Back in the 1990’s the Internet was fast becoming a popular medium of disseminating information. A big dream was the ability to transmit video, but due to technology costs, limited bandwidth and difficulties with video compression, most of the market was unable to distribute rich media content.

In 1998, Sorenson Media began to develop innovative streaming products and Sorenson Video was their first product. It was a video compression technology which allowed video producers to create video footage that could be distributed over the Internet. By using Sorenson Video, producers could compress their video footage to as little as one percent of the original size.

I had the opportunity to speak with Ed McGarr, Vice President of Marketing and Sales who walked me through Sorenson’s history and current technologies. He said: "Sorenson has a background in the medical industry and they had branched out and investigated other technologies that could complement their medical devices. Years ago, they were looking at video compression as a technology that could aid in compressing large medical imaging files. They found some great technologies, brought them on board and then all of a sudden, the Internet fell in the way. In response, they started to develop some different technology companies. One of these was Sorenson Vision, which specialized in the conferencing business. In April of 2000, Sorenson Media was formed specifically for compression technologies."

"During that time, Lucasfilm was looking to stream the trailer for the Phantom Menace. They went to Windows Media and Real, but the high motion at low bandwidth quality wasn’t good enough. They went to Apple, who had been looking at our codecs for awhile. Apple felt they could make it work and were able to show Lucasfilm the trailer compressed in the Sorenson video codec, which was absolutely phenomenal. They went exclusively with Quicktime, which had licensed the Sorenson codec and that really put us on the map."

"We have been pretty much branded and have a great reputation as a company with the highest quality video compression and specifically with high motion at low data rates. We came out with a professional version of our codec and a live broadcasting tool for Quicktime, and for the two years, we’ve been dabbling in the hosting and streaming environment."