Edge Archives – The Broadcast Knowledge

Video: Examining the OTT Technology Stack

Posted on 24th June 2021 by Russell Trafford-Jones

This video looks at the whole streaming stack asking what’s now, what trends are coming to the fore and how are things going to be done better in the future? Whatever part of the stack you’re optimising, it’s vital to have a way to measure the QoE (Quality of Experience) of the viewer. In most workflows, there is a lot of work done to implement redundancy so that the viewer sees no impact despite problems happening upstream.

The Streaming Video Alliance’s Jason Thibeault diggs deeper with Harmonic’s Thierry Fautier, Brenton Ough from Touchstream, SSIMWAVE’s Hojatollah Yeganeh and Damien Lucas from Ateme.

Talking about Codecs, Thierry makes the point that only 7% of devices can currently support AV1 and with 10 billion devices in the world supporting AVC, he sees a lot of benefit in continuing to optimise this rather than waiting for VVC support to be commonplace. When asked to identify trends in the marketplace, moving to the cloud was identified as a big influencer that is driving the ability to scale but also the functions themselves. Gone are the days, Brenton says, that vendors ‘lift and shift’ into the cloud. Rather, the products are becoming cloud-native which is a vital step to enable functions and products which take full advantage of the cloud such as being able to swap the order of functions in a workflow. Just-in-time packaging is cited as one example.

Examining the OTT Technology Stack from Streaming Video Alliance on Vimeo.

Other changes are that server-side ad insertion (SSAI) is a lot better in the cloud and sub partitioning of viewers, where you do deliver different ads to different people, is more practical. Real-time access to CDN data allowing you near-immediate feedback into your streaming process is also a game-changer that is increasingly available.

Open Caching is discussed on the panel as a vital step forward and one of many areas where standardisation is desperately needed. ISPs are fed up, we hear, of each service bringing their own caching box and it’s time that ISPs took a cloud-based approach to their infrastructure and enabled multiple use servers, potentially containerised, to ease this ‘bring your own box’ mentality and to take back control of their internal infrastructure.

HDR gets a brief mention in light of the Euro soccer championships currently on air and the Japan Olympics soon to be. Thierry says 38% of Euro viewership is over OTT and HDR is increasingly common, though SDR is still in the majority. HDR is more complex than just upping the resolution and requires much more care over which screen it’s watched. This makes adopting HDR more difficult which may be one reason that adoption is not yet higher.

The discussion ends with a Q&A after talking about uses for ‘edge’ processing which the panel agrees is a really important part of cloud delivery. Processing API requests at the edge, doing SSAI or content blackouts are other examples of where the lower-latency response of edge compute works really well in the workflow.

Watch now!
Speakers

	Thierry Fautier VP Video Strategy. Harmonic Inc.
	Damien Lucas CTO, Ateme
	Hojatollah Yeganeh Research Team Lead SSIMWAVE
	Brenton Ough CEO & Co-Founder, Touchstream
	Moderator: Jason Thibeault Executive Director, Streaming Video Alliance

Video: CDN Trends in FPGAs & GPUs

Posted on 14th September 2020 by Russell Trafford-Jones

As technology continues to improve, immersive experiences are all the more feasible. This video looks at how the CDNs can play their part in enabling technologies which seem to rely on fast, local, compute. However, as with many internet services, low latency is very important.

Greg Jones from Nvidia and Nehal Mehta form Intel give us the lowdown in this video on what’s happening today to enable low-latency CDNs and what the future might look like. Intel, owners of FPGA makers Altera, and Nvidia are both interested in how their products can be of as much service at the edge as in the core datacentres.

Greg is involved in XR development at Nvidia. ‘XR’ is a term which refers to an outcome rather than any specific technology. Ostensibly ‘eXtended’ reality, it includes some VR, some augmented reality and anything else which helps improve the immersive experience. Greg explains that the importance of getting the ‘motion to photon’ delay to within 20ms. CDNs can play a role in this by moving compute to the edge. This tracks with current trends on wanting to reduce backhaul, edge computation is already on the rise.

Greg also touches on recent power improvements on newer GPUs. Similar to what we heard the other day from Gerard Phillips from Arista who said that switch manufacturers were still using technology that CPU’s were on several years ago meaning there’s plenty in the bank for speed increases over the coming years. According to Greg, the same is true for GPUs. Moreover, it’s important to compare compute per watt rather than doing it in absolute terms.

Nehal Mehta explains that, in the same way that GPUs can offload certain tasks from the CPU, so do FPGAs. At scale, this can be critical for tasks like deep packet inspection, encryption or even dynamic ad insertion at the edge,

The second half of video looks at what’s happening during the pandemic. Nehal explains that need for encryption has increased and Greg sees that large engineering functions are now, or many are soon likely to be, done in the cloud. Greg sees XR as going a long way to helping people collaborate around a large digital model and may help to reduce travel.

The last point made is regarding video conferencing all day long leaving people wanting “more meaningful interactions”. We are seeing attempts at richer and richer meeting experiences, both with and without XR.
Watch now!
Speakers

	Greg Jones Global Business Development, XR NVIDIA
	Nehal Mehta Direcotr Visiual Cloud, CDN Segment, Intel
	Moderator: Tim Siglin Founding Executive Director, Help Me Stream

Webinar: Edge Computing and Video Delivery

Posted on 22nd March 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Date: Thursday 28th March, 2019
Time: 10am PDT / 1pm EDT / 17:00 GMT

Whether or not edge computing is the next generation of cloud technology, the edge plays a vital role in the streaming video experience. The closer a video is stored to the requesting user, the faster the delivery and better the experience. But, streaming also provides a lot more opportunity for interactivity, engagement, and data collection than traditional broadcast television. That means as the edge grows in compute capacity and functionality, it could enable new and exciting use cases, such as AI, that could improve the viewer experience. In this webinar, we’ll explore the state of edge computing and how it might be leveraged in streaming video.

Speakers

Jason Thibeault
Executive Director,
Streaming Video Alliance

Webinar: Media at the Edge – A New Content Technology Perspective

Posted on 27th September 2018 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Thursday 4th October, 2018. 15:00 BST

It’s time to hear what decentralised infrastructure is and how it can apply to broadcasting.

In this IBC365 webinar:
• What is Edge computing and why it will be key to broadcasting, media and entertainment
• How edge computing is rapidly evolving to provide content anywhere and everywhere through the IoT and soon across 5G networks
• What mobile edge computing means for production, processing and video distribution
• How new consumer experiences, VR, AR, UHD streaming will be driven by the availability of edge infrastructure
• Protecting the physical and digital assets. How to secure the critical IT infrastructure which will house valuable content at the edge of the network

Register Now!

Speakers:	Damon Neale, Chief Technology Officer, BASE Media Cloud Damon is a leading media, cloud and AI technology consultant, performing the analysis, design and implementation of cloud-based solutions for large media companies, global broadcasters and film studios including extensive experience on previous projects with the BBC, BSkyB and Sony.
	Steven Carlini, Senior Director, Data Centre Global Solutions, Schneider Electric Steven is responsible developing integrated solutions and communicating the value proposition for Schneider Electric’s data center segment including enterprise and cloud data centers.
	Jefferson Wang, Managing Director, Accenture Strategy, Communications, Media and Technology For nearly two decades, Jefferson has guided business & technology innovation at the convergence of the Communications, Media and Technology industries.
Moderator:	Ambrose McNevin, Managing Director, Tech Marketing Content LtdAmbrose McNevin is a consultant and content producer for the tech and digital media sectors.

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