Video: SCTE-35 In-band Event Signalling in OTT

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones


SCTE-35 has been used for a long time in TV to signal ad break insertions and other events and in recent years has been evolved into SCTE-104 and SCTE-224. But how can SCTE-35 be used in live OTT and what are the applications?

The talk starts with a look at what SCTE is and what SCTE-35 does – namely digital program insertion. Then the talk moves on to discuss the most well-known, and the original, use case of local ad insertion. This use case is due to the fact that ads are sold nationally and locally so whereas the national ads can be played from the playout centre, the local ads need to be inserted closer to the local transmitter.

Alex Zambelli, Principal Product Manager at Hulu, then explains the message format in SCTE along with the commands and descriptors giving us an idea of what type of information can be sent and how it might be structured. Looking then to applying this to OTT, Alex continues to look at SCTE-224 which defines how to signal SCTE-35 in DASH.

For those who still use HLS rather than DASH, Alex looks at a couple of different ways of using this with Apple, perhaps unsurprisingly, preferring a method different from the one recommended by SCTE.

The talk finishes with a discussion of the challenges of using SCTE in OTT applications.
See the slides

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Speaker

Alex Zambelli Alex Zambelli
Principal Product Manager,
Hulu

Video: Predicting Viewer Attention in Video for use in Compression

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Video compression is a never-ending endavour with hundreds of techniques possible. Some which aren’t in use are waiting for computers to catch up or, in this case, to find the best way to apply new techniques, such as machine learning, to the task.

In this talk from Streaming Tech Sweden 2018, Fritz Barnes from Entecon explains that region of interest compression – where you compress the image more in areas where the viewer won’t be looking – can significantly help reduce bitrate.

Fritz looks at techniques to analyse video and work out where people will be looking. This technique is called ‘saliancy deteciton’ and has been made practical by machine learning. Convolutional Neural Networks are introduced. The extensive training material is introduced and explains the model used to learn from it. Optical flow is a way to encode the motion of the video and is also part of the video.

The talk finishes by looking at the results of this technique; both the successes and problems.

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Free registration required
Streaming Tech Sweden is an annual conference run by Eyevinn Technology in Sweden. Talks are recorded and are available to delegates for several months and are then freely available. Whilst registration is required on the website, it is free to register and to watch this video.

Video: All IP Success Stories Real World Deployments

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

When SDI came in to replace analogue video, there were difficulties and setbacks yet now it’s very well trusted and ubiquitous. Similarly, life is not simple moving from SDI into IP, either 2022-6 or 2110, let alone PTP which replaces black nad burst.

In this talk we hear from people who have made that change and are working with IP. We find out what went well, whether things are up and running yet and also what the challenges and lessons learnt are.

Speakers

Mike Wilken Mike Wilken
SVP of Systems and Technology,
FOX Sports
Francois Legrand Francois Legrand
Senior Project Mangaer,
CBC/Radio Canada
Daniel Murphy Daniel Murphy
NEP

Video: Multiple Codec Live Streaming At Twitch

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Twitch is constantly searching for better and lower cost ways of streaming and its move to include VP9 was one of the most high profile ways of doing this. In this talk, a team of Twitch engineers examine the reasons for this and other moves.

Tarek Amara first takes to the stage to introduce Twitch and its scale before looking at the codecs available, the fragmentation of support but also the drivers to improve the video delivered to viewers both in terms of frame rate and resolution in addition to quality. The discussion turns to the reasons to implement of VP9 and we see that if HEVC were chosen instead, less than 3% of people would be able to receive it.

Nagendra Babu explains the basic architecture employed at Twitch before going on to explain the challenges they met in testing and developing the backend and app. He also talks about the difficulty of running multiple transcodes in the cloud. FPGAs are in important tool for Twitch, and Nagendra discusses how they deal with their programming.

The last speaker is Nikhil who talks about the format of VP9 being FMP4 delivered by transport stream and then outlines the pros and cons of Fragmented FMP4 before handing the floor to the audience.

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Speakers

Tarek Amara Tarek Amara
Principal Video Specialist,
Twitch
Nikhil Purushe Nikhil Purushe
Senior Software Engineer,
Twitch
Nagendra Babu Nagendra Babu
Senior Software Engineer,
Twitch