Zeitbyte’s latest zeitCast video player handles multiple languages.
While Steve Jobs might be bad-mouthing Adobe’s Flash, the flexible code still plays most of the video found on the web. That popularity is one of the reasons that Zeitbyte Digital Media recently debuted zeitCaster 2.0, a Flash-based video player for the web.
This Chelsea-based media services company also shoots, edits, hosts, and streams video besides developing custom video players for top clients such as Universal Music Group. I previously wrote about Zeitbyte growing and adding staff which you can find here.
Zeitbyte wrote zeitCaster from the core on up so that they could include unique capabilities such as a CMS (content management system), which allows users to add metadata to stored data for enhanced search, etc. Over the next few weeks, Zeitbyte promises to deliver a plug-in playlist builder that can tag videos with metadata.
Another new capability—support for multi-bitrate video playback—solves a problem that can lead to confusing the user: you don’t want to repeat info for each version of a stored video. Instead, it should only show up once in a playlist, which is what Version 2.0 accomplishes.
The upgrade also adds a modular, plug-in architecture so that clients can build a custom player that only has the features they need; a capability of playing both live and on-demand files (allows you to simultaneously stream both a live feed and non-video info such as a live chat room that comments on the video); and flexibility for complex layouts (including chat rooms, photo catalogs and realtime Q&A).
New clients who will use the player include TDK, Con Edison and the Jeff Buckley Foundation.
By the way, if you are curious about the core arguments over the recent huffing and puffing between Apple and Adobe (i.e. HTML5 versus Flash), you might check out this short but informative interview with Zeitbyte President Gary Kahn.
