Telestream Licenses guide
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How the license works
The license.dat file is the key to unlocking the features purchased for your FlipFactory software. Each license is made up of a number of strings that activate various features and codecs in the software. This simplifies the software releases as there are four main products in the FlipFactory range with a huge number of options but all have the same software download. You can open the license in wordpad which will show you a list of license strings, one example of which is below:
FEATURE TRANSPORT_AKAMAI TL_SERV 2010.0304 permanent uncounted \
HOSTID=02004c4f4f50 SIGN=821057120954
Each license is tied to the Mac ID of the server the software is installed on (highlighted in red) and has a date associated with each string (in green - UK date would be 4th March 2010) to show when the support runs out on that feature. In general all features in a license would have support to the same date but on occassion they will be out of sync, this won't cause any problems and will be re-synced at the next license renewal.
On your initial purchase a temporary license will be issued, once all invoices have been paid you will then be issued your permanent license. Additional options will be added to your license as temporary as above, only in the case of support renewals are new permanents sent out straight away.
Support and software upgrades
The main thing to remember with licenses is that, even though the support is run on an annual basis the license itself is perpetual and will always work with the latest version of FlipFactory you were licensed for. To clarify, if your license support ran until June 2009 and V6.1 came out in May you would still be OK to run that software. However, if you tried to upgrade to V7 in August your software would not work. To bring your FlipFactory back into support please give us a call to discuss options.
The main cause of FlipFactory problems
Since FlipFactory is tied to a Mac ID on a NIC (network interface device) in the machine you must not disable your NIC. It is quite common for there to be two NIC's on machines and we've had occassions when one is not being used in the day to day running of the machine but is the one the license file is referencing. The customer has then disabled or removed that NIC which causes FlipFactory to fail. Please don't do this...
That covers the basics and should help you understand the wonderful world of FlipFactory licenses.
Ben Richmond
ben.richmond@boxer.co.uk