Flumotion First Worldwide to Stream Event Live in WebM format

Prestigious open source conference GUADEC will be the first event worldwide to be streamed live in WebM

The Hague(28 Jul 2010)

Flumotion, a leading company in online video streaming technology and services, is streaming the GUADEC conference from July 28-30 live in the new WebM video format. The prestigious developer conference will be the first event worldwide that is streamed live in the new media file format, which was released for open source use last May.

Within 20 hours of VP8's release, Fluendo, a leading provider of multimedia software, integrated the new codec, which was then included into Flumotion's multi-format streaming software and streaming platform. In only 48 hours after the release by Google, Flumotion provided the first demo of a live stream in WebM.

"We are excited to see companies such as Flumotion and Fluendo integrating the WebM format to stream live events to viewers around the world. It's a testament to the rapid innovation and end user benefit enabled by the open development of WebM that the format can already be implemented and used so widely," said Jim Bankoski, Google's codec engineering manager.

"Flumotion's technology is based on open source and supports both open as well as proprietary formats", explains Flumotion CTO Thomas Vander Stichele. "This allows us to integrate any new format or device in record time, which enables content providers to make their videos available to the largest public possible", he adds.

The GUADEC conference is at the core of the open source movement and is the biggest gathering of developers of the Gnome project, a desktop environment and graphical user interface, used by businesses and governments worldwide. This year's lecture focuses on developing products based on GNOME, demand from public institutions for a work environment based on open source software, and attracting talent to the open source culture and the industry surrounding it.

About WebM
The WebM project is dedicated to developing a high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone. WebM is an open, royalty-free media file format designed for the web. WebM files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec. The WebM file structure is based on the Matroska media container. The WebM launch is supported by Mozilla, Opera, Adobe, Google and more than forty other publishers, software and hardware vendors.

About Flumotion
Flumotion is an award winning streaming software company that was founded in 2006 by a group of open source developers and multimedia experts. They developed an open source multi-format video streaming software, closing the gap of competing industry standards and making streaming more accessible.

Flumotion Streaming Software allows broadcasters and companies to stream content live and on demand in all the leading formats from a single server. Flumotion also offers a Streaming Platform and WebTV, which reduce workflow and costs by covering the entire streaming value chain. This end-to-end yet modular solution includes signal acquisition, encoding, multi-format transcoding, streaming of contents and state-of-the art interface design. The media back office allows for advanced content management and optimal monetisation through rich media advertising.

Flumotion was awarded ‘Best Streaming Innovation' by industry leading Streaming Media Magazine. Companies such as Cuatro, COPE and Nestlé trust Flumotion with the delivery of their high value content. Flumotion's scalable and cost effective technology enables telcos and hosting companies worldwide to create their own end-to-end video and audio streaming platforms. Partners include NTT Europe Online, Telefonica and British Telecom. More info at www.flumotion.com and in the streaming blog of Flumotion. For Media Enquiries: Julia Atzesberger, press@flumotion.com

About Fluendo
Founded in 2004 in Barcelona, Fluendo specializes in software development and consulting services. Fluendo employs several of the central developers of the GStreamer multimedia framework, which is quickly establishing itself as the de-facto standard multimedia framework for GNU/Linux and UNIX systems. Fluendo provides a wide range of products under and above GStreamer including proprietary codecs (together with their respective patent licenses), a streaming server, a DVD player, the Fluendo Media Center for Linux, and Moovida Pro media player for Windows. Fluendo is an established leading provider of multimedia software and has succeeded in offering legal end-to-end solutions working with multiple formats and platforms. Learn more at www.fluendo.com

About GNOME and GUADEC
GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, accessible and easy to use desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems. The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide. The GUADEC conference is at the core of the open source movement and is the biggest gathering of developers of the Gnome project, a desktop environment and graphical user interface, used by businesses and governments worldwide. Media Enquiries: GNOME Foundation Executive Director, Stormy Peters; Email: gnome-press-contact@gnome.org