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StreamGuys has upgraded its flagship SGrecast podcast management and live stream repurposing system. Version 4.0 is available immediately. According to the company, the upgrade includes an improved user interface to speed and simplify operations, an expanded waveform editing toolset and further enhancements to the solution’s automated publishing capabilities.
“Our goal with SGrecast 4.0 was to maintain the proven workflow and processes that users are already familiar with, but modernize and streamline their interactions with the platform,” said Jason Osburn, executive vice president of StreamGuys.
New overlay windows enable users to quickly access and edit information about a particular item or task while preserving their current place in the main interface and workflow. The result is faster and more intuitive operation, saving users valuable time when publishing podcasts.
SGrecast’s integrated, browser-based Waveform Editor also sports an updated user interface and expanded functionality. New interstitial cutting capabilities enable operators to remove unwanted sections in the middle of recordings and recombine the remaining segments for republishing.
In addition, the AudioLogger recording feature offers the option of preserving mid-roll ad break metadata from the live stream, enabling subsequent dynamic ad insertion in the published podcast without requiring manual marker insertion. Combined with the ability to automatically trigger podcast publishing based on metadata in the live stream, this enables fully automated, metadata-driven publishing workflows.
Version 4.0 adds new functionality for publishing to Google Audio News, including support for the mRSS format required for advanced Google News features. Users can specify episode-specific intro and outro audio files in the mRSS feed. The new update also expands the range of standard RSS fields supported by SGrecast, including linking to specific webpages related to particular episodes in a feed.
A new Audit Log feature provides an integrated, historical log of automated or manual actions initiated by SGrecast or its users.
StreamGuys is bundling SGrecast’s optional Audio2Video and ENCO-powered automated captioning features for new and existing customers. Audio2Video enables users to turn on-demand audio content into video clips for social media and other outlets, combining the aural content with graphics, custom text, visual waveforms, motion backgrounds and transitions. ENCO’s cloud-based enCaption technology enables users to automatically generate transcriptions of new or existing recordings, and to caption pre-recorded, archived files for web and mobile streaming. Resulting captions can be exported as SRT, WebVTT or JSON files, while complete transcripts can be saved for later use.
