Live Streaming Archives – Page 15 of 29

Video: Specification of Live Media Ingest

Posted on 24th October 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

“Standardisation is more than just a player format”. There’s so much to a streaming service than the video, a whole ecosystem needs to work together. In this talk from Comcast’s Mile High Video 2019, we see how different parts of the ecosystem are being standardised for live ingest.

RTMP and Smooth streaming are being phased out – without proper support for HEVC, VVC, HDR etc. they are losing relevance as well as, in the case of RTMP, support from the format itself. Indeed it’s clear that fragmented MP4 (fMP4) and CMAF are taking hold in their place so it makes sense for a new ingest standard to coalesce around these formats.

Rufael Mekuria from Unified streaming explains this effort to create a spec around live media ingest that is happening as part of MPEG DASH-IF. The work itself started at the end of 2017 with the aim of publishing summer 2019 supporting CMAF and DASH/HLS interfaces.

Rufael explains CMAF ingest used HTTP post to move each media stream to the origin packager. The tracks are separated into video, audio, timed text, subtitle and timed metadata. They are all transferred on separate tracks and is compatible with future codecs. He also covers security and timed text before covering DASH/HLS ingest which can also contain CMAF because HLS contains the capability to contain CMAF.

Reference software is available along with the <a href=”http://”https://dashif-documents.azurewebsites.net/Ingest/master/DASH-IF-Ingest.pdf” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>specification.

Watch now!
Speaker

Rufael Mekuria
Head of Research & Standardisation,
Unified Streaming

Video: DASH Updates

Posted on 17th October 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

MPEG DASH is a standardised method for encapsulating media for streaming similar to Apple’s HLS. Based on TCP, MPEG DASH is a widely compatible way of streaming video and other media over the internet.

MPEG DASH is now on its 3rd edition, its first standard being in 2011. So this talk starts by explaining what’s new as of July 2019 in this edition. Furthermore, there are amendments already worked on which are soon to add more features.

Iraj Sodagar explains Service Descriptors which will be coming that allow the server to encapsulate metadata for the player which describes how the publisher intended to show the media. Maximum and minimum latency and quality is specified. for instance. The talk explains how these are used and why they are useful.

Another powerful metadata feature is the Initialization Set, Group and Presentation which gives the decoder a ‘heads up’ on what the next media will need in terms of playback. This allows the player to politely decline to play the media if it can’t display it. For instance, if a decoder doesn’t supply AV1, this can be identified before needing to attempt a decode or download a chunk.

Iraj then explains what will be in the 4th edition including the above, signalling leap seconds and much more. This should be published over the next few months.

Amendement 1 is working towards a more accurate timing model of events and defining a specific DASH profile for CMAF (the low-latency streaming technology based on DASH) which Iraj explains in detail.

Finishing off with session based DASH operations, a look over the DASH workplan/roadmap, ad insertion, event and timed metadata processing, this is a great, detailed look at the DASH of today and of 2020.

Watch now!
Speaker

Iraj Sodagar
Independant Consultant

Video: Towards a healthy AV1 ecosystem for UGC platforms

Posted on 15th October 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Twitch is an ambassador for new codecs and puts its money where its mouth is; it is one of the few live streaming platforms which streams with VP9 – and not only at, with cloud FPGA acceleration thanks to Xylinx’s acquisition of NGCODEC.

As such, they have a strong position on AV1. With such a tech savvy crowd, they stream most of their videos at the highest bitrate (circa 6mbps). With millions of concurrent videos, they are highly motivated to reduce bandwidth where they can and finding new codecs is one way to do that.

Principal Research Engineer, Yueshi discusses Twitch’s stance on AV1 and the work they are doing to contribute in order to get the best product at the end of the process which will not only help them, but the worldwide community. He starts by giving an overview of Twitch which, while many of us are familiar with the site, the scale and needs of the site may be new information and drive the understanding of the rest of the talk.

Reduction in bitrate is a strong motivator, but also the fact that supporting many codecs is a burden. AV1 promises a possibility of reducing the number of supported codecs/formats. Their active contribution in AV1 is also determined by the ‘hand wave’ latency; a simple method of determining the approximate latency of a link which is naturally very important to a live streaming platform. This led to Twitch submitting a proposal for SWITCH_FRAME which is a technique, accepted in AV1, which allows more frequent changes by the player between the different quality/bitrate streams available. This results in a better experience for the user and also reduced bitrate/buffers.

YueShi then looks at the projected AV1 deployment roadmap and discusses when GPU/hardware support will be available. The legal aspect of AV1 – which promises to be a free-to-use codec is also discussed with the news that a patent pool has formed around AV1.

The talk finishes with a Q&A.

Watch now!

Speakers

Yueshi Shen
Principal (Level 7) Research Engineer & Engineering Manager,
Twitch

Video: Streaming Live Events: When it must be alright on the night

Posted on 20th September 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Live Streaming is an important part of not only online viewing, but increasingly of broadcast in general. It’s well documented that live programming is key to keeping linear broadcast’s tradition of ‘everyone watching at once’ which has been diluted – for both pros and cons – by non-linear viewing in recent years.

This panel, as part of IBC’s Content Everywhere, looks at the drivers behind live streaming, how it’s evolving and its future. Bringing together ultra-low-latency platform nanocosmos with managed service provider M2A Media and video player specialists Visual On, Editor of The Broadcast Knowledge, Russell Trafford-Jones starts the conversation asking what gamification is and how this plays in to live streaming.

nanocosmos’s Oliver Lietz explains how gamification is an increasing trend in terms of not only monetising existing content but is a genre in and of itself providing content which is either entirely a game or has a significant interactive element. With such services, it’s clear that latency needs to be almost zero so his company’s ability to deliver one-second latency is why he has experience in these projects.

We hear also from VisualOn’s Michael Jones who explains the low-latency service they were involved in delivering. Here, low-latency CMAF was used in conjunction with local synced-screen technology to ensure that not only was latency low, but second screen devices were not showing video any earlier/later than the main screen. The panel then discussed the importance of latency compared to synchronised viewing and where ultra-low latency was unnecessary.

Valentijn Siebrands from M2A talks about the ability to use live streaming and production in the cloud to deliver lower-cost sports events but also deliver new types of programming. Valentijn then takes us into the topic of analytics, underlining the importance of streaming analytics which reveal the health of your platform/infrastructure as much as the analytics which are most usually talked about; those which tell you the quality of experience your viewers are having and their activities on your app.

The talk concludes with a look to the future, talking about the key evolving technologies of the moment and how they will help us move forward between now and IBC’s Content Everywhere Hub in 2021.

Watch now!

Speakers

	Oliver Lietz CEO & Founder, nanocosmos
	Michael Jones Former SVP and Head of Business Development, VisualOn Inc
	Valentijn Siebrands Solutions Architect, M2A Media
	Russell Trafford-Jones – Moderator Manager, Support & Services – Techex Executive Member – IET Media Technical Network

Subscribe to get daily updates