Telestream Releases Version 6 of Episode

Telestream has released Episode 6, the only cross-platform, multiformat software encoder on the market that offers scalability from the desktop to a workgroup or server cluster. Episode Version 6 is an all-in-one video encoder that brings One Click Clustering with integrated file sharing to content owners, professional videographers, and post-production facilities. This new feature allows users to easily pool resources and share encoding tasks across multiple computers in a mixed environment of PC and Mac computers. A new, intuitive user interface with graphical workflow builder simplifies the encoding process. New deployment capabilities are also available in version 6, including automatic uploading to YouTube.

“Setting up a cluster couldn’t be easier,” says Brent Kirsten, Owner and Creative Director at digitalcore, a San Francisco video production and post facility. “With Episode’s simple clustering features, it’s effortless to maximize our horsepower when we need it. We’ve been waiting for a solution like this for our SAN; it will save us hours of time.”

Dylan Armajani, System Administrator at New York-based 24-hour lifestyle network, Plum TV concurs, “We love Episode 6 and plan to deploy it in all nine of our locations. It is an incredibly feature-rich and robust program with a straight-forward user interface that even novice users can operate with very little training. Within 10 minutes of receiving the product, I had our watch folders delivering numerous different encodes: to our CDN for web playback, to our video playout servers for broadcast, and another straight to YouTube. From one watch folder I could push a single video to all of our various destinations.”

New video format support includes WebM, the web media format, based on the VP8 open source video codec, as well as high-quality Main Concept H.264 and MPEG formats. Due to Episode’s high-quality 10-bit processing, Telestream has been licensed to distribute the Apple ProRes codec, which enables native decoding and encoding in the Mac version of Episode 6 right out of the box.

New deployment capabilities allow users to automatically deliver completed content using standard network delivery protocols, and upload content to popular video sharing websites like YouTube. These new capabilities are easily accessible through the new user interface and graphical workflow builder, which allows users to visually create and view the steps in their encoding process. Video compressionist Jan Ozer describes the new user interface as “brilliant” in his Episode 6 video tour which can be found on StreamingMedia.com.

Episode 6 is now available for online purchase. Episode 6 features three models. Episode ($495) includes support for Flash 8 & 9, H.264, WebM, Windows Media, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1, DV, 3GPP and much more, plus One-Click Clustering with integrated file sharing, processing of one job at a time, and unlimited batch processing. Episode Pro ($995) adds support for high-end professional formats plus parallel encoding of two jobs at a time. Episode Engine ($3,995) adds unlimited parallel encoding plus Split-and-Stitch distributed encoding for high-volume throughput at maximum speed. The upgrade fee from Episode v5 to Episode v6 is $145, and from Episode Pro v5 to Episode Pro v6 is $295.