The Cisco® Media Processing category, which includes the Cisco Media Experience Engine Family of products, is a new class of devices designed to expand the reach and usefulness of video as a collaboration and communications tool. As a part of the Cisco any-to-any vision for network-based media processing, the Cisco Media Experience Engine Family provides a suite of media adaptation and customization features that allow Cisco and our partners and systems integrators to develop a broad range of media-oriented applications.
The Cisco® Media Experience Engine (MXE) 3500 is an easily deployed appliance that integrates transparently into the network to deliver a rich set of media-processing capabilities (Figure 1). Designed as a core component of the Cisco Media-Ready Network, the Cisco MXE 3500 provides:
• Comprehensive live and video on demand (VoD)-based transcoding services that allow you to share video content across your network to virtually any type of endpoint
• Innovative postproduction features that transform ordinary video content into stunning studio-quality output
• Innovative collaboration with other applications delivered by the Cisco suite of media products
The result is a powerful media-processing platform that allows IT administrators to significantly streamline operating costs associated with live media streaming, media production, and distribution.
Figure 1. Cisco Media Experience Engine (MXE) 3500
Features and Benefits
The Cisco MXE 3500 uses market-leading technology to rapidly and reliably repurpose media assets for different media applications. With exceptional reliability, it automatically ingests content from any source file, preprocesses it for optimal online viewing quality and experience, simultaneously encodes it into any number of video formats, and delivers finished files to servers or content-delivery networks for viewing.
The Cisco MXE 3500 automates the critical workflow components for producing VoD content and scales in output capacity to provide the first automated enterprise-grade VoD production solution. It also supports live transcoding services to enable reliable repurposing of live enterprise TV streams.
The graphics capabilities of the Cisco MXE 3500 synchronize video and metadata with graphic templates during transcoding to produce dynamic multilayered titles, branded graphics, subtitles, captions, and animations. Overlays are suitable for both small- and large-screen applications. You can apply these graphics to both file-based and live processing jobs.
The Cisco MXE 3500 delivers innovative voice-recognition technologies to enable speech-to-text services that input speech and convert audio tracks of a video to text that can be layered on to the video as a caption.
You can integrate the Cisco MXE 3500 transparently with other Cisco media applications. For example, you can upload and distribute both file-based and live content to a variety of endpoints using the Cisco Show and Share application to integrate content produced by the Cisco MXE 3500 with the Cisco Digital Media Suite(DMS).
The Cisco MXE 3500 also interoperates with the Cisco TelePresence™ Recording Server to extend the reach of Cisco TelePresence recordings. In addition, the Cisco MXE can process high-definition (HD) video captured by Flip cameras in just a single step.
Table 1 lists the features and benefits of the Cisco MXE 3500.
Table 1. Features and Benefits of Cisco MXE 3500
Feature
Benefit
Category
Easily deployed appliance
This high-performance, self-contained solution reduces operating overhead for installation and routine maintenance.
Live streaming
The Cisco MXE 3500 can repurpose live Cisco Cast and IPTV feeds to be viewed on a variety of endpoints.
Support for most popular web and mobile formats
The industry's widest array of formats is constantly updated so your media reaches the broadest possible audience.
Flexible transrating capabilities
You can transrate video to help ensure that the bit rate of the content is optimized relative to the bandwidth available at a particular site.
Speech-to-text analytics
The Cisco MXE 3500 can dynamically create transcripts to VoDs with text captions embedded in the video.
High-performance batch encoding
High-performance batch encoding dramatically reduces the time to produce time-sensitive media.
The profile system boosts production reliability and output consistency; it simultaneously encodes into all popular formats and data rates.
Production system integration
The Cisco MXE 3500 ingests content from Mac and Windows based postproduction systems, broadcast servers, or asset-management systems.
Folder Attendant
Folder Attendant automates file and metadata submission for any system.
Metadata preservation
The Cisco MXE 3500 carries valuable metadata through the production process for simplified media labeling, categorization, archive, and search.
Extensible to custom environment
Application programming interfaces (APIs) let you extend automation to other parts of your unique workflow.
Advanced graphics overlays
• Automated workflow for creating on-demand and live graphics replaces manual, nonlinear editor-based graphics production, freeing systems and personnel for other tasks.
• The Cisco MXE 3500 provides speech-to-text caption overlays.
• You can target overlay content to specific audiences
for branding and advertising.
• The application scales to provide automated graphics capability to new and existing MXE systems.
• You can produce multiple brands of programs that share identical video and metadata simultaneously, saving both time and money.
Transparent integration with Cisco DMS
You can view processed media on Cisco Show and Share. Additionally, you can systematically catalogue video content libraries to improve search capabilities. The system can also ingest live feeds from Cisco Cast and IPTV for viewing on PCs using Cisco Show and Share.
Extending the reach of Cisco TelePresence Services
The Cisco MXE 3500 integrates with the Cisco TelePresence Recording Server so Cisco TelePresence recordings can reach a broader audience on a variety of endpoints.
Cisco Video Surveillance Integration
The Cisco MXE 3500 can transparently extract video assets from Cisco Video Surveillance Operations Manager (VSOM) and repurpose the content to be played back on a variety of devices, including Cisco Digital Media Player 4300 and 4400 models and handheld devices. Additionally, you can embed valuable information such as time stamps and location of surveillance cameras. The analysis of surveillance camera feeds is simplified by using the innovative Scene Change Detection capabilities of the Cisco MXE 3500 that allow you to scan large volumes of video footage and have the application send the administrator an email notification with an attached picture to signal changes in the environment.
Integration with Flip cameras
You can use Flip cameras to easily capture HD video content. Using a single drag-and-drop action, you can use the Cisco MXE 3500 to improve video quality, layer on graphics, transrate video to an optimized bit rate, and reformat content to allow playback on a variety of endpoints.
Note: Product features are subject to change. An updated data sheet showing actual features will be released after first customer shipment.
Figure 2. Speech to Text captions as would appear at the base of a video
Product Specifications
Table 2 summarizes the specifications for the Cisco MXE 3500, Table 3 lists product dimensions and environmental operating ranges, and Table 4 gives compliance information.
Table 2. Product Specifications
Specification
Description
Supported input formats
• Editing Systems
• Avid
• Final Cut Pro
• Adobe Premiere AVI
• DVD VoB (Video over Broadband) files
• QuickTime: All supported formats
• MPEG-1: Elementary Stream, System Stream, and Layer II Audio
• MPEG-2: Elementary, Program, and Transport Stream; PCM Audio; Layer II Audio; and AC3 Audio
• MPEG-4: 3GPP and 3GPP2
• AVI: Limited supported formats
• DirectShow: All supported formats, WAV, Windows Media, VC-1, and H.264
• Live input formats: MPEG2ts
• Speech-to-text audio formats: wav, mp3, mp4, H264, and QuickTime
Supported output formats
• Windows Media: V7, V8, V9, MPEG-4V3, and ISO-MPEG4-V1
• Windows Media Audio: V2/V7/V8, ACELP.net, RealVideo10, RealVideo 9, RealVideo 8, and RealAudio 10
• RealAudio 8 QuickTime: All supported codecs, MPEG-4, On2 Flash 8, MP3, and WAV
• Live output formats: WMV, FLV, and Real Media
• Speech-to-text output formats: Text-only transcripts, text with time stamps transcripts, and XML
Preprocessing and media preparation
• Video: Blur, bumpers, and trailers; color space conversion; contrast enhancement; cropping; de-interlacing and interlacing; fade-in; and fade-out
• In/out trimming: Field frame control, gamma correction, hue rotation, inverse telecine, noise reduction, saturation, support for 16 x 9 and other aspect ratios, add and remove letter boxing and curtaining, temporal smoothing, video frame-rate conversion and resizing with anti-alias filtering watermarking, automated thumbnail extraction, and speech-to-text captioning
Workflow automation
Job submission:
• Profile building: An automated system that allows you to quickly apply customized processing settings to new jobs
• Monitoring: A summary screen that provides insight into the status of queued jobs
• Automated Folder Attendant: A program that facilitates integration between external systems and the Cisco MXE 3500 platform
Table 3. Dimensions and Environmental Operating Ranges
Specification
Description
Physical dimensions (H x W x D)
(1 rack unit [1RU])
1.7 x 16.9 x 27.8 in. (4.3 X 42.9 X 70.6 )cm
Operating temperature
50 to 95°F (10 to 35°C)
Nonoperating temperature
-40 to 149°F (-40 to 65°C)
Operating humidity
5 to 93% noncondensing
Nonoperating humidity
5 to 93% noncondensing
Operating altitude
0 to 10,000 ft (0 to 3,000m); maximum ambient temperature decreases by 1°C per 300m) (984 ft)
Nonoperating altitude
40.000 ft (12,000m)
Table 4. Regulatory and Standards Compliance
Specification
Description
Safety
• UL 60950-1 No. 21CFR1040
• CAN/CSA-C22.2 No. 60950-1
• NOM-NYCE
• NOM-10-SCFI-10993
• IRAM IEC60950-1
• CB IEC60950-1
• EN 60950-1
• IEC 60950-1
• GOST IEC60950-1
• SASO
• SABS/CB IEC6095-1
• CCC*/CB GB4943-1995
• CNS14336
• CB IEC60950-1
• AS/NZS 60950-1
• GB4943
EMC: Emissions
• 47CFR Part 15 (CFR 47) Class A
• AS/NZS CISPR22 Class A
• CISPR2 2 Class A
• EN55022 Class A
• ICES003 Class A
• VCCI Class A
• EN61000-3-2
• EN61000-3-3
• KN22 Class A
• CNS13438 Class A
EMC: Immunity
• EN50082-1
• EN61000-6-1
• EN55024
• CISPR24
• EN300386
• KN 61000-4 Series
Ordering Information
The Cisco Media Experience Engine (MXE) 3500 is targeted to be orderable by January 2010.
Service and Support
Cisco and our partners provide a broad portfolio of intelligent, personalized services and support that can help you realize the full value of your video investment, increase business agility and network availability. This portfolio of services drives business transformation through a network-based collaboration platform that enables business to collaborate anywhere, anytime. For more information about these services, visit: http://www.cisco.com/go/services/digitalmedia.
For More Information
For more information about the Cisco MXE 3500, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/mxe or contact your local Cisco account representative.
