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.

LEAD Technologies released several updates to the LEADTOOLS Multimedia family of products. Programmers use LEADTOOLS Multimedia SDKs for the development of audio/video applications across a wide variety of industries including defense, broadcast and security. With LEADTOOLS, developers can complete complex DirectShow and Media Foundation tasks with fewer lines of code.

Keep reading below to see a list of all the improvements in this update. You can also read the official press release.

LEADTOOLS Multimedia SDK has made a name for itself by offering high level controls that take the complexity out of developing DirectShow and Media Foundation applications. Most core operations such as conversion, capture and playback can be done with only a few lines of code. In addition to the high level features, LEADTOOLS is flexible enough for any advanced application with more difficult scenarios and still offers as much or as little control as desired over the graphs and topologies under the hood.

The ConvertCtrl is a perfect example of this. By setting a source file, destination file and format you can make an audio/video conversion application in minutes. Developers who wish to dive deeper can supply their own media samples and process the conversion frame by frame.

Microsoft Media Foundation is rapidly gaining ground as more and more people adopt the latest Windows Operating Systems. Naturally, it is growing in popularity among our customers since we released our Media Foundation SDK earlier this year.

LEADTOOLS includes high level controls for handling all of the core Multimedia functionality such as playback, capture and conversion. More advanced applications often implement transforms (previously known as filters in DirectShow) to add special processing to the audio and video streams. One of the most popular and flexible transforms in LEADTOOLS is the Video Callback Transform, which gives you direct access to the raw video data. With that data, and one of LEADTOOLS raster, document or medical imaging SDKs, the possibilities are quite endless.

Today, we uploaded a new setup for our LEADTOOLS Multimedia products. This update adds new features and enhancements to several technologies including H.264 and Media Foundation. However, the big push for this release started with all of the positive feedback and requests we have received for the Media Streaming Server. Just a few months ago we added live streaming capabilities, and our developers have even further expanded that functionality, making it easier to create and configure, enabling a high level control over server resources and bandwidth consumption.