Twin Technologies was recently selected as a winner of Adobe’s LiveCycle Partner Solution Showcase in San Jose, CA for the 1st Quarter of 2010. Nine solutions were presented by partners to a panel of Adobe judges. Twin entered in two LiveCycle-based business solutions:
The JumpStart: Human Capital Applications Solution – a best-practice implementation of the HCA Solution Accelerator that has been able to realize a 958% ROI in only 1 year after implementation, based on improvements in Human Resource on-boarding and off-boarding systems.
The Digital Media Review, Commenting and Approval (DMRCA) Solution – which fuses Twin’s proprietary DigiNodes video-streaming technology into LiveCycle’s Review, Commenting and Approval (RCA) LiveCycle building block using the new Adobe Mosaic Tiles technology to create a powerful new video-editing tool that allows frame-by-frame review and commenting ability.
Kevin Okragly Presenting DMRCA
And the winner is . . . the DMRCA Solution! The video editing possibilities that DMRCA provides are endless, and it directly answers the requests by multi-media organizations of all sizes for a robust and intuitive video review and commenting system.
The solution will now be a standard product in Adobe’s repository and a featured LiveCycle product to present to customers for 2010. DMRCA is now looking to make a splash on the main stage of Adobe’s MAX Conference 2010.
We recently had an internal project that required us to extract meta-data from video files. We needed information such as the number of streams, length of the video, format, creator, encoding, and anything else we could gather. This information was then stored in a database for the easy extraction and categorization of a large set of videos.
Twin has also recently started an internal streaming media framework using tools like Red5, Xuggler, and ffmpeg. Using the expertise we gained with Xuggler, I decided to quickly write our own meta-data extractor. Later I decided on an even simpler solution.
The first method was to write our own meta-data extractor using Xuggler. In order to use Xuggler, download and install it from http://www.xuggle.com/xuggler/downloads/. In Linux, you will also need to add the XUGGLE_HOME/lib directory to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable so the native libraries are picked up by Java (Xuggler uses JNI to call its own C++ wrappers around ffmpeg). The Windows installer does this automatically for you.
After Xuggler is installed, I cracked open the demos it had and modified one. The code is very simple and required few changes. The Java code is downloadable below. Just make sure the xuggle-xuggler.jar (included in the XUGGLER_HOME/share/java/lib folder) is in your classpath before compiling and running it, and pass in a movie file as a command line parameter. For example:
The output will be something along the lines of:
Opening video file: /home/dave/workspace/twin/MetaData/video/test.mpe
null (probesize): 32000
set mux rate (muxrate): 0
set packet size (packetsize): 0
null (fflags): 0x00000000
set the track number (track): 0
set the year (year): 0
how many microseconds are analyzed to estimate duration (analyzeduration): 3000000
decryption key (cryptokey): §C,
max memory used for timestamp index (per stream) (indexmem): 1048576
max memory used for buffering real-time frames (rtbufsize): 3041280
print specific debug info (fdebug): 0x00000000
file "/home/dave/workspace/twin/MetaData/video/test.mpe": 2 streams; duration (ms): 53700; start time (ms): 149; file size (bytes): 11323804; bit rate: 1686972;
stream 0: type: CODEC_TYPE_VIDEO; codec: CODEC_ID_MPEG1VIDEO; duration: 4833000; start time: 13490; language: unknown; timebase: 1/90000; coder tb: 1/30; width: 432; height: 320; format: YUV420P; frame-rate: 30.00;
stream 1: type: CODEC_TYPE_AUDIO; codec: CODEC_ID_MP2; duration: 4810187; start time: 13490; language: unknown; timebase: 1/90000; coder tb: 1/90000; sample rate: 44100; channels: 2; format: FMT_S16
And a lot of other stuff.
The output is hard to make sense of, however, since it’s essentially in its rawest format. Instead of painstakingly mapping each raw field to human-readable English, (for the record: not a good use of a consultant’s time!) I searched a little online for a pre-existing solution. Not surprisingly, there were many. The best one, which is also an open source project on SourceForge, was MediaInfo.
So, the second method of extracting data from source videos, which is a little easier but more limited because the program’s sole purpose is for info on media (e.g. you couldn’t play a video sample if you wanted), is to download and install MediaInfo. The website is at http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en. Download and install this on your platform, and then using either the GUI or the CLI (command line interface), you can see the available information of essentially any video. For example, using the CLI, you can then type something like:
MediaInfo –Full “/path/to/your/video.mpg”
This will give a lot of information, most of which is human-readable. Then this information can be extracted using any of a number of methods, like Python or Perl text parsing, etc., and fed into a database for categorization. And there you have it; two easy ways to extract every bit of information from a video file and categorize it for further use!
David Ladd, Nic Tunney, and Audrey Hubbard report high levels of traffic and interest in the Twin Technologies booth #2608 at FOSE this week. Reporters from the Technical Times stopped by to talk about Twin Technologies’ JumpStart: Workforce Management, which is up for a Best in Show Award.
FOSE, which focuses on technology for government applications, brings together the top innovators in the government space. This year’s trends center around integration of services, developing self-service options, cutting cost, and improving efficiency. Twin Technologies Government Solutions systems integration and RIA services offer creative and proven methods of meeting these goals. With over 25 sign-ups for LiveCycle training and more than ten leads on Day One, it’s clear that Twin Technologies solutions resonate with a government agency audience.
March 10, 2009, Washington, DC – Twin Technologies’ Government Solutions is exhibiting its powerful system integration and web development capabilities at the FOSE trade show in Washington DC, March 10-12. You can meet Twin Technologies’ experts at booth#2608 and learn more about how Twin’s robust software applications are powering collaborative projects with government agencies such as DARPA, DISA, the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Army, and the Department of Defense.
At FOSE, Twin Technologies’ Government Solutions will show its unique SDLC methodology that has proven track records in commercial and government space, and integrates work flows and operations, bringing key elements of web 2.0 to government applications. Twin Technologies delivers design, creation, and deployment of mission critical operations that improve workflow and conserve resources.
A Record of Solutions
Global Asset Services: A secure documentation collaboration portal and web-based form guide for Real Estate Closing transactions.
Government Services: A custom dynamic data capture form guide collects data on hundreds of users, exports it into PDF, and integrates the information into a defined workflow.
Global Financial Services: A Rich Internet Application (RIA) that emulates the service provided on hard turret phones, yet offers remote accessibility on any phone with the functionality and flexibility of a web application.
Global Travel Services: A web portal that includes the storage and publication of country-specific medical data integrated across international databases into a fast, user-friendly interface that travelers in medical or political crises can access intuitively.
Global Healthcare Services: The first commercial web-enabled Electronic Medication Administration Record (eMar) with flexible remote connectivity, intuitive, user-friendly design, and stability to accurately track and document patient records.
Commercial Services: A web portal with interfaces for both front and back end users, integrated within the existing enterprise that includes both content and order management systems and used by hundreds of contractors, suppliers, and service providers.
To accommodate the growth in our government division, Twin Technologies has recently opened an office in the Washington DC area. To meet the neighbors, we’ve joined ranks with two local technology councils:
The Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC) which links the local technology community with over 1100 member companies. Twin Technologies anticipates diving into the networking and educational events.
The Greater Baltimore Technology Council devotes itself to building and growing the region’s technology community also. Twin Technologies plans to network with other local companies to connect with the Baltimore business community.
Our new local DC area address is:
Twin Technologies
2010 Corporate Ridge
McLean, VA 22102
With more and more people storing everything from personal sensitive information to company emails and files on their cell phones paying attention to security threats should be a something we all think about. As the convergence between ubiquitous computing, wireless communication, and telephony increases the threat to security radically increase. I suppose it wont belong till someone starts selling good microdevice firewalls and virus scanners for cell phones but for now seriously consider not putting personal data on your cell phone or if you do immediately encrypt and remove it when you do not need it any longer. While security threats to cell phones are not new their have not been to many like Charles Miller has exposed in the iPhone by creating a code injection attack via a website which a user might browse to. You can read more about it here at Exploiting the iPhone. Also check out the video below.
Based on requests from Webmaniacs I plan to start posting more about security both in specific and in general as it relates to IT.One suggestion I made in my lecture was to consider blocking the IP’s of specific countries that pose the largest threat especially if you are running a site or application that’s very regional.Just recently the National Journal Magazine ran a story about China’s Cyber-Militia that I think is instructive.I have just posted a snippet so if you want to read the whole article, which I suggest, then follow this link.
“Chinese hackers pose a clear and present danger to U.S. government and private-sector computer networks and may be responsible for two major U.S. power blackouts.
by Shane Harris
Sat. May 31, 2008
Computer hackers in China, including those working on behalf of the Chinese government and military, have penetrated deeply into the information systems of U.S. companies and government agencies, stolen proprietary information from American executives in advance of their business meetings in China, and, in a few cases, gained access to electric power plants in the United States, possibly triggering two recent and widespread blackouts in Florida and the Northeast, according to U.S. government officials and computer-security experts.
One prominent expert told National Journal he believes that China’s People’s Liberation Army played a role in the power outages. Tim Bennett, the former president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a leading trade group, said that U.S. intelligence officials have told him that the PLA in 2003 gained access to a network that controlled electric power systems serving the northeastern United States. The intelligence officials said that forensic analysis had confirmed the source, Bennett said. “They said that, with confidence, it had been traced back to the PLA.” These officials believe that the intrusion may have precipitated the largest blackout in North American history, which occurred in August of that year. A 9,300-square-mile area, touching Michigan, Ohio, New York, and parts of Canada, lost power; an estimated 50 million people were affected.
Officially, the blackout was attributed to a variety of factors, none of which involved foreign intervention. Investigators blamed “overgrown trees” that came into contact with strained high-voltage lines near facilities in Ohio owned by FirstEnergy Corp. More than 100 power plants were shut down during the cascading failure. A computer virus, then in wide circulation, disrupted the communications lines that utility companies use to manage the power grid, and this exacerbated the problem. The blackout prompted President Bush to address the nation the day it happened. Power was mostly restored within 24 hours.
There has never been an official U.S. government assertion of Chinese involvement in the outage, but intelligence and other government officials contacted for this story did not explicitly rule out a Chinese role. One security analyst in the private sector with close ties to the intelligence community said that some senior intelligence officials believe that China played a role in the 2003 blackout that is still not fully understood.
Bennett, whose former trade association includes some of the nation’s largest computer-security companies and who has testified before Congress on the vulnerability of information networks, also said that a blackout in February, which affected 3 million customers in South Florida, was precipitated by a cyber-hacker. That outage cut off electricity along Florida’s east coast, from Daytona Beach to Monroe County, and affected eight power-generating stations. Bennett said that the chief executive officer of a security firm that belonged to Bennett’s trade group told him that federal officials had hired the CEO’s company to investigate the blackout for evidence of a network intrusion, and to “reverse engineer” the incident to see if China had played a role.
Bennett, who now works as a private consultant, said he decided to speak publicly about these incidents to point out that security for the nation’s critical electronic infrastructures remains intolerably weak and to emphasize that government and company officials haven’t sufficiently acknowledged these vulnerabilities.”
For those readers who are interested here is my (Robi Sen) presentation from Web Maniacs on Securing Flex. Currently I have only provided the PDF version and a PPT . For those who asked for the presentation I will email you the PPT as well as the assoicated code and files for some of the examples.
Also because of the interest in this presentation I will start bloging in more depth about specific security issues related to RIA development so check back often for more information.
In case people are interested I will be giving a high level talk on creating secure Flex applications mostly derived from the OWASP top 10 at Web Maniacs. The session will be mostly focused on those top ten risks, how to mitigate them through best practices, but I will also talk some about specific Flash/FLEX risks as well as the growing risk of XSS attacks because of SOA type infrastructures. I think this would be a could intro for developers who have never really though about security as well as IT managers who are running Flex projects.
Kevin Okragly Presenting DMRCA 