Phoenix, AZ, June 8, 2011 – Phoenix NAP, a next generation datacenter and network access point, today announced Unicorn Media, a digital media management provider, has added to its colocation space within the Phoenix NAP facility to help address rising demands.

Unicorn Media decided to expand its presence in Phoenix NAP due largely to the comfort and service levels it has received from the datacenter since its initial colocation space procurement in March of 2010.

“Our customers expect the most from our cloud-based technology and it’s imperative that they receive reliable service. When it became clear that we needed to expand our back-end services, the state-of-the-art facility and superior customer service at Phoenix NAP made it the obvious choice,” said AJ McGowan, CTO, Unicorn Media.

Unicorn Media is using the additional space to provide its growing customer list with its patented technology, which includes unparalleled device support via Unicorn ONCE™, real-time analytics via Unicorn VISION™, and superior cloud-based workflow optimization tools via Unicorn ELEMENTS™.

“It is great to see companies thrive in today’s economic landscape, and the range of services Unicorn Media provides is obviously filling a need in the market. We are thrilled to be supporting Unicorn’s successes with our datacenter’s infrastructure, and look forward to the continued growth of both organizations,” said Ian McClarty, president of Phoenix NAP.

Phoenix NAP is a PCI DSS Validated Services Provider and a SAS 70 Type II certified facility.

About Phoenix NAP

Phoenix NAP, LLC (www.phoenixnap.com) is a privately held organization of operational, networking and management professionals that have worked in the datacenter and IT fields since the early 1990s. The company employs a unique approach to providing flexible datacenter solutions that are tailored to meet the differing needs of small businesses and large enterprises. For more information, visit the company’s website at www.phoenixnap.com.

About Unicorn Media, Inc.

Unicorn Media, Inc. is a digital media management provider that helps companies deliver media to any device, any time, anywhere, while providing real-time analytics on any platform. Unicorn’s core services include Unicorn ONCE™, which allows content owners to ingest media one time and deliver everywhere and Unicorn VISION™, which provides real-time analytics across any Internet-connected device. These services are layered on Unicorn’s core technology platform, Unicorn ELEMENTS™, which is a modular suite of workflow optimization tools that enable publishers to customize their online video strategy. Unicorn Media’s workflow optimization tools and real-time analytics revolutionize the process for running a profitable online media property. Founded by Limelight Networks founding CEO, Bill Rinehart, and headquartered in Tempe, AZ, privately held Unicorn Media, Inc. has offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and London. For additional information, please visit: www.unicornmedia.com.

UNICORN ELEMENTS™ MODULAR TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM GAINS INCREASED FLEXIBILITY

Unicorn Media, Inc., a digital media management provider, announced today that it is now offering plug-ins for Adobe’s Open Source Media Framework (OSMF) and Longtail Video’s JW Player. The plug-ins will provide video publishers using the industry standard JW and OSMF players with the ability to take full advantage of Unicorn Media’s real-time analytics to measure video performance and drive profitability.

The JW and OSMF players have broad support in the industry, with extensive active plug-in communities behind them, providing Unicorn customers with a wide range of rich player solutions including UI customization, advertising integration utilizing the largest selection of advertising networks and decision engines, as well as other extensible functionality via the easy-to-use plug-in architecture. As part of Unicorn Media’s strategy to provide its customers with solutions that easily integrate with their existing tools and workflows, content publishers and distributors may continue to use these industry standard tools while for the first time taking advantage of the unique benefits of the Unicorn platform. Unicorn’s patented technology includes superior workflow optimization tools via Unicorn ELEMENTS™, real-time analytics via Unicorn VISION™ and unparalleled device support via Unicorn ONCE™.

“Unicorn is committed to giving our customers the flexibility to use industry standard solutions such as the powerful JW and OSMF player platforms, while providing superior digital media management, real-time analytics and our patented Unicorn ONCE™ technology for unparalleled device support.  We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of these plug-ins to our customers,” said Mark Consuegra, EVP, Product Management at Unicorn Media.

Unicorn Media’s modular suite of workflow optimization tools includes global ingestion, transcoding, distribution, player customization, monetization, analytics and syndication. In addition, its patented Unicorn ONCE™ technology enables content owners to ingest and deliver video to any Internet-connected device such as iPad, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile 7, game consoles, set-top boxes, etc. while providing dynamic ad integration and real-time analytics across any platform via Unicorn VISION™.

Unicorn Media CTO, AJ McGowan spoke on the Cloud-computing panel this past Monday at the DCIA CONTENT IN THE CLOUD Conference at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, NV. Other panelists included:

• Alexander Marquez, Director, Intel Capital
• Devon Copley, Managing Director, Kaltura
• Alex Castro, VP & GM, Video Platform Solutions, Limelight Networks
• Guy de Beer, CEO, Playcast
• David Dudas, VP of Video Solutions, Sorenson Media

The panel discussed the The Impact on Broadcasters of Cloud Computing Deployment. The speakers touched on the complexities of managing multi-format requirements, from transcoding to storage to distribution. As well as the challenges faced by video publishers who are trying to keep up with viewer demand and emerging technology. Publishers are finding that it’s just not that easy to get video everywhere that viewers want to watch- though at Unicorn Media, we’ve got a solution that makes that very problem a lot easier to solve.

Some interesting points were made during the discussion around cloud computing:

• Storage and bandwidth requirements have skyrocketed; larger files and more transcodes per clip.
• Sony’s SR tape factory in Japan was destroyed in the recent earthquake.  This is accelerating the shift away from tape-based backup in broadcasting and the need for alternative solutions.
• Technicolor and others are in the process of moving their dailies distribution to the cloud.

Publishers are facing issues around delivery- and you may want to note that these are exactly the issues that we identified and solved for with Unicorn ONCE:

• Video publishers don’t know the bandwidth capabilities of each of their consumers; adaptive bit-rate streaming is the common band aid to address this.
• There are sometimes as many as 50,000 transcoded files being required for a 2-hour title, taking into consideration delivery to iOS devices as well as other platforms such as Android and BlackBerry.
• How do publishers get their content everywhere and still get paid?
• Publishers haven’t traditionally delivered directly to their customers.  It’s been a difficult process, with ever-emerging and widely adopted technology such as the iPad; their ability to do this well will largely determine their success.

By now you’ve probably read about Unicorn ONCE, and if you haven’t, you should go check out our last blog post which details exactly how ONCE  allows our customers to ingest ONCE and deliver everywhere. As AJ said pointed out during the panel discussion – ‘We are in ‘flying car’ territory: users are consuming content in ways that would have been unimaginable five years ago.”

I am happy to announce the commercial availability of Unicorn Once!  It is very simple…deliver us ONE FILE, ONE TIME, and it is available at ONCE on 4,400+ mobile devices.  We are changing the way publishers can monetize content on mobile devices.  Contact us and let us show you why Unicorn Once is leading the way for mobile video delivery.

- Bill Rinehart, Founder and CEO, Unicorn Media

Unicorn Once allows you to ingest content once and deliver everywhere

AJ McGowan, CTO Unicorn Media

Unicorn’s CTO, AJ McGowan has been selected to speak on a panel at this year’s NAB Show in Las Vegas, Nevada.  The show runs April 11 – 14 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. NAB is the premier content event of the year. The panel discussion will take place on Monday, April 11, More details to come.

AJ has recently presented at Streaming Media West at the Online Video Summit as well as International CES at the DCIA Conference in the Cloud.

On Wednesday, Google announced the much anticipated release of VP8 and the WebM Project, a community effort to develop a world-class media format for the open web.  VP8, the high-quality video codec, adapts to varying processing and bandwidth conditions and is available royalty-free.

The team here at Unicorn Media is pleased to announce its support of VP8 as a part of our ongoing commitment to support the widest array of video delivery technology.

Unicorn Media’s transcoding architecture currently supports virtually any codec or format for maximum flexibility, and we look forward to continuing that commitment in throwing our support behind the WebM Project.

Questions about how Unicorn Media can help you utilize VP8?  Drop us a note here, or contact your Media Services Consultant.

For the full release, visit us here.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been discussing what makes Unicorn Media’s Media-as-a-Service™ solution unique from all the rest of the online video platforms in the market.  While my discussions here are certainly not exhaustive, we’ve covered a lot of ground, and I wanted to take a minute to boil it down.

I’ve mentioned before that Unicorn Media isn’t just a player with some snazzy features attached.  We’ve really set out to build a whole new way of looking at the online video ecosystem.

But what does that really mean for our clients and partners?

It means that we deliver more than just video.  We deliver profits.

Unicorn Media cuts costs two ways: by providing actionable information to our customers and by improving their operational efficiencies.  Our analytics technology gives our clients the ability to make intelligent business decisions on the spot, in real-time.  Our syndication model simplifies processes and significantly reduces deployment times.  Our transcoding technology allows for high quality viewing at a lower bitrate, and our pricing model only charges our customers for what they’re actually using (no hefty licensing fees here).

We’ve said before that Unicorn Media does OVP the way we think OVP should be done.  So you can certainly call us that if you’d like..but you won’t find another OVP that scales to the needs of your business-like we do, or allows for real business intelligence-like we do, or one that significantly cuts video delivery costs-like we do.

So call us an OVP if you’d like, but expect something different…because at Unicorn Media, we’re in the business of delivering more than just video.

A lot of people might argue that the transcoding process isn’t the most electrifying of topics…but we aren’t those people.

The fact is, transcoding isn’t a science.  It’s an art.

So I sat down with Rikki Carls, Director of Software Architecture and the Picasso of Unicorn Media’s transcoding architecture to get the ins and outs of how the Unicorn transcoding system was built.

What did we set out to accomplish in building our transcoding architecture?

Rikki: We started with a couple of basic tenets in mind.  First, to encode videos to a world-class standard of quality at a lower bitrate than previously thought possible. Second, to have a dynamic profile system that would enable our customers to choose the video output that best meets their business needs, and lastly to create the architecture in such a way to allow it to scale-anywhere from a single hardware farm to multiple “cloud computing” infrastructures.

So, we know what we want the end result to look like.  Where did we go from there?

Rikki:  Well, to accomplish the first goal, we spent several months in research and development.  We needed to find the best H.264 encoder in terms of quality output, configurable settings, and ongoing development.  We then went though and “tweaked” every imaginable configurable setting combination until we found what we think of as the perfect combination of encoding speed, quality, and bitrate. We then ran a battery of test content through, making additional configuration changes until we were sure that we had the best quality encoding on the market at any given bitrate.

So we’ve got the basics down, how did we accomplish the dynamic profiles and scalability?

Rikki:  Our second and third goals were actually much easier to accomplish. Instead of relying on a prebuilt software package to do our encoding, our system was custom built in a modular fashion.  This not only allows us to quickly add new functionality on-the-fly, but also allows us to keep up with the ever-changing video codecs required to read and transcode the wide variety of video types we receive. On top of that, we can quickly scale out our infrastructure to meet any customer’s demand, from a small video publisher with a couple hundred assets up to a large syndication company with tens of thousands of assets.

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As Rikki mentioned, we set out to build a transcoding system that would bring our customers the highest standard of quality video at lower bitrates, and that’s exactly what we’ve done.  But you don’t have to take our word for it, the proof is in the pudding.  Head over to UnicornMedia.com and check out this video-quality comparison.

As you know, last week we announced a new release that brought some great new features to our platform services.

This morning we released Part 2 of that build that enables a few very exciting features.

Enterprise Advertising Support:

• We have released our first client-configurable enterprise advertising support.
• Customers have the ability to setup custom rules for ad playback on each of their player templates and can mix and match different server configurations.
• Look for more exciting news on this front over the next few months!

Auto-Publish:

This feature automatically publishes content per catalog or piece of content as it completes transcode of all profiles.  This means that users can “upload and forget,” and content will automatically be published.  This feature works in conjunction with the XML ingest feed service to automatically publish content as it is ingested from an outside system.

Real-Time Transcoding Status:

In the media item edit view, the status of the various profiles in profile details will automatically change as the file works its way through the transcoding process.

Congratulations again to the development team for getting this release out!