LEADTOOLS Multimedia Version 18 and the Cloud

Posted on 2013-03-27 by Gabriel Smith

Lately we’ve had some customers inquire about using LEADTOOLS Multimedia 18 with the Cloud SDK. This is a perfect choice since the conversion of audio/video files is what originally sparked the creation of our Cloud SDK. LEADTOOLS Multimedia V18 gives distributed processing application developers the most flexibility, features and performance with the latest codecs, processing filters, and the option to use either DirectShow or Media Foundation. This combination sets up LEADTOOLS as the unrivaled choice for parallel processing of multimedia conversion tasks.

In case you’re new to the LEADTOOLS Cloud SDK, its greatest asset is the freedom it gives developers. While we include demos for OCR and Multimedia since those are the most popular kinds of distributed applications among our customers, the Cloud SDK is actually a completely independent framework. You don’t have to use LEADTOOLS Multimedia, OCR, Image Processing, or really any LEADTOOLS imaging feature. LEADTOOLS Cloud SDK simply makes it easy to divide any job amongst an unlimited number of networked computers and get your job done faster and less expensively.

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LEADTOOLS Named a Finalist in Dr. Dobb’s Jolt Awards 2013

Posted on 2013-03-26 by Katie

We just got word that LEADTOOLS has racked up yet another award! LEADTOOLS Imaging Pro was nominated for and won a finalist award for the Dr. Dobb’s Jolt Awards 2013. These prestigious annual awards from Dr. Dobb’s were given by a panel of independent judges who rigorously tested and evaluated over thirty software development kits.

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Native PDF Annotations in Version 18

Posted on 2013-03-25 by Gabriel Smith

PDF is by far one of the most widely used and adopted file formats in the world. However, support is lacking among most SDKs, which generally only implement basic loading as raster and saving searchable text with OCR. Since 17.5, LEADTOOLS has suppported advanced PDF capabilities such as extraction of text, hyperlinks, bookmarks and metadata as well as updating, splitting and merging pages from existing PDF documents. In version 18, the LEADTOOLS PDF SDK is even more powerful and comprehensive with its new and improved support for native PDF annotations and drawing markups.

Native annotations are an important feature in document imaging, as it allows users to communicate with each other by writing comments and drawing shapes on top of the document without making any permanent changes. Here are some of the most important PDF Annotations features in LEADTOOLS Version 18:

  • Full support for reading, displaying, editing and writing native PDF Annotations and drawing markup
    • Comment
      LEADTOOLS PDF Demo vs. Adobe Acrobat
    • Highlight
    • Text
    • Arrow
    • Line
    • Review
    • Shapes
  • Convert PDF annotations to and from LEADTOOLS annotations for live editing
  • Options to control annotation rendering when loading PDF as raster with support for No Appearance Stream annotations
  • Fully functional sample application with source code that implements all of the PDF reading, writing, editing, and annotation features.

If you’re not a PDF guy or gal but still need annotations, LEADTOOLS has much to offer. In fact, LEADTOOLS has included annotation and markup functionality for over a decade within its document and medical imaging product lines and is supported on multiple platforms including .NET, HTML5, iOS, OS X, Android and more.

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New Video Presenting OCR SDK Updates in Version 18

Posted on 2013-03-19 by Katie

Our marketing department’s media team has produced a new video highlighting the new and improved features within the LEADTOOLS OCR Engine in Version 18, including Faster Recognition, Zonal and Full Page Recognition, Image Over Text PDF, Tables and Cells, Dithered Text and Underlined Text Recognition. Take a couple minutes to learn about these exciting features, and we hope you enjoy the video!

We plan on releasing more videos just like this one covering other major feature sets like HTML5, PACS, DICOM, Barcode and more. As always, we welcome any feedback and would love to know what you think about our new videos, and/or let us know what you’d like to see next.

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Multimedia 18: Media Foundation and RTSP

Posted on 2013-03-15 by Gabriel Smith

Now that Version 18 has been out for a little over a month, we’ve received a lot of feedback about some of the features our customers are really excited about. This week I’m jumping into LEADTOOLS Multimedia Version 18, which is headlined by the addition of Media Foundation support and a new RTSP Server.

Media Foundation

LEAD Technologies has a strong record of keeping pace with the latest development platforms and technologies. Adding support for Microsoft Media Foundation is much more than just keeping up, it’s also a reflection of our commitment to making difficult development projects simple. In the same way that LEADTOOLS simplified and abstracted DirectShow application development, LEADTOOLS Multimedia SDKs now offer the same benefits for the new Microsoft Media Foundation framework with new components and transforms. Below is a list of controls, processors, codecs, multiplexers and demultiplexers that are supported in Microsoft Media Foundation:

  • Playback, Conversion and Capture controls
  • MPEG-4 Decoder
  • MPEG-4 Encoder
  • H.264 Decoder
  • H.263 Decoder
  • MPEG-2 Decoder
  • AAC Decoder
  • AC3 Encoder
  • AMR Decoder
  • MKV Media Sink
  • MPEG-2 Transport Media Source
  • MPEG-2 Program Media Source
  • ISO Media Source
  • OGG Media Source
  • LEAD FLV Media Source
  • LEAD MKV Media Source
  • LEAD MXF Media Source
  • LEAD Volume Control Transform
  • LEAD Video Deinterlace Transform
  • LEAD Video Callback Transform
  • LEAD Video Resize Transform
  • LEAD Video Rotation Transform
  • LEAD Video Stabilizer Transform
  • LEAD Video Text Overlay Transform

RTSP Server

The next major feature our customers have been asking us about is the new Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) Server. Creating an RTSP Server capable of streaming high quality audio and video data securely and concurrently to hundreds of clients is no small undertaking and can take years to research and develop. Now you can cut that time down to just a couple days.

For a detailed example on how to use the new RTSP Server features, check out our latest article on The Code Project.

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