As part of the LEAD Technologies 25th anniversary, we are creating 25 projects in 25 days to celebrate LEAD's depth of features and ease of use. Today's project comes from Hadi.

What it Does

This C# WinForms app will convert a video to animated GIF using LEADTOOLS Multimedia Version 19.

LEAD Technologies is pleased to announce the release of the Media Streaming Server SDK. This major addition to the LEADTOOLS Multimedia product line provides a programmer-friendly library for building professional audio/video multimedia streaming applications for playback on any device.

Media Streaming Server SDK Overview

• High-level Media Streaming Server framework with minimal coding required
• Place any audio/video media file on the server and stream to any client
  • Adobe Flash RTMP — for any web browser that has Adobe Flash installed
  • Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) — for most web browsers that have Adobe Flash installed
  • Apple HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) — for Apple iPad / iPhone and Android devices
  • MPEG-DASH — for most web browsers that have Adobe Flash installed
  • Microsoft Smooth Streaming (SSF) — for web browsers with Microsoft Silverlight installed
  • RTSP/RTP — for web browsers with the Apple QuickTime or VLC RTSP plugin installed or any application that supports RTSP
  • RTSP/RTP (MPEG-2 transport) — for web browsers with Apple QuickTime or VLC RTSP plugin installed or any application that supports RTSP
  • RTSP/RTP over HTTP — for web browsers with Apple QuickTime or VLC RTSP plugin installed or any application that supports RTSP
  • HTML5 Video — for most web browsers with HTML5 support (PC and mobile devices)
• Automatically convert videos on the fly from a single base format to minimize recompression
• Configure server settings programmatically or with XML files
  • Supports custom, application-defined properties and settings
• Monitor and manage connected users
• Flexible filters and demultiplexers allow for continuous streaming with changing formats
• Stream high-quality videos at Full HD 1080p resolution
• Broadcast audio/video content compressed with LEADTOOLS' industry-leading compression technology

Product Line Changes

Developers can acquire the new LEADTOOLS Media Streaming Server as an add-on to LEADTOOLS Multimedia SDK or bundled with LEADTOOLS Multimedia Suite:

Streaming video is the norm these days. Whether watching a movie or TV show from one of the many services out there, catching a quick laugh or how-to on YouTube, or watching some promotional video on a company's website, we have all come to expect media streaming as a way of entertainment and education. Consumers (and I will admittedly put myself into this group as well!) are usually picky about the quality of their playback. Buffering? Stuttering playback? Chances are you just lost interest.

As a web developer, server administrator or content provider, how do you serve up streaming audio/video content? YouTube can be a solid option but not for everyone as many companies prefer to host it themselves and not rely on any third party. If you choose to host your own streaming media, you now have to make sure you can support all of your clients' devices and browsers and convert the videos accordingly or risk some clients being unable to play your video.

Last week, I officially introduced LEADTOOLS Version 18 for the first time and gave a bird's eye view of the changes coming to the product line. Today I'm covering the fun stuff: features!

LEADTOOLS Anywhere

Of course, the marquee update in version 18 is the completion of LEADTOOLS Anywhere. Announced last spring, our executive management put forth a vision and plan to incrementally release cross-platform versions of LEADTOOLS. First came zero footprint HTML5 and JavaScript tools, then native libraries for WinRT (the new Windows 8 platform previously called Metro), and now with version 18 there will be native libraries for iOS, OS X, Android and Linux.

LEAD Technologies has a strong commitment to ongoing support and improvements to the current version. This isn't just the bare minimum bug fixing and workarounds like the rest, we're talking about new features and additions that are added to the toolkit at no charge or upgrade fee. Today we have released an update to the Media Foundation features within the LEADTOOLS Multimedia SDK.

At first glance some of these features might not seem like much, such as a live preview for the capture and convert controls. However, anyone who has attempted low level Media Foundation programming knows this is a pretty major undertaking. The near-magical work our engineers did will save LEADTOOLS customers countless hours of headache! Here's what's new and improved for the Media Foundation SDK: