Dolby Laboratories

Video: How is Technology Shaping the Future of Streaming Services?

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

The streaming market is defined by technology, but as tech advances, it becomes more and more transparent to the user as it not only better facilitates delivery of media, but also makes the user experience better. This article looks at the current streaming market from the perspective of Disney, MediaKind, Dolby and Twitch to discover how far technology has brought us and the current challenges.

Sardjono Insani from Disney says that’s it’s very easy, now, to launch an OTT service with the technical barrier being much lower than before with many decent platforms which have good features. This allows new entrants a quick route to market. The challenges he sees are now more in the business domain such as having the right content, retaining customers and meeting their expectations. Customers have exposure to the big streaming platforms which have good device integration and can invest heavily in the technology behind their services. Whilst off-the-shelf platforms can be very good and offer similar device integration, depending on your audience, you may have a few notable gaps between the service you can provide and the competition. Without a “smooth tech offering”, Sardjono suggests it will be harder to pick up and keep customers.

Sunita Kaur from Twitch sees customer engagement at the heart of the Twitch experience and one reason why it keeps customers and continues to grow. “What if TV could talk back to me?” is the question she uses to explain Twitch to those unfamiliar with the service highlighting the fact each video comes with a live chat feature allowing the viewers to interact directly with the hosts giving them an immediate connection with the audience. The future of her services will be around customer experience. Will the viewers still tolerate a 5-second delay? What if a feature is more than a click away? Answering questions like this help build the future Twitch. Sunita also touches on ‘partnerships’ which are an important monetisation strategy for streamers whether individuals or media giants. Partnerships, for example, allow microtransactions between viewers and streamers in the form of paid ‘super chats’. This voluntary donation route works well for the younger audiences who are no stranger to ad-blockers. Burkhard Leimbrock, Commercial Director for Twitch EMEA phrases it like this: “In the era of ad blocking, content that is voluntarily engaged with and actively created by an audience – the majority of whom is aged 13 to 34 – in real-time creates a powerful and rare new opportunity for brands.”

 

 

Raul Aldrey from MediaKind talks about using technology to transform live events as we know them now into immersive experiences such as allowing fans to choose camera angles and even clip up their version and share on social media. However, having 25 live cameras able to be delivered to the viewer with frame accuracy is still a difficult challenge. Once you’ve worked out how to do that, the next question is how ad insertion works. Raul feels there is a lot of space for innovation in the user experience including creating hyper-personalised experiences using AI to follow specific players and also, linking in with Sunita’s points, using microtransactions much more during the event.

Pankaj Kedia from Dolby is focused on the world of mobile devices. In his region, he says between 48 and 94% of consumers have upgraded or will upgrade in the coming year or so. This, he feels, means there is a lot of technical capability in the mobile device market leaving a gap between the technology that available content can exploit what the devices can do. He sympathises with the need to maintain a consistent user experience where locally-generated content (such as Bollywood) sits next to international content which may look or sound better. But his point is that content creation has become democratised and tools are more accessible than before. Money is absolutely still a factor, but HDR has arrived in low-end devices such as iPhones so it’s not out of the question to have high-end technology in all levels of content.

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Speakers

Pankaj Kedia Pankaj Kedia
Managing Director, Emerging Markets,
Dolby Laboratories
Sardjono Insani Sardjono Insani
Director, Media & Entertainment Distribution,
Walt Disney Company
Sunita Kaur Sunita Kaur
Senior Vice President APAC,
Twitch
Raul Aldrey Raul Aldrey
Chief Product Officer,
MediaKind
James Miner Moderator: James Miner
CEO,
MinerLabs Group

Video: RAVENNA AM824 & SMPTE ST 2110-31 Applications

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones



Audio has a long heritage in IP compared to video, so there’s plenty of overlap and there are edge cases abound when working between RAVENNA, AES67 and SMPTE ST 2110-30 and -31. SMPTE’s 2110 suite of standards currently holds two methods of carrying audio including a way of carrying encoded audio such as Dolby AC4 and Dolby E.

RAVENNA Evangelist Andreas Hildebrand is joined by Dolby Labs architect James Cowdrey to discuss the compatibility of -30 and -31 with AES67 and how non-PCM data can be carried in -31 whether that be lightly compressed audio, object audio for immersive experiences or even just pure metadata.

Andreas starts by revising the key differences between AES67 and RAVENNA. The core of AES67 fits neatly within RAVENNA’s capabilities including the transport of up to 24-bit linear PCM with 48 samples per packet and up to 8 channels of 48kHz audio. RAVENNA offers more sample rates, more channels and adds discovery and redundancy with modes such as ‘MADI’ and ‘High performance’ which help constrain and select the relevant parameters.

SMPTE ST 2110-30 is based on AES67 but adds its own constraints such that any -30 stream can be received by an AES67 decoder, however, an AES67 sender needs to be aware of -30’s constraints for it to be correctly decoded by a -30 receiver. Andreas says that all AES67 senders now have this capability.


In contrast to 2110-30, 2110-31 is all about AES3 and the ability of AES3 to carry both linear PCM and non-PCM data. We look at the structure of the AES3 which contains audio blocks each of which has 192 Frames. These frames are split into 2, in the case of stereo, 64 in the case of MADI. Within each of these subframes, we finally find the preamble and the 24-bit data. Andreas explains how this is linked to AM824 and the SDP details needed.

James Cowdery leads the second part of today’s talk first talking about SMPTE ST 337 which details how to send non-PCM audio and data in an AES3 serial digital audio interface. It can carry AC-3, AC-4 for object audio delivering immersive audio experiences, Dolby E and also the metadata standards KLV and Serial ADM.

‘Why use Dolby E?’ asks James. Dolby E has a number of advantages although as bandwidth has become more available, it is increasingly replaced by uncompressed audio. However legacy workflows may now be reliant on IP infrastructure between the receiver and decoder, so it’s important to be able to carry it. Dolby E also packs a whole set of surround sound within a single data stream removing any problems of relative phase and can be carried over MPEG-2 transport streams so it still has plenty of flexibility and uses cases.

Its strength can bring fragility and one way which you can destroy a Dolby E feed is by switching between two videos containing Dolby E in the middle of the data rather than waiting for the gap between packets which is called the guardband. Dolby E needs to be aligned to the video so that you can crossfade and switch between videos without breaking the audio. James makes the point that one reason to use -31 and not -30 to carry Dolby E, or any other non-PCM data, is that -30 assumes that a sample rate converter can be used and so there is usually little control over when an SRC is brought in to use. A sample rate converter, of course, would destroy any non-PCM data.

RAVENNA 824 and 2110-31 gateways will preserver the line position of Dolby data. Can support Dolby E transport can therefore be supported by a vendor without Dolby support. James notes that your Dolby E packets need to be 125 microseconds to achieve packet-level switching without missing a guardband and corrupting data.

Immersive audio requires metadata. sADM is an open specification for metadata interchange, the aim of which is to help interoperability between vendors. sADM metadata can be embedded in SDI, transported uncompressed as SMPTE 302 in MPEG-2 Transport Streams and for 2110, is carried in -31. It’s based on XML description of metadata from the Audio Definition Model and James advises using the GZip compression mode to reduce the bitrate as it can be sent per-frame. An alternative metadata standard is SMPTE ST 336 which is an open format providing a binary payload which makes it a lower-latency method for sending Metadata. These methods of sending metadata made sense in the past, but now, with SMPTE ST 2110 having its own section for metadata essences, we see 2110-41 taking shape to allow data like this to be carried on its own.

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Speakers

James Cowdery James Cowdery
Senior Staff Architect
Dolby Laboratories
Andreas Hildebrand Andreas Hildebrand
RAVENNA Evangelist,
ALC NetworX

Video: 5 Myths About Dolby Vision & HDR debunked

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

There seem no let up in the number of technologies coming to market and whilst some, like HDR, have been slowly advancing on us for many years, the technologies that enable them such as Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and the metadata handling technologies further upstream are more recent. So it’s no surprise that there is some confusion over what’s possible and what’s not.

In this video, Bitmovin and Dolby the truth behind 5 myths surrounding the implementation and financial impact of Dolby Vision and HDR in general. Bitmovin sets the scene by with Sean McCarthy giving an overview on their research into the market. He explains why quality remains important, simply put to either keep up with competitors or be a differentiator. Sean then gives an overview of the ‘better pixels’ principle underlining that improving the pixels themselves is often more effective than higher resolution, technologies such as wide colour gamut (WCG) and HDR.

David Brooks then explains why HDR looks better, explaining the biology and psychology behind the effect as well as the technology itself. The trick with HDR is that there are no extra brightness values for the pixels, rather the brightness of each pixel is mapped onto a larger range. It’s this mapping which is the strength of the technology, altering the mapping gives different results, ultimately allowing you to run SDR and HDR workflows in parallel. David explains how HDR can be mapped down to low-brightness displays,

The last half of this video is dedicated to the myths. Each myth has several slides of explanation, for instance, the one suggests that the workflows are very complex. Hangen Last walks through a number of scenarios showing how dual (or even three-way) workflows can be achieved. The other myths, and the questions at the end, talk about resolution, licensing cost, metadata, managing dual SDR/HDR assets and live workflows with Dolby Vision.

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Speakers

David Brooks David Brooks
Senior Director, Professional Solutions,
Dolby Laboratories
Hagan Last Hagan Last
Technology Manager, Content Distribution,
Dolby Laboratories
Sean McCarthy Sean McCarthy
Senior Technical Product Marketing Manager,
Bitmovin
Kieran Farr Moderator: Kieran Farr
VP Marketing,
Bitmovin

Video: Audio Metadata over IP

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Next-Generation Audio is gradually becoming this generation’s audio as new technologies seep into the mainstream. Dolby Atmos is one example of a technology which is being added to more and more services and which goes way beyond stereo and even 5.1 surround sound. But these technologies don’t just rely on audio, they need data, too to allow the decoders to understand the sound so they can apply the needed processing. It’s essential that this data, called metadata, keeps in step with the audio and, indeed, that it gets there in the first place.

Dolby have long used metadata along with surround sound to maintain the context in which the recording was mastered. There’s no way for the receiver to know what maximum audio level the recording was mixed to without being told, for instance. With NGA, the metadata needed can be much more complex. With Dolby Atmos, for example, the audio objects need position information along with the mastering information needed for surround sound.

Kent Terry from Dolby laboratories joins us to discuss the methods, both current and future, that we can use to convey metadata from point to point in the broadcast chain. He starts by looking at the tried and trusted methods of carrying data within the audio of SDI. This is the way that Dolby E and Dolby D are carried, as data within what appears to be an AES 3 stream. There are two SMPTE standards for this in a sample-accurate fashion, ST 2109 and ST 2116.

SMPTE 2109 allows for metadata to be carried over an AES 3 channel using SMPTE ST 337, 337 being the standard which defines how to put compressed audio over AES 3 which would normally expect PCM audio data. This allows for any metadata at all to be carried. SMPTE ST 2116, similarly, defines metadata transport over AES3 but specifically for ITU-R BS.2125 and BS.2076 which define how to carry the Audio Definition Model.

The motivation for these standards is to enable live workflows which don’t have a great way of delivering live metadata. There are a few types of metadata which are worth considering. Static metadata, which doesn’t change during the programme such as the number of channels or the sample rate. Dynamic metadata such as spacial location and dialogue levels. And importantly optional metadata and required metadata, the latter being essential for the functioning of the technology.

Kent says that live productions are held back in their choice of NGA technologies by the limitations of metadata carriage and this is one reason that work is being done in the IP space to create similar standards for all-IP programme production.

For IP there are two approaches. The first is to define a way to send metadata separately to the AES67 audio which is found within SMPTE ST 2110-30, which is done with the new AES standard AES-X242. The other way being developed is using SMPTE 2110-41 which allows for any metadata (not solely ST 292) to be carried in a time-synchronised way with the other 2110 essences. Both of these methods, Kent explains are actively being developed and are open to input from users.

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Speaker

Kent Terry Kent Terry
Snr. Manager, Sound Technology, Office of the CTO,
Dolby Laboratories