The content should be out there and reachable. Clients send their video or audio to Generic Media's central service, which produces the master file. Then the file then can be accessed through the client's Web site via a link. Hoddie says it is not unusual now for a content provider to offer up to nine versions of the same video clip. When upgrades to the server come out, when new codecs come out, we just automatically adapt to that.
Cost is a big selling point.
And of course, there is never a need to revisit it to re-encode it again down the line because our service takes care of that automatically. With no human producer needed, the system can turn around media files as quickly as it receives them, making it a good fit for time-sensitive content such as news. It's basically zero-time encoding, which is kind of a nifty thing the industry hasn't seen before. Generic Media already has struck deals to provide its universal media file technology to big brands including Sony Corp. and Canon DV, the company's digital camera division. Another player offering a universal source file for rich media is Telestream Inc., whose FlipFactory software automatically creates universal streaming media files.