Telestream Pipeline Network Encoder

At NAB, Telestream were showing their recently announced Pipeline Network Encoder, and it’s a unique and interesting device with lots of potential.

Pipeline is SD only, but what makes it special is that it can be used by any FCP system on the network. It has the following connectors:

SDI input (supports capture of up to 16 channels of embedded audio)
SDI output
RS-422
LAN
Power

Current ingest formats are DV25, IMX 30/40/50mbs and MPEG-2. Telestream said they are working on Windows Media, H.264 and MPEG-4.

UPDATE: Telestream tell me they are also working on support for DVCPRO50 but it may not make it into the initial release

Pipeline is accessed from the File > Import > Flip 4 Mac Pipeline menu and uses Apple’s Bonjour technology to discover available Pipeline devices on the network.

A clean and uncluttered interface allows control of the deck and marking of in/out points. It is possible to do an open-ended capture and also build up a batch list for batch capturing. The bad news is that timecode breaks are not handled at the moment although Telestream say they are very aware this is a desired feature.

Only the import functionality was being demoed at NAB with FCP but Pipeline is designed to be available as an export device too. Presumably though the File > Export menu.

Pipeline is slated to ship in June and is priced at $1950 for the single channel version and “less than $11K” for the quad channel version. Yes, that’s what I first thought - surely it’s cheaper to buy four single channel versions than a quad. The reason for the higher price is that the quad version is more than four single versions in a bigger box:

• Redundant PSU
• Ref input
• Confidence monitoring of recording - either in 2 encode + 2 decode or 3 encode + 1 decode configurations.
• 1U rackmount case

I can see this product could have a lot of potential as a method of capturing multicamera shoots.

Martin Baker is the founder of Avid2FCP/Digital Heaven and an Apple Certified Trainer for FCP and Motion. During his 13 year editing career, as a freelance and at the BBC, he worked on a wide variety of edit systems including linear, Lightworks, Avid DS and Avid Symphony before switching to FCP in 2003.