Palo Alto, Calif.-based Epiphan Video, prominent in video capture, streaming and recording solutions, announced Epiphan Connect. This cloud-based tool makes broadcast-quality livestreaming more accessible through the convenience and familiarity of Microsoft Teams.
Epiphan Connect Features
The new tool by Epiphan enables users to extract Teams participant feeds and bring them into any device or software capable of decoding the Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) streaming protocol. Users can thus display feeds up to 1080p and with isolated audio, mirroring what’s achievable with professional broadcast workflows through the intuitive Epiphan Connect and Teams interfaces.
Professional broadcasts include elements like branded layouts, live switching, and dynamic titles and graphics. According to the company, all elements are necessary for creating compelling content. With Epiphan Connect, these capabilities are now possible through the convenience of Teams.
“These days we’re all aware of the critical role video plays in keeping people engaged and informed, and there’s a growing understanding that quality matters for those outcomes,” says Nic Milani, Epiphan’s vice president of marketing and business development. “We’ve heard from more and more organizations searching for a tool like Epiphan Connect that blends the best of both worlds: the convenience of video conferencing and the quality of professional broadcast.”
Commercial Integrator: What factors are pushing quality expectations higher as people consume more content that is output from videoconferencing platforms?
Nic Milani: We experience the world as a consumer, and we choose to engage with highly branded content. Those tools have been inaccessible in the corporate world because video conferencing lacks the ability. The desire to look and feel like professionals is what’s driving quality expectations. The more we use video conferencing, the more we want to look better. This is why people are using 4k cameras instead of standard webcams to look more polished or branding video conferencing content so customers know who you are, which makes you stand out from the crowd.
“Epiphan Connect unlocks the full Microsoft Teams experience, giving people powerful new options for creating compelling content,” adds Aaron Linne, senior program manager, Microsoft Teams for Broadcasters at Microsoft. “In collaboration with Epiphan, we aim to offer an easier, more convenient way to create high-quality live and on-demand content, powered by Teams.”
Achieving Professional Quality with Familiar Tools
The rise of hybrid and remote work has brought unprecedented demand for communication and collaboration solutions like Teams, says Epiphan. Workers everywhere use these platforms daily to connect and collaborate with colleagues and partners and interface with customers.
CI: With tools like Microsoft Teams now almost completely ubiquitous, explain how users across enterprise, education and other verticals now expect their technology interactions to be simple, intuitive and stripped down.
Milani: Simple to use and ubiquitous is the minimum, now it’s about how we engage creators of content in meaningful ways. You can take a four-person conference rooms and turn them into pop up studios where someone in can walk in, hit record on a touch screen, and easily record a seven-minute presentation with killer video and audio. We have seen an explosion in organizations to build their own production studio and outbound media spaces for town halls. Also, there is a need for highly flexible fly kits for executives and remote participants so they can look and sound great. Epiphan understands what humans need technology to do so we can create a better outcome without disrupting simple and intuitive.
More and more organizations are using the same tools for one-to-many communications. This ranges from an external broadcast like a webinar to an internal event such as a corporate town hall meeting. The prevalence of these applications has driven demand for a higher quality of output without sacrificing the convenience.
According to a statement, the Epiphan Connect has a refined and intuitive interface. Thus it lets users extract as many as eight 1080p video feeds (at 30 frames per second) from any Teams meeting and one screen share. The tool also leverages the SRT streaming protocol for end-to-end security and to enable high-quality, low-latency streaming over any given network.
CI: Discuss the importance of end-to-end security when using an enterprise’s network for streaming of this sort.
Milani: Epiphan sees video as a mission critical content. We use best in class security protocols that are open and agnostic to what we’re connecting to. Epiphan can sit in an ecosystem of devices and exchange through industry protocols like Secure Reliable Transport (SRT), giving customers confidence that whether we’re a component or end-to-end solution, it’s still secure.
Epiphan Connect will be available in late summer 2022, the company says.
