Scalable streaming video encoding

Encoding hundreds of hours streaming video from a conference or other major event can be a monumental task that takes  months to accomplish.  But attendees want to have the proceedings available within days of the event, not months.  That was the problem the folks handling the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference had to solve. 

Jim Baker writes a great (and finely detailed) piece on DV.com about the enterprise-scale encoding farm they built for the WWDC.  When you talk about scalability, one-off oriented desktop encoding solutions break down and new workflow processes and tools are needed.   With the scalable process Baker's team developed, they reduced the total encoding time for the conference from last year's three months to a blazing-fast two weeks.