Media Excel HERO 6000 Review: Is It Worth It?

When evaluating professional live streaming and encoding solutions, the Media Excel HERO 6000 stands out as a powerful and versatile platform. This review explores its core functionalities, from initial setup to live stream delivery, providing a clear picture of its capabilities for broadcasters and content distributors. We’ll walk through configuring streams, creating encoding presets, managing audio, establishing channels, and setting up outputs for playback, along with adding roles and initiating streams.

The HERO platform is offered in several deployment models: as an on-premises hardware appliance, a virtual appliance, a commercial cloud service, and a hybrid orchestration solution. Its functionality spans encoding, transcoding, decoding, live streaming, file-based VOD delivery, and playout. For stream delivery, it supports major protocols like HLS, MPEG-DASH, MPEG-TS, Smooth Streaming, and Low-Latency CMAF. Codec support is equally comprehensive, including HEVC, H.264, AV1, and the emerging VVC. The platform is engineered for broad hardware compatibility, running efficiently on both Intel and AMD CPU architectures. Its software is optimized to keep processor load low, allowing it to function on relatively modest systems. For operations requiring higher channel density, adding more CPU cores or utilizing higher clock speeds will increase capacity. To boost scalability and cost-effectiveness further, the platform also integrates GPU acceleration with NVIDIA graphics cards.

A key strength is its support for synchronized multi-camera outputs and advertising insertion workflows. It handles real-time HEVC compression at resolutions up to UHD/4K at 60 frames per second and even 8K with HDR, across on-premises, virtual, and cloud infrastructures. This robust technology powers services for a global roster of high-profile clients such as AT&T, Disney, ESPN, the NFL, and CNN.

Accessing the platform begins with logging into the HERO Management System. This web-based interface is the central hub for navigating, managing encoding tasks, and handling all setup and configuration duties. The foundational step for encoding is to create video encoding presets, which are later assigned to channels. This is done by navigating to the Configure tab, selecting Video Presets, and clicking Add to create a new preset. The system presents a detailed array of encoding parameters to adjust. It’s crucial to have accurate source information when creating these presets; if a value is incorrect, a clear error message appears at the top of the screen to guide corrections. For this evaluation, an adaptive bitrate ladder with four distinct video quality levels was constructed. This required creating individual encoding presets for each rung of the ladder. Audio is configured separately by establishing dedicated audio presets within the same management system.

The testing process involved a hands-on approach to verify the platform’s usability. The setup requires attention to detail, as various components are created and used together. The specific tasks tested included creating a channel, adding an output to that channel, integrating adaptive bitrate streams, assigning the channel to a Live role, monitoring the live streams, starting the channel, retrieving a playback URL, and finally playing an HLS stream in VLC media player.

To create a channel, you go to the Channel tab and click Add. After naming the channel, you select a video source. For this test, the source was the classic “Big Buck Bunny” video, available as a local static playlist within the platform. With the source set, you scroll down and select Add Output. In the configuration that follows, you reference the specific video file and define the master playlist name, such as adding `m.m3u8`. The next critical step is adding the adaptive bitrate streams by clicking Add Stream and then selecting each of the previously created video and audio presets. Once the streams are attached, the channel must be added to a Live role to enable playback. This is done by selecting the Live role, adding the channel to its list, and saving the change.

Monitoring is intuitive; you simply click on the green monitor icon for your live streams. Starting the channel is a matter of clicking the Start button. Once running, you can expand the channel details to obtain a URL for the master playlist. This URL can then be pasted into a player like VLC to view the live stream, confirming the entire pipeline is operational.

In summary, tasks like creating channels, adding outputs, and building adaptive bitrate streams proved straightforward within the HERO 6000 environment. The platform simplifies the creation of adaptive bitrate ladders, and adding a channel to a Live role is effortless. The monitoring section provides valuable, easily accessible feedback, and having quick access to the master playlist URL is a significant benefit.

The HERO platform is a feature-rich product with substantial depth. The HERO Management System successfully demystifies the process of configuring complex video encoding settings. However, due to its extensive capabilities, new users would benefit greatly from hands-on training with an expert to fully grasp all its nuances. The sheer number of adjustable video encoding settings will particularly appeal to advanced encoding professionals, while the variety of source options available for channels adds to its flexibility. The helpful error dialogs that appear during configuration are a thoughtful touch, actively guiding users toward correct settings and enhancing the overall user experience.

(Source: Streaming Media)