It appears that Wizzard Media, previously known as a podcasting company, is getting into the video platform business. Wizzard will be showcasing its new Flash based Wizzard Media Player this week in Las Vegas at the 2008 New Media Expo (NME). The show is the industry’s annual convention for professional podcasters, online video publishers and bloggers. Under the tag line, “Get Your Content to Go,” the Wizzard Media Player is expected to attract video producers with its functionality and highly customizable features.

“The Wizzard Media Player allows for unprecedented producer control and customization. It incorporates all of the best features I have seen in other web video players and several that are innovative and unique,” says Jeff Macpherson, producer and star of TikiBar TV. “I expect a surge of content producers moving to this media player. It has been my pleasure to work with Wizzard in the development of a media player that exceeds my own lofty expectations. It is exactly what I was looking for.”

The Wizzard Media Player was designed with various unique features to appeal to both producers and advertisers with the expectation of increasing audience growth and advertising revenues. The Wizzard Media Player, launched in beta mode in July, is currently in use on content producers’ web sites around the Internet and is already being used successfully in the fulfillment of advertising campaigns.

The Wizzard Player allows content creators to embed video imported from an RSS feed on web sites, blogs and social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter. The player is highly customizable, streamlined and supports the latest video technologies (H.264) with auto-detection for the highest quality playback. Built with a robust set of audience behavior statistics, the Wizzard Media Player could be a great asset for monetizing online video content. Video views are integrated within the statistics on Wizzard Media’s hosting platform, Libsyn, and videos running advertising campaigns are captured and tracked with Nielsen NetRatings for third party verification.

Various versions of the Wizzard Player are available for producers for distributing individual episodes and entire shows, and one specifically designed for audiences to be able to share video with their friends. Virtually every aspect of the Wizzard Player is ‘skinnable,’ allowing for a range of options from basic color changes to custom menu and button options. A sophisticated set of user controls and options such as sharing via email and embed codes, version selection (high resolution, low resolution, and HD when available), full screen and mouse-over have been carefully considered to provide the best viewing experience possible.

The Wizzard Player simplifies the workflow process by providing an easy and automated method for importing RSS feeds for use with the Player. Once the initial set-up is completed by the publisher, video files are distributed to embedded Wizzard Players around the Internet.

“The goal for Wizzard is to bring the latest, cutting edge video technologies to video producers and their audiences without sacrificing backward-compatibility for legacy users,” said Dave Mansueto, Wizzard Technical Futurist and Co-Founder of Libsyn. “And, in doing so, we are simplifying the video producer’s workflow to one upload that enjoys all the benefits of total distribution.”