Mediasite by Sonic Foundry Goes Mobile with Live Streaming to iPads, iPhones and iPods

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- (EDUCAUSE booth #1219) Mediasite by Sonic Foundry, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFO), the recognized market leader for lecture capture trusted by more than 900 colleges and universities, today unveiled Mediasite 6, the latest version of the award-winning lecture capture platform.

The announcement includes a family of features aimed to radically accelerate the adoption of lecture capture and video content management for education institutions at all stages of the blended learning life cycle. New capabilities available in Mediasite 6 include:

• Live or on-demand streaming of any Mediasite presentation to iPad, iPhone, iPod, Blackberry or Android device using HTML5 and H.264
• The first and broadest range of live mobile streaming from a professional-grade webcasting appliance and rich media management platform
• System-wide search for words and phrases in a single presentation, a presentation catalog and across your entire Mediasite library based on indexed slide text, captioning transcripts and presentation metadata
• Search engine optimization for public Mediasite content by exposing more information about your presentations, including metadata, slide text and closed captions, to the search engines
• Enhanced Mediasite analytics with embeddable analytics widgets and iOS-friendly reports
• Ingestion support for any H.264 video to be managed, secured and tracked alongside Mediasite content
• Touch-friendly Mediasite Mobile Catalog for tablets and mobile devices
• Web-friendly, resizable mini player for embedding Mediasite content in tight spaces on blogs and web pages
• Custom presentation and catalog registration allowing users to collect valuable information about viewers before they watch a webcast
• Enhanced screen reader mode when using Mediasite Players with JAWS, Window-Eyes or any other screen reader
• Multiple Mediasite Management Portal enhancements

"We will absolutely want to use Mediasite 6. The students have iPods and iPads that they do most of their computing on now, including most of their emailing and a lot of their web browsing. So it's natural for them to want to watch a classroom activity from these devices," said John Carpenter, chief technology officer at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.

"Lecture capture and retrieval tools have been shown to have positive effect on student grades and retention, and they promise to be important pedagogical tools. The ability to index lectures and the ability to offer playback of selected passages have proven key to these positive results," reported Marti Harris, Gartner research analyst, in the Hype Cycle for Education, July 2011. "Practical benefits of lecture capture include review, improved scores, improved retention, convenience, and a new option for students to make up planned or unplanned absences."

"For ten years, we've been singularly focused on creating the most reliable, scalable and automated lecture capture system on the market. Using our automated and integrated approach our customers have enjoyed success with their Mediasite deployments. Not only are they increasingly generating vast amounts of original Mediasite content, they are also efficiently pulling in user-generated content from desktop sources. Now it's time to identify new ways to manage and distribute campus knowledge," said Rob Lipps, executive vice president of sales for Sonic Foundry. "Customers and analysts rave about our content management and distribution system for online video and rich media is leading edge, and we now have the opportunity to unleash the power of that platform for other uses."

The company will be live streaming EDUCAUSE keynotes and concurrent sessions in Philadelphia this week, demonstrating Mediasite's mobile playback as well as live HD streaming and Smooth Streaming in booth 1219. Mediasite is the recognized leader for room-based lecture capture and video-based knowledge management which improves student learning outcomes, delivers successful online programs, accelerates adoption and reliably scales campus wide. It provides the complete platform to record, stream, archive, manage and track your institution's instruction and online events, both live and on-demand. Mediasite was named Best Webcasting Platform by Streaming Media readers for four consecutive years, and Sonic Foundry was named Global Market Share Leader for Lecture Capture by Frost & Sullivan in three consecutive reports.

About Sonic Foundry®, Inc.

Sonic Foundry (NASDAQ: SOFO, www.sonicfoundry.com) is the global leader for rich media webcasting and knowledge management, providing enterprise communication solutions for education, business and government. Powered by Mediasite, the patented webcasting platform which automates the capture, management, delivery and search of lectures, online training and briefings, Sonic Foundry empowers people to transform the way they communicate. Through the Mediasite platform and its Mediasite Events  group, the company helps customers connect a dynamic, evolving world of shared knowledge and envisions a future where learners and workers around the globe use webcasting to bridge time and distance, accelerate research and improve performance. Product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of Sonic Foundry, Inc. or their respective owners.

Certain statements contained in this news release regarding matters that are not historical facts may be forward-looking statements. Because such forward-looking statements include risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, but are not limited to, uncertainties pertaining to continued market acceptance for Sonic Foundry's products, its ability to succeed in capturing significant revenues from media services and/or systems, the effect of new competitors in its market, integration of acquired business and other risk factors identified from time to time in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SOURCE Sonic Foundry, Inc.