Video

Video: The State of Server-Side Ad Insertion

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones


Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) it’s the best defence against ad-blockers, but switching in an ad at source can be tricky particularly in low latency streams. This talk at the OTT Leadership Summit at Streaming Media East brings together leaders in the field to explain where they’re up to in delivering this technology and the benefits they see.

Magnus Svensson tells us about the instrumental role Eyevinn Technology, the consultancy who run the technical conference Streaming Tech Sweden , is played in Sweden creating an open standard for all the broadcasters to work to in order to agree how to track SSAI allowing the correct payments to be made. Magnus also talks about aligning SCTE insertion with MPEG structure and the importance of correct preparation of the source video.

Tony Brown from Newsy talks about the centralised nature of SSAI making management easier and gives ana overview of decisioning bringing together buys and sellers of ads. Tony also discusses other analytics such as adjacency and targeting.

Jason Justman of Sinclair Broadcasting Group, explains SCTE insertion and talks about the technical difficulties in reacting to live changes in programming.

Geir Magnusson, Jr. from fuboTV covers the difficulties of preparing the ads quickly enough for thousands or millions of streams to get customised, SSAI ads at the same time and discusses his strategy to start pre-fetching ads from the ad server to prepare them ahead of time. Geir also highlights the misunderstanding that can exist where streaming provides the same video and programme experience as traditional broadcast but ad buyers don’t all understand how much more targeting is possible – even with SSAI.

Watch now!

Speakers

Nadine Krefetz Nadine Krefetz
Consultant & Founder,
Reality Software
Tony Brown Tony Brown
Chief of Staff,
Newsy
Jason Justman Jason Justman
Senior Principal Architect,
Sinclair
Geir Magnusson Geir Magnusson, Jr.
CTO,
fuboTV
Magnus Svensson Magnus Svensson
Media Solutions Consultant,
Eyevinn Technology

Video: ST 2110 – From Theory to Reality

Posted on by Adam K

Delivering an all-IP truck is no mean feat. tpc explains what they learnt, what went well and how they succeeded in delivering a truck which takes no longer to fire up than a traditional SDI truck.

A common question among people considering a move to IP is ‘do I need to?’ and ‘how can I get ready?’. Here at The Broadcast Knowledge we always say ‘find a small project, get it working, learn what goes wrong and then plan the one you really wanted to do.’ The Swiss broadcasting service provider ‘Technology and Production Centre’, known as ‘tpc’, has done just that.

tpc is currently working on the Metechno project – a large, all-IP news, sports and technology centre for Swiss radio and television. In order to acquire necessary experience with the SMPTE ST 2110 standard, tpc designed the UHD1 OB van ahead of time which has been used in TV production for 6 months now. In this video, Andreas Lattmann shares the vision of the Metechno Project and, critically, his experiences related to the design and use of the truck.

The UHD1 is a 24-camera OB van with all IP core based on Arista switches with non-blocking architecture. It is the equivalent of an 184-square UHD SDI system however, it can be expanded by adding additional line cards to network switches. The truck is format agnostic, supporting both HD and UHD formats in HDR and SDR. IP gateways are incorporated for SDI equipment.

The SMPTE ST 2110 specification separates video and audio into discrete essence streams which boosts efficiency and flexibility, but we hear in this talk that more attention to latency (lip-sync) is required compared to SDI systems. Andreas talks about the flexibility this truck provides with up-/down-conversion, colour-correction for any video plus how IP has enabled full flexibility in what can be routed to the multiviewer screens.

Andreas spends some time discussing redundancy and how IP enables full redundancy – an improvement over many SDI infrastructures and how SMPTE’s ST 2022-7 standard makes this possible.

The main GUI is based on a Lawo VSM control system which aims to deliver a familiar experience for operators who used to work in the SDI domain. Network training has been provided for all operators because troubleshooting has changed significantly with the introduction of essences over IP. This is not least because NMOS IS-04 and 05 standards were not mature enough during the design of the truck, so all IP connections had to be managed manually. With more than 50 thousand IP addresses in this system, AMWA’s NMOS IS-04 which manages discovery and registration and IS-05 which manages the setup and take-down of connections would have helped significantly in the lean management of the truck.

Lattmann emphasizes the importance of using open standards like SMPTE ST 2110 instead of proprietary solutions. That allows you to choose the best components and not rely on a single manufacturer.

The learning’s the Andreas presents us involve difficulties with PTP, IP training, the benefits of flexibility. From a video point of view, Andreas presents his experiences with HDR->SDR workflows, focussing in HDR and UHD.

Watch now!

Speaker

Andreas Lattmann Andreas Lattmann
CTO, Head of Planning & Projects
tpc Switzerland AG

Video: Performance Measurement Study of RIST

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones


RIST solves a problem by transforming unmanaged networks into reliable paths for video contribution. This comes amidst increasing interest in using the public internet to contribute video and audio. This is partly because it is cheaper than dedicated data circuits, partly that the internet is increasingly accessible from many locations making it convenient, but also when feeding cloud-based streaming platforms, the internet is, by definition, part of the signal path.

Packet loss and packet delay are common on the internet and there are only two ways to compensate for them: One is to use Forward Error Correction (FEC) which will permanently increase your bandwidth by up to 25% so that your receiver can calculate which packets were missing and re-insert them. Or your receiver can ask for the packets to be sent again.
RIST joins a number of other protocols to use the re-request method of adding resilience to streams which has the benefit of only increasing the bandwidth needed when re-requests are needed.

In this talk, Ciro Noronha from Cobalt Digital, explains that RIST is an attempt to create an interoperable protocol for reliable live streaming – which works with any RTP stream. Protocols like SRT and Zixi are, to one extent or another, proprietary – although it should be noted that SRT is an open source protocol and hence should have a base-level of interoperability. RIST takes interoperability one stage further and is seeking to create a specification, the first of which is TR-06-1 also known as ‘Simple Profile’.

We then see the basics of how the protocol works and how it uses RTCP for singling. Further more RIST’s support for bonding is explored and the impact of packet reordering on stream performance.

The talk finishes with a look to what’s to come, in particular encryption, which is an important area that SRT currently offers over and above reliable transport.
Watch now!

To dig into SRT, check out this talk from Chris Michaels
For more on RIST, have a look at Kieran Kunhya’s talk and Rick Ackerman’s introduction to RIST.

Speaker

Ciro Noronha Ciro Noronha
Director of Technology, Compression Systems,
Cobalt Digital

Video: QUIC in Theory and Practice

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones


Most online video streaming uses HTTP to deliver the video to the player in the same way web pages are delivered to the browser. So QUIC – a replacement for HTTP – will affect us professionally and personally.

This video explains how HTTP works and takes us on the journey to seeing why QUIC (which should eventually be called HTTP/3) speeds up the process of requesting and delivering files. Simply put there are ways to reduce the number of times messages have to be passed between the player and the server which reduces overall overhead. But one big win is its move away from TCP to UDP.

Robin Marx delivers these explanations by reference to superheroes and has very clear diagrams leading to this low-level topic being pleasantly accessible and interesting.

There are plenty of examples which show easy-to-see gains website speed using QUIC over both HTTP and HTTP/2 but QUIC’s worth in the realm of live streaming is not yet clear. There are studies showing it makes streaming worse, but also ones showing it helps. Video players have a lot of logic in them and are the result of much analysis, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see the state of the art move forward, for players to optimise for QUIC delivery and then all tests to show an improvement with QUIC streaming.

QUIC is coming, one way or another, so find out more.
Watch now!

Speaker

Robin Marx Robin Marx
Web Performance Researcher,
Hasslet University