Meeting: The IET President’s Address – A story of unseen engineering: digital TV compression

11th October 2018, 18:00 BST
Location: IET London, Savoy Place

Whilst many of us in the broadcast industry know current technology well, we would be wrong to overlook learning from the past and few can say we remember it all. This talk Former BT Chief Science Officer, Mike Carr, and current President of the IET promises to be a great reminder of the achievements of the past and why, for better or for worse, they have given us the technological landscape we work in today.

This Presidential address will overview the highlights and evolution of video compression engineering, starting with the relative simple schemes of the late 1970’s through to latest sophisticated techniques demonstrating how digital compression has played such a key part in enabling video as we use it today.

The talk is free to attend at Savoy Place, near Embankment, Central London. To register, you need to sign up for a free IET account. Following the talk is an optional paid dinner. Access to the talk is free and requires only registration!

Speaker:

Mike Carr Mike Carr is the former Chief Science Officer for BT and responsible for the company’s world-leading research and commercial exploitation unit, including patent licensing and corporate venturing activities

During his first 15 years with BT’s Labs his career has focused on the research, development and practical design of real-time audio/visual and multimedia communications systems.

He has several patents to his name in the field of video compression and is the holder of two prestigious BT awards; the Martlesham Medal for R&D (1992) and the BT Gold medal (1994) for leading multimedia product developments.

In 1998 he was elected President of the Digital Audio-Visual Council (DAVIC) a non-profit association based in Switzerland and representing 160 companies in more than 25 countries, focused on developing specifications for audio-visual systems. From 1999 Mike was based in Silicon Valley, California, USA where he established BT’s US Technology office and Corporate Venturing activity.

Mike is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He received an OBE for “services to innovation” in 2017.

Webinar: Advanced Encoding & Transcoding with the Experts

Thursday 27th September 2018, 19:00 BST / 11am PT / 2pm ET

Encoding and transcoding are at the heart of every video service and solution, and the codec and format landscape has never been more crowded. Publishers are wringing the most efficiency out of H.264 while making the move to HEVC/H.265 and AV1—and keeping an eye on other proprietary codecs. On top of all that are considerations like video optimization, bitrate ladders, and per-title encoding.

Join this expert panel as they discuss the latest in encoding and transcoding, including the following:

  • The state of the art in encoding efficiency in 2018
  • How per-title encoding and machine learning can increase quality and decrease delivery costs
  • How to build flexible and cost-effective encoding solution
  • The latest developments in video encoding platforms and infrastructure
  • The benefits of contribution to distribution encoding and transcoding
  • The next big advances in encoding and transcoding, including AV1
MODERATOR PRESENTERS
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Troy Dreier
Editor
OnlineVideo.net
Richard Fliam
Solutions Architect
Bilmovin
Nick Chadwick
Software Engineer
MUX
Jiri Matela
CEO & Co-Founder
Comprimato

Webinar: Compression Economics


Date: Today, 23rd July, 2018 16:00 BST / 8am PST

This joint webinar from the IABM and V-Nova, will dive into the current state of the compression market, exploring new technologies and assessing compression costs and benefits to broadcasters, operators and OTT providers.

“More with less,” this has always been the compression mantra since the beginning. With the rise of new media and the emergence of immersive formats such as UHD and VR, compression vendors have been again asked to deliver better quality at a reduced bit-rate.

    Topics include:

  • Industry trends driving demand for improved video compression
  • Shift from hardware to software (and virtualisation) – impact on compression vendors and benefits for operators
  • The benefits of next-generation video compression for AVOD and SVOD services. What are the dynamics? How much of an effect can it have on a streaming video business?
  • The rise of AI – how artificial intelligence can improve compression economics
  • Immersive formats – UHD/VR demand by end-users; economics of delivering these formats and how best to do so
  • HEVC, AV1 and PERSEUS Plus – the various factors dictating what codec to choose and in which scenarios they have most value

Register now!

Webinar: Managing Transition to HEVC/VP9/AV1 with Multi-Codec Streaming

In this talk from Streaming Media East 2018 Paul MacDougall from Bitmovin discusses moving from h.264 to newer codecs.

Video streaming is in a transition towards the next generation of video codecs, offering to double the quality while lowering the required bandwidth. As the successor crown to the ubiquitous AVC/H.264 is still up for grabs, major content providers and device manufacturers are throwing their weights behind competing formats – HEVC/VP9/AV1 – leading to market fragmentation, specifically within web environments. To deal with this challenge, OTT services need to support multiple codecs in an efficient way.

In this presentation, Paul talks about how to evaluate the benefits and the tradeoffs of embracing next-generation compression technologies in your media workflow. He looks at the state of the browser market and compatibility, current deployment percentages and then how to decide whether to do multiple encoding on an asset or not. Paul finished with advice on playback and the state of smart TVs.

Watch now!