Russell Trafford-Jones, Author at The Broadcast Knowledge

Video: 10 Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Posted on 5th July 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

A great way to end the week: From Channel Four’s Richard Davidson-Houston, 10 common mistakes made by online streaming services.

Richard’s advice covers a wide range of organisational biases and assumptions which may seem right at the time, but aren’t. The overall theme is to not understate the power and importance of online streaming, even within a traditional broadcaster and offers advice on how to fight your corner and ensure that the service you’re working for or are creating gets the attention it deserves.

From identifying irreversible decisions to not losing patience with intractable problems, Richard highlights the warning signs of going the wrong direction and provides some advice to help move forward.

Speakers

Richard Davidson-Houston
Head of All Four,
Channel Four

Video: Blockchain-based Distributed Transcoding Model

Posted on 4th July 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

It’s all very well talking about ‘blockchain’ but where’s the use case? This working transcoding and distribution platform is one example and LivePeer’s Philipp Angele steps onto the stage to explain how they have created this platform as a service using the under-utilised video encoding capability of GPUs used in crypto currency mining.

Whilst there is a lot of hype around blockchain, the fact remains that many blockchains are in constant use throughout the world and, unrelated to any currency aspect, they have a robust way of solving certain problems – the main one being ensuring exchanges of data are completed fairly and without any fraud. This can be applied to distribution of content as much as it can be to ‘smart contracts’ which, Philipp explains are like legal contracts in as much as they are a promise to do certain things. They are ‘smart’, because the blockchain network can verify that the contract has been completed.

Livepeer’s open source platform on which developers can build services works, we hear, by brokering interactions between ‘broadcasters’, ‘orchestrators’ and ‘transcoders’. Philipp details how these work together and also looks at the incentives miners have to participate by analysing their profits for different tasks.

To finish off, this talk then takes focusses on the other elements of online streaming services and examines what services are available to accomplish those tasks using distributed/blockchain technology.

Watch now!
Free registration required
This talk was given at Streaming Tech Sweden which is an annual conference from Eyvinn Technology. Streamed on their own video platform, talks are initially available exclusively to all conference attendees, but are released free-to-view during the subsequent year. Free registration is required to watch the videos.

Speaker

Philipp Angele
Head of Product,
Livepeer

Video: How to Identify Real-World Playout Options

Posted on 3rd July 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

There are so many ways to stream video, how can you find the one that suits you best? Weighing up the pros and cons in this talk is Robert Reindhardt from videoRx.

Taking each of the main protocols in turn, Robert explains the prevalence of each technology from HLS and DASH through to WebRTC and even Websockets. Commenting on each from his personal experience of implementing each with clients, we build up a picture of when the best situations to use each of them.

Speakers

Robert Reinhardt
CTO,
videoRX

Video: AMWA BCP 003 NMOS API Security

Posted on 2nd July 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Building security into your infrastructure is more and more important for broadcasters with many now taking very seriously a topic which, only 6 years ago, was only just being discussed. Attacks on broadcasters like TV5 Monde have brought into focus that it’s not just copmanies who have high value rights who are ripe for breach – attacking a broadcaster is a high impact way of getting your message accross.

We have seen how the internet, which was built on very open and trusting protocols, has struggled in recent times to keep abuse to a minimum and to implement security to keep data safe and to keep out unauthorised persons.

And so AMWA is looking at its recent specifcations to ensure there is a clear and interoperable way of implementing security. The benefit of IP should be that that as an industry we can benefit from the work of other industries before us and here, having based these specifications on HTTP interfaces, we can do exactly that. Just like sites on the internet can implemnt HTTPS, we, too use the same mechanism of security certificates and TLS (colloquially known as SSL) encryption to ensure that not only is our data encrypted but also that no one can impersonate anyone else on the network.

Simon Rankine from BBC R&D explains the work he has been part of in defining this secure interface which not only protects from mal-intentioned actors, but also offers some protection from accidental mistakes by staff.

Simon gives a good intorduction to not only how this is a benefit but also how the underlying mechanisms work which are just as applicable to the NMOS APIs as they are to general websites.

Speaker