Cloud encoding specialist Encoding.com is bringing its encoding and universal video URL shortener, Vid.ly, out of private beta today and opening it up for public use after three months of testing, thousands of video uploads and dozens of tweaks and a new software release that it says has made it a more stable platform.
Vid.ly automatically pre-transcodes video into 14 popular web and mobile formats, so that when an end user requests a video, Vid.ly detects his device and serves the correct and optimized video. Publishers can embed the HTML5 code provided by Vid.ly directly into their web pages or Flash players, or can share the provided short URL via SMS, Facebook, Twitter or other social media outlets.
Vid.;y was rolled out in private beta in January. Encoding.com President Jeff Malkin told FierceOnlineVideo thousands of users signed up for the trial and ran more than 10,000 videos through the service, giving the company to work out "50 to 60 significant bugs" along the way.
"We got exactly what we had expected," he said. "We've had a lot of feedback and suggestions from our testers and Vid.ly is definitely in a better place right now as a result."
Malkin said the "beta" tag would remain on the service as Encoding.com continues to massage the technology.
"It's a new, complicated service," he said. "But we're going to continue to work to make it better and we've decided the beta tag will stay for now."
So far, the product has undergone a plethora of changes, the most major being in embed code architecture, compatibility with IE9 and FireFox 4, new support for fullscreen video playback on Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, support embed code in popular blog services: wordpress, blogspot, tumblr and more (see a list on Vid.ly's blog here).
The biggest choke point, he said, simply has been the number of different devices on the market.
"We found everything from conflicts with various CMS providers on embed codes to seeing videos work on one Android phone but not another," he said. "We've really hunkered down on fixing those bugs. This platform is a hell of a lot more stable than when it launched."
Malkin said the Vid.ly team also is working to fine tune its paid Vid.ly Pro service, testing and refining its API as well as billing infrastructure. He says Vid.ly Pro is expected to launch in May, although it may hit sooner than that.
To participate in the open beta, visit http://www.vid.ly.
For more:
- see this release
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