The Osprey-500 is the first professional-grade video capture card designed specifically for streaming media. It was developed and optimized exclusively to support the Windows Media Format by ViewCast.com�s Osprey Technologies Division and Microsoft�s Digital Media Division. It is the first capture card to include tight integration with the new Windows Media Encoder 7 and the innovative new Windows Media Video Format codecs.

Through the collaboration between ViewCast.com and Microsoft, there is now an easy way for video professionals to place their high-quality productions on the Internet and corporate intranets. The Osprey-500 offers unprecedented benefits to professional and "prosumer" video content creators. It comes in three models:

• The Osprey-500 Pro � Captures digital video and audio in the formats produced by professional-level video camera and production equipment, including SDI video and professional Digital Audio. This significantly improves quality by eliminating the common practice of converting digital video and audio to analog before converting back to digital again for streaming.
• The Osprey-500 DV � Enables real-time streaming from a DV source. The Osprey-500 DV actually decodes DV video on the card, then hands digital video directly to the Windows Media Encoder for streaming. This is far superior to most IEEE-1394 solutions, which capture DV data to the host, where it must be decoded on the CPU for display and editing. Decoding on the Osprey card leaves the bulk of your CPU power for creating higher-quality video streams with Windows Media.
• The Osprey-500 DVPro � Includes all the features of both the Osprey-500 Pro and the Osprey-500 DV.

All three Osprey-500 models include an input filter to de-interlace video from any of the video sources as it captures in real time. This improves the quality of every video stream � especially for video containing a lot of motion � at any bit rate.

The Osprey-100 video card launched the streaming video revolution on the Internet. Now, the Osprey-500 raises the bar, using Windows Media to deliver broadcast-quality and professionally produced video to the Internet and corporate intranets.

With the Osprey-500, Microsoft Windows Media users can create professional-quality streaming video anytime, anywhere with virtually any video source � from a professional video camera with SDI output, to the latest "prosumer" digital camcorder with DV output, to an analog VCR. A special filter developed exclusively by ViewCast.com increases the quality for digital video streaming using Microsoft�s Windows Media � no matter what the video source. And because the Osprey-500 supports all major digital video and audio standards, it produces the highest-quality streaming video.

The Osprey-500 family opens up a new world of high-end video streaming applications for live broadcasts, television network web sites, intranet broadcasts, training, and any other form of Windows Media broadcast requiring the highest-quality video.

The Osprey-500 is a single-slot card that delivers uncompressed digital or analog video and audio to Microsoft�s Windows Media applications. It includes digital video preprocessing in hardware that can significantly improve video quality for streaming applications. The variety of video and audio inputs supported by the Osprey-500 allows it to meet quality demands across a wide spectrum of professional and prosumer users.

Video Input

• Composite (BNC)
• S-Video
• DV (via IEEE-1394 connector)
• SDI (SMPTE-259M)

Audio Input

• unbalanced stereo (RCA connectors)
• balanced stereo (XLR connectors)
• professional digital audio AES/EBU (XLR connector)
• consumer digital audio (S/P-DIF Optical /RCA connectors)

• temporal/spatial de-interlacing filter
• DV decoding
• video scaling

• Windows 2000 Professional
• Windows NT 4.0

Hardware/System:

• 32-bit/5-volt PCI card
• full PCI Rev. 2.1 compliance

Software:

• VFW interface, kernel driver, capture driver, documentation
• viewing application
• user�s guides for Windows software

Audio and video capture performance is meaningless without taking into account how this data is being operated upon (i.e., viewed in a window, saved to disk, encoded in real time or streamed over a network). The Osprey-500 is one card that covers all the performance bases. Advanced DMA capabilities and system software enable it to achieve unparalleled performance on PCs capable of supporting full-motion multimedia.

On systems supporting Direct Draw, the Osprey-500 delivers 640x480 video to the screen in overlay mode at 30 fps, with CPU utilization at about one percent. It can deliver 640x480 video at 30 fps to Microsoft�s Windows Media applications for encoding. Once data has been delivered to the application, other factors enter into the end performance, including resolution, encoding bitrate, scene motion content and smoothness/quality tradeoffs. ViewCast.com has encoded 640x480 streams at up to 1Mbit/sec at a sustained rate of nearly 30 fps using 4.1 Windows Media Encoder on Windows 2000.

For more information contact ViewCast.com.  Or, download the product brochure in a PDF format.