FlickRocket
FlickRocket is a platform for film distribution for content owners, independent film makers and DVD distributors from ACE GmbH. The software components run exclusively on Microsoft Windows operating systems. The platform allows to publish full featured Video DVDs online, which can be downloaded, viewed on a computer, burned to a DVD-R and also be exported to a wide variety of mobile video players. As of that, customers are able to use the purchased or rented video on a large amount of software and hardware video players, including Windows Media Center. All video files and burned DVD-Rs are optionally protected against copyright violations by using Fluxdvd and Protect Software technology.
Features
All movies are transcoded into low bandwidth, high-quality H.264 video files, which usually have a size of around 1-2 GB per DVD. All menus, audio and subpicture streams from the source DVD are kept, LPCM streams are converted to AC3. Each resulting file contains a complete DVD which can be played on every Windows computer with an installed video and audio decoding filter package. The file can also contain additional metadata like textual descriptions of movie titles, actors, etc. and a graphical DVD cover and a thumbnail, as also auto-generated PREview pictures. The thumbnail/cover can be displayed in video players or printed by the user.
The movie assets are uploaded to a server after defining licenses and pricing for the content. Movies can either be rented (for a given period of time) or purchased to own. Optionally it is possible to encrypt the movie with a DRM scheme, which will also add copy protection to the burned DVD-R. The movie can be assigned to different themes (like horror, comedy, etc.) and customer groups (e.g. for sending a preview of a movie to a limited audience). All settings can be changed at any time within a shop management website.
The server checks the upload for any upload errors and distributes the movie to the FlickRocket Content Delivery Network, from where customers can download the movie after the purchase. The FlickRocket platform offers web shop templates which can be modified and integrated into other webpages by copying and pasting specifically created HTML code. Within the web shop various user languages are supported and the payment gateway includes support for credit cards and PayPal. The money from all movie sales is paid out monthly.
Tools
Encoder Tool
The FlickRocket Encoder is used by content owners in order to transcode a given DVD into the fluxDVD file format. The tool keeps all menus, audio tracks, subtitles and other movie features like anamorphic encoding. The video is transcoded into a full resolution H.264 high profile video stream, existing audio streams are either kept, or optionally transcoded into 2 channel Dolby Surround AC3 audio streams. If the source video is not a DVD (like an AVI file), it is necessary to create a DVD from it first.
It is possible to let the tool encode the video in various quality levels, the resulting bitrate is increasing with quality. It is not possible to predict how large a fluxDVD file will get, as the video is always encoded in a constant quality level. Movies with a lot of noise or action will get larger than movies which contain many static scenes. The final file size depends, beside the other parameters, on the length of all titles on the given DVD.
A first quick analyse run determines the bitrate distribution of the movie and whether the movie is interlaced. Due to the complexity of the H.264 high profile, the encoding process can take several hours to complete.
During the encoding process, preview pictures are automatically created from pictures of the movie at equidistant positions.
Upload Tool
After the conversion of the movie, the file can be uploaded by the FlickRocket Uploader. Before the actual upload takes place, it is possible to add various metadata to the file and to select which preview pictures should be used in the web shop. A user specified thumbnail and DVD cover can also be included in the resulting file. Further it is possible to add a DRM scheme to the fluxDVD file, which makes it impossible to use a downloaded file on computers without a valid license. Each user needs to obtain a license for such a movie which happens automatically as part of the purchase or rental process.
After the upload finishes, the server performs some checks on the uploaded file and sends it to the FlickRocket Content Delivery Network. From that time on, the movie is ready to be sold and the related web shop will be updated.
Website Management
By using the Shop Management web page of the FlickRocket web shop it is possible to create and manage different license models (e.g. rental or purchase), choose or create a web and confirmation email template and to link movies to other movies, in order to create a recommendation group.
The Management web page also includes tools for the creation of discount codes, managing of email lists (using wildcards for customer names or discount codes) and the creation and management of user groups. User groups are helpful for subscription or screener distribution.
The server will then generate web shop integration HTML code, either as an external link to the customized FlickRocket web shop on the FlickRocket web server or as HTML for usage within an IFrame embedded in another web site.
Playback and Conversion Tools
On the client side, there are different software tools which enable the user to view the fluxDVD file in nearly every media player and, depending on the license, to transcode the movie to a standards compliant DVD, which can be burned using regular DVD burners and media. The burned DVD plays on every standard DVD player. The DVDs optionally have a copy protection, which makes it hard to create a copy of the disc.
In addition to burn, the license might contain rights for exporting the file to various optinally protected output formats like WMV, iPod, PlayStation Portable or 3GP for cell phones (with OMA).
In order to enhance the experience in the webshop, a download manager is integrated into the web shop and handles the download of the movie while it is watched or converted.