Cisco Systems decided it was time to direct its work toward anticipating future trends, and launched an advanced network-based Media Processing platform meant to respond to the evolution of video as a means of communication and collaboration.

The platform is designed to simplify live and on-demand media sharing across PCs, mobile devices and other digital screen, by seamlessly formatting video and rich media for viewing on any device, Cisco explained. This basically allows for media conversion, real-time post production, editing, formatting, and network distribution capabilities in one networked solution.

Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco’s Emerging Technologies group, noted that as the proliferation of video as a communications and collaboration medium continues to drive new business models for customer, and as businesses look for ways to do more with less, video has basically become the technology capable of changing the way we interact and manage.

Media Processing is the fabric of medianet, De Beer continued, and this will enable a new range of experiences, from language translation for live and on-demand video, to speech recognition that will allow videos to be searchable, and the transformation of video to make it available to all connected devices with display.

Cisco introduced the Cisco Media Experience Engine (MXE) 3000 as the first media processing device of the media processing platform concept which gives users the possibility to create and share new media experiences across a network without needing any intermediary professional help.

MXE 3000 delivers an automated workflow to produce video-on-demand content, and synchronizes video and metadata with graphic templates during transcoding to produce dynamic multilayered titles, branded graphics, subtitles, captions, and animations.

According to Cisco, MXE 3000 reduces operating overhead for installation and routine maintenance, supports the latest web and mobile formats, reduces the time to produce time-sensitive media, delivers superior output quality, it is reliable, and offers an automated workflow.

In addition to that, it also delivers real-time post production and processing capabilities, such as watermarking, voice and video editing, text and image overlays, as well as noise reduction for quality video experiences.

The company explained that its business video strategy relies on combining systems and services using the network as a platform, to deliver new visual networking experiences across multiple devices, simplify sharing and provide fast delivery of rich media content.

MXE 3000 will thus join a new class of media-optimized technologies and solutions for better video experiences. These “medianet” technologies will enable advanced communications, collaboration and entertainment experiences through video- and rich media-optimized service provider, business, and home networks, the company pointed out.

The Cisco media processing platform joins several of the company's new technologies, such as the Cisco TelePresence, Cisco Digital Media Systems (DMS) and Cisco Physical Security.