RGB TransAct Packager

An increasing amount of premium video content is being viewed on desktop and mobile devices and will continue to grow in the coming years. Yet with that content being delivered over the open and unmanaged internet, this movement comes with challenges. Network bandwidth, firewalls and infrastructure support can all create issues for video and audio network traffic. The advent of adaptive streaming technology to reach these new devices helps to alleviate these challenges.

RGB’s TransAct Packager segments streams using adaptive streaming technology to deliver video and audio to PCs, mobile devices and set-top boxes. TransAct Packager ingests H.264 encoded video streams carried in an MPEG-2 transport stream (TS) and produces segmented output in Apple HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), Microsoft Smooth Streaming, Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS), MPEG DASH and RTMP formats. The TransAct Packager can also ingest file-based content in a TS mezzanine format from RGB’s TransAct Encoder/Transcoder to deliver just-in-time output for catch-up TV, video-on-demand (VOD) or network digital video recorder (nDVR) services. Additionally, the Packager can encrypt traffic using standard AES-128 for HLS or PlayReady for Smooth Streaming, integrating key exchange with leading digital rights management (DRM) servers.

Flexible Deployment Options

The TransAct Packager works seamlessly with RGB's Video Multiprocessing Gateway (VMG™) to provide a complete transcoding and packaging solution. A key advantage of separating transcoding from packaging functionality is the ability to leverage both centralized and distributed deployment architectures. The VMG provides a high-density, carrier-class hardware platform for the delivery of advanced video services, including high definition (HD) and standard definition (SD) video, as well as MPEG-4/H.264 and MPEG-2 video streams. The VMG transcodes multi-bitrate, multi-resolution streams that are suitable for mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, as well as for consumption on PCs and set-top boxes. Those streams are then sent directly to a co-located TransAct Packager or distributed over the network to edge locations for packaging the stream into Apple HLS, Microsoft Smooth Streaming, Adobe HDS, MPEG DASH or RTMP. Packaged streams are delivered directly to origin web servers or to a content delivery network (CDN) for wider distribution to end devices.

Just-in-Time Packaging

With just-in-time packaging (JITP), rather than having to pre-package all profiles of every program in all adaptive streaming protocols, RGB’s TransAct Packager simply packages programs in real time into the appropriate protocol only when that content is requested by viewers. JITP substantially reduces the need to add additional storage and enables video service providers (VSPs) to manage their storage and bandwidth costs as their multiscreen distribution content libraries grow.

Hardware or Software

RGB Networks offers the TransAct Packager as either a software license or as an appliance. The software license-only solution can be downloaded or shipped on a DVD and allows customers to deploy on their choice of server-based hardware platform. Running on an RGB supported appliance – the Application Media Server (AMS) – the TransAct Packager provides a minimum MTBF of 100,000 hours, as the AMS is an extremely durable hardware appliance requiring minimal ongoing maintenance.