Video

Video: Stopping Geolocation Fraud Via “Rented” Residential IPs to Protect Territorial Content

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Securing streams is a cat-and-mouse game and this is the latest move to keep content secure.

In order to maximise returns on content, the right to show the content is usually limited to certain geographies and sometimes streaming rights are sold separate to broadcast rights. This means it’s common to geo-lock streaming services whereby each IP address requesting content is checked against a database to see in which country that computer is located. This system isn’t perfect, but it tends to work fairly well.

The key, then, for people wanting to access content from outside the geography is to use someone else’s IP. You can do this by renting time on a computer such as in AWS, Digital Ocean or other similar providers where you can select in which country the computer you are using is located. However the IP addresses owned by these providers are also in the databases and are often blocked from access.

The determined viewer, therefore, needs a VPN which uses residential addresses from within that location. The OTT providers can’t block legitimate IP addresses, therefore access will be given. Access is provided to these addresses by VPNs which offer free use of their service in exchange for them being able to route traffic via your computer.

Detecting this kind of use is difficult, and is what Artem Lalaiants discusses in this talk from SMPTE 2018.

Watch now!

Speaker

Artem Lalaiants Artem Lalaiants
Service Delivery Manager,
GeoGuard

Video: Get Ready For A Multiple Codec World

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

The codec world is fragmenting. None of the new entrants on to the market is expected to ever gain the universal status that AVC enjoys. This panel from Streaming Media East takes a look at how to prepare for this.

The panel kicks off discussing the differences between AVC and HEVC, VP9 and AV1 and moves on to discuss the pros and cons of supporting multiple codecs. Tarek from Twitch explains its partial adoption of VP9 – the reasons that it makes sense but the overheads which it brings the business.

Vittorio Giovara from Vimeo explains their reasons for using HEVC including their drive to be able to encode and deliver 10-bit video. Ellation’s Subhrendu Sarakar makes the point that managing codec changes and bitrate changes needs to be done carefully to ensure viewers that notice the change understand them and don’t feel there has been a reduction of quality.

After a brief discussion of encoding strongly characterised video types such as anime and gaming, the conversation moves on to AV1 and migrating from VP9 and there is an audience question on HEVC licensing and the lack of use of SVC (Scalable Video Coding)

It’s now relatively well known that Twitch deployed VP9 using FPGAs rather than as a software encoder which was the only way to get the real-time speed at 1080p60. The panel discusses encoding speed both in the encoder and decoder for VP9 and AV1 then finishes with a Q&A from the audience.

Watch now!

Speakers

Tim Siglin Tim Siglin
Founding Executive Director
Help Me! Stream
Tarek Amara Tarek Amara
Principal Video Specialist,
Twitch
Vittorio Giovara Vittorio Giovara
Senior Engineer, Video Encoding
Vimeo
Nathan Egge Nathan Egge
Video Codec Engineer,
Mozilla
Subhrendu Sarkar Subhrendu Sarkar
Senior Engineering Manager, Video Infrastructure & CMS,
Ellation

Video: TR-1001 Replacing Video By Spreadsheet

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Here to kill the idea of SDNs – Spreadsheet Defined Networks – is TR-1001 which defines ways to implement IP-based media facilities avoiding some typical mistakes and easing the support burden.

From the JT-NM (Joint Taskforce – Networked Media), TR-1001 promises to be a very useful document for companies implementing ST-2110 or any video-over-IP network Explaining what’s in it is EEG’s Bill McLaughlin at the VSF’s IP Showcase at NAB.

This isn’t the first time we’ve written about TR-1001 at The Broadcast Knowledge. Previously, Imagine’s John Mailhot has dived in deep as part of a SMPTE standards webcast. Here, Bill takes a lighter approach to get over the main aims of the document and adds details about recent testing which happened across several vendors.

Bill looks at the typical issues that people find when initially implementing a system with ST-2110 devices and summarises the ways in which TR-1001 mitigates these problems. The aim here is to enable, at least in theory, many nodes to be configured in an automatic and self-documenting way.

Bill explains that TR-1001 covers timing, discovery and connection of devices plus some of configuration and monitoring. As we would expect, ST-2110 itself defines the media transport and also some of the timing. Work is still to be done to help TR-1001 address security aspects.

Speaker

Bill McLaughlin Bill McLaughlin
VP Product Development,
EEG Enterprises

Video: Deploying WebRTC In A Low-Latency Streaming Service

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

WebRTC is an under appreciated streaming protocol with sub-second latency. Several startups are working hard to harness this technology born by Google for use in video conferencing for live streaming.

When you look at the promised latencies, you can see why. CMAF, the lowest-latency protocol for live streaming using HLS-style chunked file delivery is gaining wider adoption and provides a very impressive latency reduction, however it typically stops at between 4 and 2 seconds. To get below a second, WebRTC is almost the only option out there.

In this talk, Millicast CTO Dr. Alex Gouaillard looks at the misunderstandings and misinformation are out there regarding WebRTC. Dr. Alex covers WebRTC now having ABR, using over multiple hops, the testing ecosystem and much more.

Dr. Alex also covers the lessons learnt over the last two years of development and implementation of the standard and finishes by looking to the future which will bring in QUIC, AV1 and Web ASM.

Watch now!
Speaker

Alex Gouaillard Alex Gouaillard
Founder & CTO,
Millicast