Formats • 3GPP • 3GPP2

The explosive growth of live and on-demand video streaming has created a parallel need for media encoder arrays. In some installations this results in rack after rack of stacked media encoders, each with at least one audio / video capture channel and its own encoding software. Installing and configuring all the software that allows each card to create multiple streams at different bit rates is extremely time-intensive. Additionally, encoders are often installed in remote locations, making configuring, and maintaining a network of encoders even more difficult.

Niagara SCX®, ViewCast’s encoder management and monitoring software, manages multiple streams of video with a single user interface. This interface includes multi-codec support of multi-video sources. Features like monitoring, data reporting, and remote management provide you with ease of use.

With Niagara SCX software, users can setup and control encoders throughout an enterprise or over the Internet, eliminating the need for multiple products such as Windows Media Encoder, RealProducer® or HelixTM Mobile Producer to control and monitor the encoding process. Niagara SCX Pro features the same live streaming encoding abilities for the Windows Media® and RealVideo formats as the standard Niagara SCX version, while adding MPEG-4, H.264 and H.263 formats.

Niagara SCX Pro is included with GoStreamTM, GoStream Plus, Niagara® Pro and Niagara 7224 systems, while Niagara SCX Standard is included on all other Niagara Streaming Media encoding systems. You can also purchase Niagara SCX Standard or Niagara SCX Pro separately, for creating your own customized solutions.

ENCODER MANAGEMENT AND MONITORING SOFTWARE

LIVE STREAMING | REMOTE MANAGEMENT | MULTIPLE SOURCES

ViewCast Niagara SCX Software

ViewCast Niagara SCX Standard

ViewCast Niagara SCX Pro

Niagara SCX Remote Encoder Management and Monitoring Software

Encoder Management ConfigurationtioNiagara SCX provides you full access to view and set encoding parameters, to start and stop the encoding process, and to receive notifications of identified error conditions. With this powerful encoder management tool, you can monitor and control up to 50 encoders from a single interface running on a client PC.

The following scenario clearly demonstrates what Niagara SCX can accomplish for you. In a data center running 15 encoding systems, each connected to different content sources using one or more capture channel in each system, Niagara SCX provides the ability to monitor the encoding status of each channel on each streaming system. In this scenario, Niagara SCX, combined with Osprey SimulStream®, can also capture from the same source on each channel at different resolutions or compression formats. For example, each source is captured at 3 different bitrates: QCIF at 148 kbps, CIF at 250 kbps, and CIF at 350 kbps. All are managed and controlled by Niagara SCX!

Real-Time Any-Time MonitoringMonitoring provides you the confidence the systems are operating within the expected parameters. It provides you the ability to react and to apply remedies when a system fails to function properly.

Niagara SCX provides two categorical sets of components for monitoring:

• System Healtho CPU performanceo Network status and activity

• Ingest through Distributiono Ingesting pointo Audio and video qualimetrics, which include hue,

saturation, gamma, and audio levelso Encoding statistics, which include stream packets and bytes

delivered/dropped, stream bit rate, and frame per second(fps)

Niagara SCX Client Interface and Cropping Tools

Niagara SCX Encoder nested view allows you to easily see all encoders on the network and their current status.

Control Management FunctionalityOnly Niagara SCX provides the crucial control management functions required when you manage one or many stream-ing media encoding arrays — Access, Monitor, Control, Configure, Aggregate, and Secure.

Convenient, Local and Remote AccessWhen you manage any array of devices, convenient access to the devices is the foremost consideration — on-site and off-site. You often find an array of encoders located in a server room with several PCs. These server rooms are typically loud from the hum of servers, and do not provide an ideal long-term working environment.

Niagara SCX gives you the ability to access the encoders from one or more remote locations via an IP connection, and moves the management controls from an inhospitable environment to an ideal environment.

Niagara SCX encoder statistics window provides real-time monitoring of encode, system health and connected clients.

Complete Encoder ControlNiagara SCX is flexible, particularly in applications involving live broadcasting when on-the-fly changes and tweaks are often required. Niagara SCX excels in providing the required controls to ensure the best streaming video quality. Niagara SCX controls allow you to feel as if you were physically located next to the encoding system. Basic functions of the encoder such as start and stop are included, but Niagara SCX also provides you controls for:

• System CODEC and profile selection o Windows Media, RealVideo, Flash, MPEG-4 (SCX PRO only) and AVI • Modification of capture resolution and attributes • Ability to adjust video pre-processing filters such as de-interlacing • Adjustment of video resolution through scaling while minimizing CPU load • Branding and protecting of video content through logo watermarking • Enabling/Disabling/Configuring Osprey SimulStream

Access with SecurityNiagara SCX provides security for the system and components through conven-tional local area network (LAN) security measures. The encoding systems reside behind an enterprise firewall, while the user, with an Internet connection, running Niagara SCX can reside anywhere in the world. Standard Virtual Private Network (VPN) methods allow secure user access to the LAN where the encoders safely reside. This is possible because Niagara SCX uses a server/client architecture — the SCX server software resides on the encoding system, while the SCX client software resides on any connected device running Microsoft® Windows® device.

Quickly and Easily ConfiguredNiagara SCX lets you pre-configure or re-configure the system quickly and efficiently. This is crucial for live, spontaneous events when a portable encoder is taken on location by broadcast teams skilled in event productions. Although skilled in event productions, these teams may not be up-to-speed on the technicalities of encoder setup and configuration. Niagara SCX allows the user to pre-configure Niagara streaming media appliances. Then, all the on-site user needs to do is press the “start” button on the front panel of the system. This is an appliance solution!

At the device driver level, Niagara SCX configures the video pre-processing, scaling, and cropping for each encoding session. Other configuration settings include de-interlacing options, VBI data extraction (used in the United States for Closed Captioning or International use for teletext and other bits of data), gamma controls, color space conversion, and basic video format settings.

Manage and AggregateThe typical CODEC array operator manages several different systems, each with different settings and, in most cases, running different encoding engines. It is critically important the user experiences a single, unified interface which can only be provided using Niagara SCX. Without Niagara SCX, managing so many different devices becomes completely unmanageable.

ViewCast Niagara SCX

Using Niagara SCX, you can set all audio and video properties of each encoderon an individual basis.

Niagara SCX also has a Web Interface which is used to configure the programmable EZStream® buttons on select Niagara Encoding Appliances.

The Niagara SCX Interface provides configuration settings for items such as de-interlace and closed captioning.

The Niagara SCX Web Interface logs pre-defined encoder events andcan be configured to send alert e-mail messages when critical systemwarnings occur.

ViewCast Corporation | 3701 W. Plano Parkway, Suite 300 | Plano, Texas 75075-7840 | 972-488-7200 | 800-540-4119

For more information on ViewCast products, visit www.viewcast.com.

The Leading Global Provider of High-QualityAudio and Video Communications Products

Niagara SCX Remote Control and Monitoring Software Comparison Chart

ViewCastNiagara SCX Software

*Evaluation mode - license required for production mode.

AVI (file only)

Flash (v6) (file only)

RealVideo (v9, v10)

Windows Media (v7, v8, v9)

MPEG-4, Part 2 (H.263)

MPEG-4, Part 10 (H.264)

AVI (file only)

Flash (v6) (file only)

RealAudio®Windows Media

MP2

MP3

AAC

AMR-NB

AMR-WB

3GPP

3GPP2

Video Preview

A/V Decode View

CODEC Statistics

Visual Encoder Active View

System Health

Event Logging (Web I/O)

Email Alert of Critical Events (Web I/O)

NTSC (M/M-J)

PAL (B/D/G/H/I)

SECAM (B/D/G/H/K/K1/L/L1)

Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Hue

Proportions (CCIR601/Standard)

Standard/Custom Video Resolutions

Color Space Conversion

Composite/S-Video/SDI Support

File Input/Transcode

Vectorscope/Waveform Tuning Utility

Video Cropping

Video Scaling

Watermarking/Logo Overlay

Gamma Correction

Deinterlacing

*SimulStream Enable & Controls

Unbalanced/Balanced/AES-EBU/Embedded SDI Support

Sample Rate Conversion

Right/Left Volume/Mute Control

Closed Caption Extraction & Embedded in Stream

Closed Caption to Text Output

Video CODEC

Audio CODEC

Output FormatContainers

Monitoring & Reporting

Video Input Settings

Video Preprocessing

Audio Input Settings

VBI Niagara SCX Standard

Niagara SCX Pro

Fall 2007

Fall 2007

Fall 2007

Appliance HW

Appliance HW