The Broadcast Knowledge

Video: Encoding efficiencies and techniques

Posted on 11th March 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Ed Silvester heads up video R&D at Perform Group, since rebranded to DAZN (pronounced ‘dah zone’) so he’s just the man to talk us through the business aspects of encoding. Anchoring the conversation in the times that black and white TV changed to colour, Ed looks at the challenges DAZN have in creating an innovative platform with backwards compatability.

Ed considers whether the industry should DIET, shedding some older technologies (watch the talk to find out what DIET stands for). And raises some questions about how the industry should deal with platforms ending, scaling and compatibility.

Watch now!
Requires free registration.

For more detail on codecs, watch Ian Trow’s talk also from the Northern Waves conference.

Speaker

Ed Silvester
Head of Video R&D,
DAZN (AKA Perform Group)

Video: Streaming Tech Sweden 2018 Keynote

Posted on 8th March 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

To mark International Women’s Day these videos are free to watch, but for 3 days only! Free registration required.

To mark International Women’s Day, Eyevinn Technology have opened their premium archives to allow you to watch two videos for free until 11th March which are normally reserved for patrons of the Streaming Tech Sweden conference – so act quickly to watch Netflix’s Megha Manohara discuss Netflix’s dynamic optimiser framework and how they ensure best quality over a variety of bandwidths.

Megha covers encoding testing, metrics such as VMAF, visualising the results, per-shot encoding and the way they validate with their audience they have done a good job.

Watch Megha’s talk now! You need to register for free and then sign in for this link to work.

Streaming Tech Sweden is an annual conference which prides itself on excellence and independence. Without sponsors, they are free to pick the best and the most relevant speakers working on at the cutting edge of video streaming. The talks from Streaming Tech Sweden 17 are free to watch, but those from 2018 are available for attendees only. Later in 2019, they will become free, but until then, this is a short opportunity to watch these two great talks in order to mark International Women’s Day 2019. Registration with the site is free.

The second talk available from Streaming Tech Sweden 2018 is from Codemill’s Johana Björklund talking about contextual marketing and ad personalisation. Johana explains how the ads work, how GDPR has changed the way personalisation is carried out and how video metadata is used to find pre-roll and post-roll ads.

Watch Johana’s talk now! You need to register for free and then sign in for this link to work.

Speakers

	Megha Manohara Senior Software Engineer, Netflix
	Johanna Björklund Head of R&D, Codemill

Webinar: ATSC 3.0 Hybrid Services in Action, with Chicago 3.0

Posted on 7th March 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Tuesday March 12th, 2019. 8am PT / 11 ET / 16:00 GMT

ATSC 3.0 is a big change from previous ATSC and DVB transmission standards due to its ability to mix IP with traditional broadcast signals. By merging the best of IP with the best of DTH transmission, ATSC 3.0 enables new business models and helps broadcasters bring their current offerings up to date.

But what about the reality? Weigel Broadcast joined forces with top-tier companies to build out the station, including: Rohde Schwarz, Harmonic Inc., Triveni Digital, Enensys, Alive Telecommunications, and Sony. Each partner contributed essential equipment and resources for the sign-on of the ATSC 3.0 roll-out dubbed ‘Chicago 3.0.’

In this webinar, Harmonic’s Jean Macher is joined by Kyle Walker, VP technology at Weigel broadcast to take us through why the native IP transport is such a benefit and how they managed the experience across all viewers.

The webinar covers what was deployed, how it worked and the results. Plus they’ll also cover the principles of ATSC 3.0 services and the use-cases involved in Chicago 3.0.

Register now!

Speakers

	Jean Macher Directory of Broadcast Market Development, Harmonic Inc.
	Kyle Walker VP technology, Weigel Broadcast Co.

Video: VP9 Transcoding for Live eSports Broadcast

Posted on 6th March 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

VP9 is a well-known codec, but it hasn’t seen many high-profile, live deployments which makes Twitch’s move to deliver their platform using VP9 in preference over AVC all the more interesting.

Here, Yueshi Shen from Twitch, explains the rationale for VP9 by explaining the scale of Twitch and looking at their AVC bitrate demands. He explains the patent issues with HEVC and VP9 then looks at decoder support across devices and platforms. Importantly, encoder implementation is examined leading to Twitch’s choice of FPGA to provide live encoding.

Yueshi then looks at the potential of AV1 to Switch_Frame to provide low-latency broadcast at scale.

Watch now!

Speaker