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SnagFilms Selects mPOINT’s Video Transcoding & Metadata—Transend—a cloud computing application operating on Amazon Web Services

mPOINT leverages the power of cloud computing to improve efficiency of video transcoding and delivery to syndication partners.

New York, NY, April 21, 2009—mPOINT today announced signing SnagFilms, LLC as a customer for its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) video transcoding and utility—TranSend—a cloud computing application operating on Amazon Web Services. TranSend is an on-demand video transcoding and delivery utility for professional video content that can deliver significant cost savings for content companies while improving quality and speed.

Owners of professional video assets incur large capital expenses to distribute content from multiple source formats to the many different output formats required by broadcast, online, cable VoD, and mobile syndication partners. TranSend eliminates the need for capital investment by enabling media companies to leverage the efficiencies of the utility model where there are no upfront costs and you pay for only what you use.

"We evaluated multiple solutions but chose mPoint's Transend product because it provided the most robust feature-set while generating the greatest cost-efficiency," says Albert Lai, Chief Technology Officer of SnagFilms. "TranSend allows a high degree of control over syndication, management, and monetization for the distribution of long-form content."

TranSend leverages Amazon Web Services revolutionary Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud to provide unprecedented scalability, performance and reliability. Customers pay only for what they use and eliminate the need to build their infrastructure for peak capacity. There is no hardware or software required. In addition to a variety of on-the-fly editing features, TranSend offers full control of transcoding parameters for every codec.

To further streamline and speed up the workflow, TranSend also integrates full compatibility with Aspera high-performance file transfer software. When large media files need to be moved over wide area networks, traditional file transfer solutions such as FTP fail to provide the required level of performance. Aspera’s next-generation transport technology delivers maximum transfer speed regardless of media file size, physical distance and network conditions, allowing customers to fully benefit from the vast on-demand transcoding power offered by TranSend.

TranSend provides immediate cost savings by lowering or eliminating all the cost variables associated with a transcoding and delivery operation, while making the content ingest workflow more efficient. It eliminates the capital investment required for multi-core servers, encoding software, personnel, upgrades, enhanced features etc.

Cost-savings estimates enabled by the current release TranSend range from $200,000 for a small content owner to $2+ Million for larger content owners. New features and functionality on the TranSend roadmap enable further cost-savings while introducing new monetization models.

"The Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure provides us with the computing capacity that our ground-breaking algorithms need to transcode high quality video at unprecedented speeds. TranSend then delivers the assets to multiple outlets so that content owners can seamlessly monetize their assets unencumbered by their syndication partners’ strict format, metadata and scheduling requirements," said Chiranjeev Bordoloi, CEO at mPOINT Inc.

About mPOINT

mPOINT provides market-leading and pioneering cloud computing products that power professional video syndication. mPoint’s flagship product TranSend eliminates the need for professional content companies to incur capital expenditures to transcode and deliver media assets to syndication partners. TranSend serves as a viable overflow solution for organizations that have made significant investments in current infrastructure, and as a next-generation solution for companies seeking to free themselves from the encumbrance of outdated hardware and software solutions. To experience The mPOINT Difference, visit www.mpoint.net.

About Aspera

Aspera is the creator of next-generation transport technologies that move the world’s digital assets at maximum speed regardless of file size, transfer distance and network conditions. Based on its patent-pending fasp™ protocol, only Aspera software fully utilizes existing infrastructures to deliver the fastest, most predictable file transfer experience. Aspera’s core technology delivers unprecedented control over bandwidth, complete security and uncompromising reliability. Hundreds of organizations across a variety of industries rely on Aspera for the business-critical transport of their digital assets. Aspera empowers individuals and corporations to dramatically increase productivity, minimize operational costs, expand revenues and explore new business models. For more information, please visit www.asperasoft.com

About SnagFilms

SnagFilms features free ad-supported viewing of more than 650 award-winning titles from some of the greatest names in documentary film production and distribution. Since its launch in July 2008, SnagFilms virtual movie theater widgets have been seen 500 million times, on more than 21,000 web pages, including those of The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Politico, hundreds of blogs, and thousands of social network pages like Facebook. OVGuide named SnagFilms a Top Site of 2008.

The company was founded by digital entrepreneur, documentary film producer, professional sports teams’ owner and philanthropist Ted Leonsis, and is additionally backed by AOL co-founder and Revolution LLC Chairman, Steve Case, philanthropist and former digital executive Jean Case, operating executive, philanthropic venture capitalist Miles Gilburne, and a group led by Ted and Jim Pedas, founders of Circle Films.