Today, we're excited to announce a recent addition to our executive team: video, IPTV and telecommunications veteran, Keith Wymbs. As Vice President of Marketing, Wymbs leads the development and implementation of Elemental’s worldwide marketing strategy, including expansion of our enterprise product line. With extensive marketing, product management and overall business experience in the video space, Keith has worked at every stage of a company's lifespan. How'd Elemental get so lucky? Keith can tell it best himself:

"I’m joining Elemental almost two years to the day after waving a temporary goodbye to the video industry. It was a thrill ride to see the transition to HD, the rapid adoption of DVRs, the fits and starts of internet video, and the telecom industry’s strategic move from bits and bytes to experience and entertainment with the adoption of IPTV. And now I’m back to participate in the real-time streaming revolution of online video. So, what’s the story?

When it comes to live streaming (aka webcasting), everybody's doing it. It's now commonplace to watch the news or playoffs on TV as well as on our laptops and smart phones. Watching current events, like the gubernatorial races across the country, are no exception. Who wants to wait for the recap at 10 o'clock or for the Newsweek Index next week to see who put their foot in their mouth on the campaign trail today? We want our content live, in real-time, and when necessary, free from the tether of the television.

Broadcasters here in Oregon, such as NBC-affiliate KGW Channel 8 and Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB), are getting in on the political action by streaming our candidates' debates live. In addition, OPB's multi-channel approach for the "Think Out Loud" series includes a radio broadcast this morning and TV broadcast tonight at 9 p.m. PT, along with live streaming to the web with content encoded by Elemental Live.

Anticipation is building as we plan to once again descend on the temporary epicenter for technology innovation: Las Vegas. The forecast for the week of April 12-15 is looking hot, both for the weather and the exciting technology exhibitions we’ll see at the show, including several demonstrations in Elemental’s booth, SL4529, in the Display Systems area of the Lower South Hall.

Elemental is bringing several new video processing and encoding technologies to NAB (the National Association of Broadcasters annual trade show) this year. Elemental staff will be on hand to demonstrate Elemental Server failover and redundancy in a clustered environment as well as video streaming to multiple screens simultaneously from a single system. Elemental will also unveil a new enterprise-class video processing system targeted at new media, which represents a breakthrough in video content creation and delivery that shouldn’t be missed.

Just like last year, Elemental’s presence will be spread throughout the NAB show floor with additional demos in partner booths, including:

• Panasonic (C3712): In the Panasonic booth, we’ll be in the editing pavilion demonstrating Elemental Accelerator as part of the Adobe Premiere Pro workflow, encoding AVCHD video content using GPU acceleration. 
• HP (SL5220): in the HP booth, we’ll show a single Elemental Server in a 4RU HP chassis integrated into a larger content creation workflow.

We’re excited to speak to attendees and learn how predictions around next-generation (and heavily hyped) technologies like 3D and HTML 5, stack up against companies’ actual workflow integration plans. As Glen Dickson at Broadcasting & Cable put it, “top engineers from station groups are looking for technology that matches the new economic realities of the broadcast business.”

It's that time of year when we dust off our pile of good intentions and decide how this year will be radically different and dramatically more productive! Well, according to one video editor in Virginia, those don't have to be hyperbolic statements if you follow five easy steps to boost your system. With some essential upgrades to your hardware (and software), you can actually see some of the drama everyone is talking about with Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, such as video encoding that takes two hours instead of ten and ensures you can actually meet the rush deadline that just came up.

Won Novalis' article, "Essential Ugrades to Boost Your System," for the After Effects user site ae.tutsplus.com presents an incredibly useful upgrade guide to start the year off right. Won breaks it down into five steps complete with supporting graphics and videos, including:

   1. Get a Bigger Desk (Memory)

   2. Get Lighting That's Easy on the Eyes (Monitor)

   3. Hire a Video Specialist With Her Own Office (Video Card)

   4. Get More Storage Space (Hard drives)

   5. Get a Presentation Room to Review Your Work (I/O Card)

Today, we're excited to announce a recent addition to our executive team: sales and software veteran Daniel Marshall. As our new VP of Sales, Dan will spearhead development of a global sales team and worldwide sales strategy to drive adoption of Elemental’s enterprise-class video encoding products. After 25 years in the trenches of the enterprise storage, media and broadcast industries, Dan has had an influence on every part of the sales cycle. Learn more about his past successes in the news release. Dan has built a legion of relationships in the video industry in boardrooms, trade show floors and cocktail lounges around the world. Oh, the stories he could tell...

When he's not racking up frequent flyer miles like George Clooney in Up in the Air, Dan calls San Jose home (where he also houses his collection of rare comic books and vintage guitars). An accomplished guitarist, over the past 30 years Dan has played everything from folk to heavy metal in music venues around the Bay Area and with such legendary bands as Silk and Steel and Yellow Hurl.