Streaming Online

The Simple, Smart Online Video Platform

[streamio]

Improved test accounts

Our free test accounts has been upgraded to allow our users to really try out our Online Video Platform. We now allow 5 times the storage - 5GB of free storage per account for videos and the distribution is 25 times larger - 25GB of transfer. 25 GB of transfer equals more then 50 viewing hours of video in Streamio HQ 480P so it gives plenty of  room for video distribution. We still give full access to our API if you want to integrate Streamio’s video storage, encoding and distribution functionality (great for developers) and our worldwide distribution. 

Two changes to our terms of service will require the test account users attention: Videos uploaded or changed in any other way on test accounts will carry a Streamio watermark. An account upgraded to any of our paid plans will have the watermarks removed. Also from now on, we require user activity in order to provide this free lunch - test accounts need to be renewed every month - failure to do so will freeze the account and after a grace period it will be deleted. Paid accounts does not require renewal.  All terms and condition is posted at http://www.rackfish.com/legal

We hope you will enjoy our large and free test accounts! 

[streamio]

Live stream interview, low latency

Hosting, Live stream, CDN. Campaign with multiple video streams for flash, banners, mobile and desktop - low latency interview live stream and Nordic CDN.

A new case published by Rackfish with live streaming under extreme circumstances using Streamio Live. 

Rackfish CDN is used for a massive distribution in the Nordic countries, with around 15 different streams distributed for different purposes and live RTMP-streaming for low-latency streaming for interaction with visitors.

[streamio]

Problems with short links and film administration

Update 2 - Problem is now resolved:

https://twitter.com/Bitly/status/526012694835757057

Streamio is using a service for genereating short links, Bit.ly. Today, Saturday the 25th of October, links to Bit.ly was blocked as "unsafe" by Google and Firefox, since they have detected that some of these redirects go to unsafe pages.

This affects Streamio in two ways:

Administration of videos Clicking on a movie in Streamio administration presently generates a warning in Chrome and Firefox. We are trying to get a work-around in place that removes the short links which would solve this. Until then, see the article below with instructions on how-to get past this warning

Links to movies via bit.ly or S3m.io Links to movies that are already distributed, will show a warning to users with Chrome and Firefosx. There is no solution or work-around for this right now.

There is no security-problem with Streamio - The warning is becuase Google has found some links (669 of the 91854 pages Google recently crawled) to suspicious sites. Google confirms that Streamio is a secure place: https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?client=Firefox&hl=en-US&site=http://streamio.com

More information from another source with a guide on how the warning can be passed to reach secure content:

http://www.ghacks.net/2014/10/25/google-blocks-bit-ly-chrome-and-firefox-affected/

Update 16.09 CET

Bitly has now confirmed that they are working on a solution for the problem: https://twitter.com/Bitly/status/525980436472688640

We have not been able to reproduce the problems with shortlinks to movies under s3m.io. Bit.ly says that they should work fine, only bit.ly links should be affected.

[streamio]

Improved Youtube-sharing

One of the advantages with Streamio is that – from within itself – it is possible to share videos directly to social media like YouTube. You can also publish to LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, and take advantage

of these social network’s features as well as having a “clean” Streamio movie published on the own company webpage or in a mailing.

We have improved the functionality in the YouTube sharing with some new features. You are now able to share video files:

Under Privacy Settings you can choose whether the video that has been uploaded is public (anyone can see it), unlisted (only people with

an URL to the video can see it), or private (a list of users defined by you directly on the YouTube webpage) can see it. These can consist of Google+ names, Google+ circles or specific people (email addresses).

Under Allow Comments you are able to allow comments, allow moderated comments where you accept them before they go public, or simply disallow comments altogether.

If you check the Allow Rating box, you allow users to rate your video.

The comment functionality is especially important since not everyone has the resources to monitor yet another social network and bad comments can be left unanswered. 

[streamio]

Live streaming from remote areas without electricity and internet connections requires generator van and 4G/LTE bonding. We split the video streams between four different 4G adaptors from two different providers and then reassemble them again in our datacenter. Read more at http://www.rackfish.com/4g-lte-live-stream/

[streamio]

Live stream provider - Streamio Live!

Since Streamio was acquired by Rackfish, we are now also a live stream provider, under the brand name Streamio Live! And of course with the low pricing Streamio customers are used to!

Our live-streaming platform can handle everything from local streaming in Sweden - through an optimized network, to international streaming. Our technology is self-healing and chooses constantly the one of our internet providers that delivers the best performance to the viewer - all based on technology from Noction that we are the first in Scandinavia to use, not only among live-streaming providers. 

The plaform can stream live to all normal clients, Android, IOS and html5 as well as flash clients. We can convert incoming live-streams to different formats and make the outgoing stream adaptive, meaning it will adapt itself to the viewers bandwidth. 

Special functions such as the possibility to rewind in a live stream, let all viewers see the transmission from the beginning - with the possibility to fast forward to the live transmission, recording live video for our VOD (video-on-demand) Streamio. We even offer white-label solutions for those who want to base their live-streaming on our services, but under their own brand. 

An area where we have specialized the last few years is streaming from network cameras, where a fixed, weather proof camera can transmit live during years. 

Another area is low-latency streaming, streaming with very little delay - which is important in some transmissions such as games or interactive installations where the delay between the live action and the live-stream cannot be too big. An example of streaming with network cameras and low latency can be seen here. 

Contact us for more information about live stream delivery on [phone]

[streamio]

Systems engineer position open!

Rackfish is a creative high-tech company, specialists in campaign hosting. Incidentally, we also run Streamio!

We design technical solutions that ensure availability, security, dependability and delivery! We take complete responsibility for the hosting and work both with web servers as well as video streaming, CDN, etc.  Due to us having a very professional workforce, we are able to offer our customers the right support on the first call! 

We work together with our mother company Phosworks in very nice offices on the top floor of the Uppsala Castle. 360º awesome views!

We work with many leading agencies and brands, both in Sweden and internationally. Read more about our customers here! 

We are now looking for a tech-wizard!

In your work you will deploy servers with both Windows and Linux (with an emphasis on Linux). You should be able to install and configure databases and set up websites with and without SSL. We often use LAMP, but we have installations with node, nginx, lighttpld, tomcat, IIS, Microsoft SQL, redis and mongodb - to name a few. Knowledge of load balancing is desired. 

We work a lot with streaming, both live and video-on-demand. Knowledge of Wowza, different CDN and tecnlologies like RTMP/HLS/HDS are desired. 

We run our environment on VMWare vSphere with Equallogic storage on a Cisco network. Knowledge about ip-networks/vlan and routing (ospf/bgp) is good, since we are multihomed with connections to several providers of transit and peering contract. Read more about our technical platform here. 

Knowledge of provisioning tools like chef and puppet are desired. 

The job includes handling of mail support, phone support and work with clients of very different levels of knowledge: from easy e-mail support questions to trouble-shooting load balancers.

Fluent written and spoken knowledge of Swedish and English is required.

This job requires on-duty schedule, where you will act on automatic alarms, incoming emails and phone calls regarding urgent problems. 

You don't have to know all technology or all software mentioned above, as long as you are willing to learn and makes us even better at what we do.

We like to hear new ideas on how we can improve our workflow, routines and product portfolio.

Please send CV and salary requirements to: [email protected]

[streamio]

How to avoid mistakes live streaming a campaign

What are the most common problems when live streaming a campaign? How do you avoid making mistakes? Read how to set up a workgroup for live streaming a campaign and how to make it work! http://bit.ly/ViKZuF

[streamio]

Turkey has once again opened up for usage of Youtube, after a 2 month ban. Streamio has been working without problems during this ban, which has been confirmed by our Turkish users. 

Most people look on Youtube as a video network, when it is more a social media of user generated content, with users, follower, groups, comments and other elements that is not always allowed in all countries.

With the Streamio platform it is easy to distribute movies both via the Streamio player for sharing on websites and newsletters, AND via Youtube as well. Since the Streamio player works in places where Youtube has problems (such as China and until recently Turkey among other countries), it is ideal to use as a base for your video communication.

With Streamio it is also easy to share on Youtube and other social networks, in order to not miss out on the crowd found there.

Our usual recommendation is to use both Streamio and Youtube. Youtube has massive numbers of viewers, but you might prefer to have your own website equipped with the Streamio player to get a streaming experience that is more solid and to reach regions where Youtube is blocked or is having performance issues.

[streamio]

Streaming Live - Birdie 24 Web-TV

Streamio Live is used for Birdie 24 in Uppsala - massive live streaming of produced video, gaming and network cameras in several channels with a tailor-made player featuring embedded "second-screen" functionality signed Rackfish.

[streamio]

Video encoding for Streamio - 2014 - Campaign hosting by Rackfish

Video encoding cluster from Rackfish Managed hosting delivering Streamio encoding services to hundreds of client.

[streamio]

Streamio in Turkey!

In recent days, due to political turmoil, Turkey decided to shut down YouTube access for their population. This is not the first time social media are shut down in different countries, for different reasons.

Fortunately, Streamio service is fully functional in Turkey according to our users there, as it is in other entities where YouTube isn’t, such as Pakistan, China, etc.

Using YouTube as a primary vehicle for video marketing might not be the best alternative, especially in markets that might be subject to censorship. In Germany, for instance, YouTube has not been working fully since 2009 due to a rights litigation. A smarter way of using YouTube is to use Streamio as the primary vehicle for marketing, and from Streamio upload the video files to YouTube. 

That way, when embedding the video file on a webpage, it will be Streamio’s servers that are used to play the video, not YouTube’s, but the videos are available on Youtube as well for the users that exist within that ecosystem.

We like to say that Streamio is a video platform, while Youtube or Facebook are channels suitable for some distribution, but not all. With Streamio you can choose your distribution!

[streamio]

Your videos available faster!

One of the steps before videos become available on the Streamio platform is encoding. The first step is uploading the movie to our servers, after that the movies are encoded, which is the process of making different versions of the movie available, tailored for specific use cases, such as computers and mobile. This step requires a lot of  capacity and when a lot of jobs are delivered, they are queued. Last week we introduced a new encoding cluster, based on Rackfish high performance managed servers. After extensive testing with this system running in parallell with the original Streamio encoders we have now done a full release. The benefits for you as a Streamio customer are faster handling of your videos, making them available for your viewers in less time. The speed increase will show on single videos with speed increases from 57% to 82% according to our tests. When uploading multiple files it will be even more evident with more parallell computing capacity as well as nodes being freed up faster due to speed improvements. The total capacity improvement of the encoding cluster is 183% which will give you significantly faster video availability. Try uploading a new movie to test the encoding cluster today at Streamio.com OVP - the smart online video platform! For more information about Rackfish server hosting, please visit www.rackfish.com

[streamio]

We would like to wish all our customers a very Happy New Year!

[streamio]

Streamio acquired by Rackfish AB!

Today, we are proud to announce to our customers that Streamio has been acquired by Rackfish AB, one of Sweden's leading campaign hosting providers.

Through this acquisition, Streamio and Rackfish will gain a market leadership position in the Nordic hosting and video streaming industry.

"Streamio has been one of the most innovative Video-on-Demand (VOD) providers in the Nordic market. They have always been extremely customer-centric and their online service has enabled anyone to publish and distribute HD-quality Video on websites, corporate networks, mobile devices and in social media channels with ease", says Johan Olde, Chief Executive Officer at Rackfish AB.

"As Streamio now becomes a part of Rackfish, we will be able to join forces and provide all clients with an unparalleled selection of professional services, ranging from simple Video-on-Demand solutions and Live Streaming to integrated global hosting solutions."

For more information on the acquisition, please contact Johan Olde, Chief Executive Officer at Rackfish AB, by email ([email protected]) or phone [phone]).

[streamio]

New Secure Publishing options in Streamio

Many of our customers wishes to restrict access to their video content to a select group of viewers, such as co-workers, customers or partners.

Today, we are pleased to offer new and more flexible Secure Publishing options for these customers.

“Secure Accounts” can now be created with either of the following options:

Secure Domains

Secure Domains is a new feature that restricts access and viewing of video content to one or more specific domains (i.e. www.mydomain.com) or subdomains (i.e. http://subdomain.mydomain.com).

This is particularly useful for customers with one or more password-protected sections of their website which is only available to select users, such as co-workers, partners or paying customers.

Secure IP

Secure IP is a feature we’ve had for some time now and it restricts access and viewing of video content to one or more specific IP-addresses (t ex 213.100.33.42).

This is particularly useful for customers with a local Intranet or corporate network that wishes to restrict access and viewing of video content to co-workers located in the office (or who have logged in on the corporate network through a VPN-connection).

Wanna give it a try?

Creating a “Secure Account” is very simple – just register a new trial account (free of charge, of course) and select the kind of security that best matches your needs – Secure Domains or Secure IP.

All content uploaded to this new secure account will only be accessible and viewable when published on one or more domains/subdomains (or IP addresses) that you have specified in your "Account Settings".

Secure trial accounts, just like any trial account on Streamio, can be upgraded at any time.

We hope you will enjoy this new feature! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact our Customer Support.

[streamio]

Streamio goes Social...!

We are very happy to announce the addition of a number of new features that we believe will be highly appreciated by anyone who wishes to manage their Online Video content more effectively:

Publish your videos in social media channels We have updated the Publish-section and now made it possible for anyone to publish any individual video to all the most important social media channels – YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

With a single click, anyone can now publish an update to one or more social media channels from within Streamio and attach any video uploaded to their account. This way, your videos can be distributed in more channels and thus reach a much greater audience than if you only publish your videos on a single website or YouTube channel.

We have also added more options to those of you who would like to upload videos to your existing YouTube channel. You are now able to add your own custom tags, select categories, and much more.

Smart Video Analytics across all Channels We have also updated our Video Analytics section, so that you are now able to easily track and see in which channels your videos have been published and how many views each channel have generated.

This creates an awesome opportunity for you to test and see which channels and social media actually respond most favorably and effectively to the video content you publish.

For those of you who want more in-depth data and analytics, we have made sure that you still have the option of connecting your Streamio video players to your existing Google Analytics account.

We hope you will love these new features as much as we do. We will add many more channels in the near future, so make sure you check back in here on a regular basis!