Video: Deploying CMAF In 2019

It’s all very good saying “let’s implement CMAF”, but what’s implemented so far and what can you expect in the real world, away from hype and promises? RealEyes took the podium at the Video Engineering Summit to explain.

CMAF represents an evolution of the tried and tested technologies HLS and DASH. With massive scalability and built upon the well-worn tenants of HTTP, Netflix and a whole industry was born and is thriving on these still-evolving technologies. CMAF stands for the Common Media Application Format because it was created to allow both HLS and DASH to be implemented in one common standard. But the push to reduce latency further and further has resulted in CMAF being better known for it’s low-latency form which can be used to deliver streams with five to ten times lower latencies.

John Gainfort tackles explaining CMAF and highlights all the non-latency-related features before then tackling its low-latency form. We look at what it is (a manfest) and where it came from (ISO BMFF before diving in to the current possibilities and the ‘to do list’ of DRM.

Before the Q&A, John then moves on to how CMAF is implemented to deliver low-latency stream: what to expect in terms of latency and the future items which, when achieved, will deliver the full low-latency experience.

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Speaker

John Gainfort John Gainfort.
Development Manager,
RealEyes

Video: Tidying Up (Bits on the Internet)

Netflix’s Anne Aaron explains how VMAF came about and how AV1 is going to benefit both the business and the viewers.

VMAF is a method for computers to calculate the quality of a video in a way which would match a human’s opinion. Standing for Video Multi-Method Assessment Fusion, Anne explains that it’s a combination (fusion) of more than one metric each harnessing different aspects. She presents data showing the increased correlation between VMAF and real-life tests.

Anne’s job is to maximise enjoyment of content through efficient use of bandwidth. She explains there are many places with wireless data is limited so getting the maximum amount of video through that bandwidth cap is an essential part of Netflix’s business health.

This ties in with why Netflix is part of the Alliance for Open Media who are in the process of specifying AV1, the new video codec which promises bitrate improvements over-and-above HEVC. Anne expands on this and presents the aim to deliver 32 hours of video using AV1 for 4Gb subscribers.

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Speaker

Anne Aaron

Video: How speakers and sound systems work: Fundamentals, plus Broadcast and Cinema Implementations

Many of us know how speakers work, but when it comes to phased arrays or object audio we’re losing our footing. Wherever you are in the spectrum, this dive into speakers and sound systems will be beneficial.

Ken Hunold from Dolby Laboratories starts this talk with a short history of sound in both film and TV unveiling the surprising facts that film reverted from stereo back to mono around the 1950s and TV stayed mono right up until the 80s. We follow this history up to now with the latest immersive sound systems and multi-channel sound in broadcasting.

Whilst the basics of speakers are fairly widely known, Ken with looking at how that’s set up and the different shapes and versions of basic speakers and their enclosures then looking at column speakers and line arrays.

Multichannel home audio continues to offer many options for speaker positioning and speaker type including bouncing audio off the ceilings, so Ken explores these options and compares them including the relatively recent sound bars.

Cinema sound has always been critical to the effect of cinema and foundational to the motivation for people to come together and watch films away from their TVs. There have long been many speakers in cinemas and Ken charts how this has changed as immersive audio has arrived and enabled an illusion of infinite speakers with sound all around.

In the live entertainment space, sound, again, is different where the scale is often much bigger and the acoustics so much different. Ken talks about the challenges of delivering sound to so many people, keeping the sound even throughout the auditorium and dealing with delay of the relatively slow-moving sound waves. The talk wraps up with questions and answers.

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Speakers

Ken Hunold Ken Hunold
Sr. Broadcast Services Manager, Customer Engineering
Dolby Laboratories, Inc.

Webinar: Engaging users and boosting advertising with AI

Honing the use of AI and Machine Learning continues apace. Streaming services are particularly ripe areas for AI, but the winners will be those that have managed to differentiate themselves and innovate in their use of it.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are related technologies which deal with replicating ‘human’ ways of recognising patterns and seeking patterns in large data sets to help deal with similar data in the future. It does this without using traditional methods like using a ‘database’. For the consumer, it doesn’t actually matter whether they’re benefitting from AI or ML, they’re simply looking for better recommendations, wanting better search and accurate subtitles (captions) on all their videos. If these happened because of humans behind the scenes, it would all be the same. But for the streaming provider, everything has a cost, and there just isn’t the ability to afford people to do these tasks plus, in some cases, humans simply couldn’t do the job. This is why AI is here to stay.

Date: Thursday 8th August, 16:00 BST / 11am EDT

In this webinar from IBC365, Media Distillery, Liberty Global and Grey Media come together to discuss the benefits of extracting images, metadata and other context from video, analysis of videos for contextual advertising, content-based search & recommendations and ways to maintain younger viewers.

AI will be here to stay touching the whole breadth of our lives, not just in broadcast. So it’s worth learning how it can be best used to produce television, for streaming and in your business.

Register now!
Speakers

Martin Prins Martin Prins
Product Owner,
Media Distillery
Susanne Rakels Susanne Rakels
Senior Manager, Discovery & Personalisation,
Liberty Global
Ruhel Ali Ruhel Ali
Founder/Director,
Grey Media