SnapStream 5.5 introduces lots of exciting, new features to the TV Search platform:

• Workflows help automate the transcodes and bulk moves you do routinely
• ShowSqueeze Live lets you transcode in-progress TV recordings
• SmartChapters automatically detect and segment commercials

But we didn’t stop there. We made some notable improvements, too:

• In addition to Firefox, Mac Web Player now supports Chrome and Safari
• Clip start and end points are now draggable
• Encrypted communication between SnapStream and all clients for improved security

Now, let’s go more in-depth so you fully understand the powerful possibilities behind each of these new features.

Workflows

Think of Workflows as paths laid out for your TV recordings. At the end of the day, what formats do you need your files in? And where should they get saved? Workflows help you answer these questions and set these processes in motion. Then, SnapStream manages the rest.

To kick off the action, you’ll select a Trigger. SnapStream 5.5 brings you two new Triggers, Recording Started and Clip Created. So, for example, once a clip is created, you can have it automatically “ShowSqueeze to H.264″ or “save a copy to John’s News folder.” These are called Actions.

But wait, you don’t want all of your recordings treated exactly the same, do you? Workflows help you move away from cookie-cutter, global settings. That’s why we created Filters, to help you select the criteria for how specific types of recordings should undergo processing. In 5.5, we’re giving you three new filters, just ’cause we like you so much: From Series, From Category and In Folder. So now you can get really granular and choosy with it.

ShowSqueeze Live

ShowSqueeze Live is a brand new feature born out of Workflows. Up til now, you could only ShowSqueeze a TV recording once it finished airing. But now, you can take control right when it starts! Yes, right when a broadcast hits the air, you can send SnapStream to work and all of that lovely ShowSqueezing will happen in real time, while the recording is in progress, in sync with the program.

The beauty of this is, naturally, that it saves you not only the extra steps but the extra time involved. No more waiting. When you have a production deadline to meet, you’ll appreciate this huge time-saver and wonder how you got along without it.

SmartChapters

SmartChapters are another newbie to SnapStream, making the product a really well-rounded fit for ad verification. SmartChapters automatically detect commercials by marking major scene changes in the broadcast. You’ll see the SmartChapters appear as grey segments on the Web Player timeline. Using your arrow keys, you can skip between the commercials and the program to easily navigate any TV recording, really great for ad tracking.

On top of that, SmartChapters add a smart layer to TV Search, allowing you to filter your results to include or exclude commercials. Like in the example above, we searched for instances of Swiffer only within ads, bringing us right to the money spot.

Upgrade to 5

There’s truly never been a better time to get started with SnapStream, or to claim what is rightfully yours: a free upgrade to version 5!

Will you be at NAB April 16-19? ‘Cause we will! We’re very excited to show you all that’s new with SnapStream’s TV search technology. In the last year, we rolled out six new releases, featuring these heavyweights:

- New! Web Player for Mac and PC

- New! Task Rules

In South Upper Hall SU9115, SnapStream’s new Mac and PC Web Players will go head-to-head in a series of hands-on demonstrations. Don’t miss this epic NAB showdown. You’ll definitely want a front-row seat, so…

Record TV Think of SnapStream as a DVR on steroids. Record as few as four or as many as 100 TV channels at the same time while rubbing your belly, patting the top of your head and standing on one foot.	Endless Archival With SnapStream’s clustering technology, you can archive TV for months and years on end. Channels and storage are limitless, so you can monitor more and more TV over time.	Transcode TV Leave it to ShowSqueeze to pump out those beefy post-processing tasks. Transcode TV to H.264 or WMV, with plenty of knobs to gear up individualized, custom workflows.
Make TV Clips SnapStream lets you make TV clips and share them with the world. No fancy editing skills required. Drag your start and end points—then presto—a clip is born!	Play out SDI In real time, play out recorded TV content to your favorite editing suites with our HD-SDI Playout Node, which connects to your SnapStream SD or HD.	TV Alerts Follow TV in near real time with TV Alerts. We’ll send you an email with TV search results, linking to where and when your favorite keywords appeared on TV.

Super Bowl commercials air pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while (in between gnawing on buffalo wings and guzzling beer), you could miss the best ones! Based on our selection of favorites from Super Bowl XLVI, we can conclude that SnapStream is made up of dog lovers and Betty White enthusiasts. Who knew?

An estimated 111.3 million people watched this year’s Super Bowl, making it the most watched television show in U.S. History. In case you missed it, we created a 15-second recap of all the greatest ads to catch you up to speed. (Click below.)

Whew, that was a rush of subliminal messaging! We put that together using our very own TV recording and search technology. Now, for the unabridged versions. Please enjoy SnapStream’s handpicked favorites of Super Bowl XLVI, on the house!

1. Doritos: “Man’s Best Friend”
Did you know that Doritos commercials are all user-generated? It’s pretty cool, because both of their ads landed in our top picks. In this one, Doritos are centered as the dog’s mischievous bribe to his owner, in regards to the whereabouts of their missing cat. Sorry, Fluffy.
TV search term: “Cat”

2. Honda: “Matthew’s Day Off”
Matthew Broderick easily falls back into the character of Ferris Bueller, the role of a charming, clever high-school slacker which made him famous at the age of 23. In this spinoff, Broderick plays hooky in a red Honda CR-V instead of the red 1961 Ferrari GT California featured in the original film.
TV search term: “Broderick”

3. Bud Light: “Rescue Dog”
This is Pavlovian conditioning at its finest! A “rescue dog” named Weego is expertly trained to fetch Bud Light bottles whenever somebody says, “here we go.” Get it? “Here, Weego!” Clearly, Weego is prepared to handle the most urgent of emergencies, like needing a beer in your hand stat.
TV search terms: “Here we go”

4. Skechers: “Go Run”
Apparently we swoon over anything that includes a cute dog, and an underdog, at that. We also thought the CGI moonwalking was competitive to Michael Jackon’s. Do you think Mr. Quiggly is an adequate replacement for the former Skechers spokesperson, Kim Kardashian?
TV search term: “Skechers”

5. The Voice: “Vocal Combat”
Dear Betty White, it is about time someone loved you for more than your body! She’s America’s original and most wanted cougar, but with a mix of, “Awww, will you be my grandma?” Hey Betty, SnapStream would love to have you around, knitting sweaters and baking cookies every day.
TV search terms: “The Voice”

6. Volkswagen: “Dog Strikes Back”
At SnapStream, we’re participating in a fitness challenge, so we admire this dog’s aspiration to get in shape. Plus, anything with Star Wars wins us over. Did you think the dog was funnier than the Vader kid? (See last year’s VW Super Bowl commercial.)
TV search terms: “Get up offa that thing”

7. Doritos: “Slingshot Baby”
Another piece of consumer-generated gold for Doritos. Our favorite part is when the baby propels forward in slow-mo. Everything else in the world freezes in that moment of airborne bliss. There’s just nothing like snacking on nacho cheese Doritos with grandma on a sunny day.
TV search terms: “Doritos”

8. Oikos Yogurt: “The Tease”
We were all a big fan of John Stamos on Glee last season, so we were excited to see him make another televised appearance during the Super Bowl. Stamos proudly represents his Greek heritage in the name of protein-packed yogurt. Ladies, would you share your Oikos with John Stamos?
TV search terms: “Oikos”

9. Acura: “Transactions”
We have some serious car buffs in our office, but nothing like Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno. These two comedians are well-known for their automobile enthusiasm and collections. We totally want Leno’s flying squirrel suit to make our daily commutes more like super hero missions.
TV search terms: “Acura”

10. Chevrolet: “Stunt Anthem”
The stunts featured in this spot were totally extreme and off the wall, just like us. Bravo to Chevy for an excellent musical choice to fuel this epic series of stunts. We could also wax nostalgic about the car’s name, Sonic. You know you can play Sonic the Hedgehog on your iPhone?
TV search terms: “Chevy Sonic”

And that concludes our Top 10 Favorite Super Bowl Commercials of 2012. What were your favorites this year, and why?

SnapStream’s newly released Mac Web Player opens up the world of TV search to Mac users for the very first time.  As we hoped it would, the announcement of Mac support generated tons of excitement and fanfare on Engadget, GigaOm and a bunch of other places.

Today, it gets even better. We are releasing 5.4.2, which carries support for HD video playback on Mac OS X. Woohoo!

So now you can enjoy the crisp resolution of high-definition television as you search, play and clip content from your Mac, connected to your SnapStream HD. Version 5.4.2 also features increased stability for the Mac Web Player and the ability to load guide data from offline sources, if you’re so inclined.

While HDTV monitoring is a nice luxury for some, for others it is absolutely necessary. For instance, when repurposing  TV content, it’s HD for the win. For SnapStream users who work heavily in Final Cut Pro, in Mac environments, this one’s for you. Seamless Mac HD support is bringing you a big workflow boost!

Hey Windows users, we haven’t forgotten about you! In addition to the new features we highlighted here, every SnapStream release rolls out fixes and improvements meant to refine your user experience. So, it’s usually a good idea to update to the latest version of SnapStream. Check out our release notes for the specifics.

SnapStream users, contact our support team to see about scheduling your free upgrade to version 5.4.2.

Not searching TV, yet? Give our sales engineers a holler to get started today.

Apple fans, today is your day. After over a decade of developing software for Windows, SnapStream is thrilled to announce the all-new Web Player for Mac OS X. This is the big cherry on top of Fifth Generation SnapStream, which has brought you scalability with clustering, Workflows, and tons of other new features and upgrades.

With the new release of 5.4.1, Mac users can now experience TV search in their native environments, for the very first time.

SnapStream’s Mac Web Player is essentially a custom plug-in that we created to fit within the primary Web interface. It plays back SnapStream’s native MPEG-2 TV recordings in Mozilla Firefox 8 and above, and runs on Mac OS X 10.6.3 and above (which corresponds to anything after Snow Leopard).

The look, feel and functionality is exactly the same as the Web Player for PC, which was released in June 2011. From the Web browser, users can point to the SnapStream appliance installed on their LAN and then continue to:

• Schedule TV recordings from the electronic program guide

• Search a vast archive of TV in milliseconds

• Create TV clips

• Play back TV recordings, clips or search results

• Transcode TV content and

• Set up TV Alerts

For those who work exclusively in Mac environments (i.e. educators and broadcasters), SnapStream is very excited to welcome your business and to dazzle you with the powerful capabilities of TV Search. Solving TV monitoring problems is what we love to do. Contact us to get started or to schedule your upgrade to version 5. (Current customers must meet the hardware prerequisities in order to upgrade.)

In the spirit of the season, we are delighted to share a special video treat with you. SnapStream’s little helpers ransacked their archive of goodies to produce a year in review through the eyes of TV search. Please pour yourself a glass of eggnog and sing along as we wish you a merry holiday season and a happy new year!

Keep on searching in 2012,
Team SnapStream

Five dollar footlongs, five golden rings and five years of Government Video Expo. Five is indeed a prime number. SnapStream is entering its fifth season of showcasing its TV search technology at GV Expo, the East Coast’s largest pro video and broadcast expo. Will you be there?

If so, be sure to come and find us! This year, we’re smack dab in the middle of all the techie action at booth #523. Exhibits run November 30 and December 1 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in none other than Washington, D.C.

In the context of federal government, SnapStream fits the bill for a variety of purposes, like TV monitoring intelligence and political campaign tracking. At the local level, public information officers leverage SnapStream’s TV search and clipping technology to chronicle their media content. In turn, SnapStream supplies a huge workflow boost, expediting media responsiveness while eliminating the chore of manually scanning recorded broadcasts.

Get in touch if you’d like to schedule a demo with us during GV Expo.

With bounties of turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie on our minds this week, it’s easy to lose sight of what Thanksgiving is really all about. Giving thanks.

At SnapStream, we thank our lucky stars we’re in Texas. We will never forget our HTPC roots and humble beginnings as we continue to grow the enterprise-class TV monitoring solution that we provide today. To all of our power users and loyal advocates (that means you, reading this blog!), we greatly appreciate your support.

On our Yammer network (which is thankfully free and awesome), I posted a question to Team SnapStream, “What are you most thankful for this year?” I’ll let the responses speak for themselves. Small disclaimer: Employee avatars have not been altered from their original form.

Aaron Thompson, President
“I’m thankful for the love of my family and to be leading a successful company of awesome people during sketchy economic times.”

Rakesh Agrawal, Founder and CEO
“I’m thankful for my two daughters, my wife and the rest of my family. And I’m thankful for my SnapStream co-workers who I enjoy working with… whether or not I’m in the office.”

Rob Alexander, Software Engineer
“I am thankful for Star Wars Beta and Diablo Beta.”

Zack Price, Manager of Quality Assurance
“I am thankful for working with a good group of friends. I’m also thankful for pictures of cats dressed up in little costumes.”

Adrienne Gonzalez, Platform Engineer and Technical Support Rep
“I am thankful for having a wonderful family, awesome co-workers and finally getting some more rain.”

Chris Wilkerson, IT Manager
“I am thankful for my newly rebuilt family, SSDs making computers faster and for the reboot of IT here at SnapStream.”

Daniel Mee, Technical Support Rep
“The LogMeIn Rescue desktop application.”

Jason Baumeister, Director of Development
“I’m thankful for Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers.”

Josie Munoz, Accountant
“I am thankful for having such a big family. Their love and support has helped keep me strong, especially this year.”

Michael Bui, Technical Support Rep
“Family, work, friends, etc.”

Gerard Monier, Developer in Test
“I’m thankful for intellisense.”

Joel Gabiola, Marketing Director
“I’m thankful for long weekends.”

Elbert Pruitt Jr., Software Test Engineer
“I’m thankful for the good health of my fam.”

Allen Moody, Technical Account Manager
“I am most thankful for my new job at SnapStream. I’m proud to be part of such an amazingly talented team.”

Rachel Eichenbaum, Marketing Campaigns Manager
“I give thanks to Sprint for finally getting the iPhone and to the late Wilson Greatbatch who invented the cardiac pacemaker. “

Dear reader, what are you thankful for? Feel free to share in the comments.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

At some point in your computer-based life, you have probably experienced the wretched agony of software that doesn’t do what you think it should. You’ve probably clicked on a cryptic button, waited entirely too long for a task to complete, or accidentally activated the nuclear option that consigns all of your progress to digital oblivion. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. These experiences are so ubiquitous that they have been given an official title, “Computer Rage.” (Yes, it’s in Wikipedia.)

You know it when you feel it. Your heart pounds and your face flushes. You grip your mouse tightly and communicate this displeasure to your machine verbally, regardless of whether or not it has voice recognition software.

Select Google image search results for “Computer Rage”

The much needed relief from your computer woes comes in the form of quality assurance, where we work to ensure that the software does exactly what it’s supposed to do. Within SnapStream, recording TV shows, creating clips, ShowSqueezing episodes, e-mailing TV alerts, and indexing media items are all tasks that have a very clear purpose and pattern of behavior.

They possess multi-faceted progressions of functionality and several layers of complexity which require intricate and multi-leveled testing to guarantee their performance. To safeguard you from Computer Rage, we dream up ways to turn that complexity on its head. We break the software so that you don’t have to.

To test the software from the inside, we attempt to walk a mile in your shoes, one inch at a time. We do this by asking specific “what if” questions:

“What if I attempt to delete a media item while it’s recording?”
“What if my drive fills up with recordings?”
“What if I schedule more recordings than I have tuners for?”

SnapStream has the answers to these questions because a tester has asked them. We then build the answer into the software by deciding what the reasonable expectation of the feature should be. Essentially, this consists of another round of questions. Shall we let the user swim at his own risk or be the heroic lifeguard who ensures the safety and stability of the system? Will the user expect this feature to operate in this manner, or will they wince in agony?

Eventually, we arrive at answers for these questions, and the answers become test cases. We decide that, in a certain case, the software should behave a certain way. As we accumulate test cases, the testing coverage of our software grows and the ability to test the larger picture opens up to us. Design paradigms become more pronounced. We test to ensure that new features behave in ways that are similar to the “personality” that users have come to expect from the software.

Ultimately, it’s this “personality” that makes for a great user experience. When you feel like you know what to expect from software, you feel more comfortable using it. Computer Rage be gone.