streaming media Archives – Page 5 of 15

Video: Low Latency Live Streaming At Scale

Posted on 1st September 2020 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Low latency can be a differentiator for a live streaming service, or just a way to ensure you’re not beaten to the punch by social media or broadcast TV. Either way, it’s seen as increasingly important for live streaming to be punctual breaking from the past where latencies of thirty to sixty seconds were not uncommon. As the industry has matured and connectivity has enough capacity for video, simply getting motion on the screen isn’t enough anymore.

Steve Heffernan from MUX takes us through the thinking about how we can deliver low latency video both into the cloud and out to the viewers. He starts by talking about the use cases for sub-second latency – anything with interaction/conversations – and how that’s different from low-latency streaming which is one to many, potentially very large scale distribution. If you’re on a video call with ten people, then you need sub-second latency else the conversation will suffer. But distributing to thousands or millions of people, the sacrifice in potential rebuffering of operating sub-second, isn’t worth it, and usually 3 seconds is perfectly fine.

Steve talks through the low-latency delivery chain starting with the camera and encoder then looking at the contribution protocol. RTMP is still often the only option, but increasingly it’s possible to use WebRTC or SRT, the latter usually being the best for streaming contribution. Once the video has hit the streaming infrastructure, be that in the cloud or otherwise, it’s time to look at how to build the manifest and send the video out. Steve talks us through the options of Low-Latency HLS (LHLS) CMAF DASH and Apple’s LL-HLS. Do note that since the talk, Apple removed the requirement for HTTP/2 push.

The talk finishes off with Steve looking at the players. If you don’t get the players logic right, you can start off much farther behind than necessary. This is becoming less of a problem now as players are starting to ‘bend time’ by speeding up and slowing down to bring their latency within a certain target range. But this only underlines the importance of the quality of your player implementation.

Watch now!
Speaker

Steve Heffernan
Founder & Head of Product, MUX
Creator of video.js

Video: Low Latency, Real-Time Streaming & WebRTC

Posted on 24th August 2020 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Can any stream be too low-latency? For some matching broadcast latency, is all they need. But for others, particularly for gaming, gambling or more interactive services, sub-second is a must and they are happy to swap out parts of their technology stack to make that happen. WebRTC is often seen as the best choice for anyone wanting to go achieve an almost instant stream. Started by Google in 2011 for video conferencing applications, WebRTC hit a 1.0 release in 2018 and has been adopted by a number of companies catering to the broadcast market.

WebRTC stands out among the plethora of streaming protocols since it is an actual stream of data and not a series of files transferred just in time. Traditionally buffers have been heavily used in streaming because it was so hard to get data to the player when the mainstream internet was starting out in the 90s and as the mobile internet was establishing itself 10 years later. Whilst those buffers are very helpful in dealing with delayed data, they are a big set back in delivering a low-latency stream. With WebRTC, there is very little buffering, so when using the protocol you have to understand that you may not get all your data delivered and if packets are missing glitches will be seen. This is one significant difference since MPEG DASH and HLS will either show you a blank screen or a perfect rendition of the file chunk that was sent thanks to TCP. This is an example of the compromises of going to sub-second latency; there are no second chances to get the packet again. And whilst this compromise may be a great exchange for an auction site or betting service, for other streaming services, it may be better to use CMAF with 3-second latency.

In this talk, Limelight Networks Video Architect Andrew Crowe introduces WebRTC and explains how it can be deployed. He starts by talking about the video codecs it contains. VP9 has recently been added to the options and for a long time, it was a VP8 technology. Andrew explains how the codecs it carries does have a knock-on effect on its compatibility with browsers. UDP is the underlying technology to all low-latency technologies since the bureaucracy of TCP/IP gets in the way of real-time media streams. Andrew also explains how security pervades WebRTC from its use of DTLS (which is like HTTPS/TLS for UDP) to secure RTP and SRTCP.

The last part of the talk discusses the architectures that CDN LimeLight uses to enable large-scale WebRTC streams including the need to get through firewalls. Andrew discusses how some features of the technology suit small-scale events, but can’t be used with thousands of viewers. He also discusses how adaptive bitrate streams can be delivered, although not within WebRTC itself, there is enough information to implement ABR in addition to the standard stream.

Watch now!
Speakers

Andrew Crowe
Video Architect,
Limelight Networks

Video: OTT Workflow Integration Best Practices

Posted on 17th August 2020 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Streaming can seem deceptively simple and a simple HLS workflow can be, but to deliver a monetised service to a wide range of devices, with a mix of live and on-demand assets, with advertising and DRM where needed is far from trivial. In this video, we hear from several companies on how they manage the complexity which allows their service to thrive.

Nadine Krefetz from streaming media asks the questions as we hear from Sinclair, Eyevinn Technology, fuboTV, FandangoNOW and Verizon Media. Firstly they introduce us to their services and the types of workflows that they are maintaining day in, day out.

Companies like Sinclair are frequently adding new channels through market acquisitions. Those companies that don’t grow through acquisition will, similarly, find themselves looking at their own legacy workflows as they look to modernise and improve their offering. Our panel gives their thoughts on tackling this situation. Magnus Svensson and Michael E. Bouchard both talk about having a blueprint, in essence, a generic workflow which contains all the functional blocks needed for a streaming service. You can then map the old and new workflows to the blueprint and plan migration and integration points around that.

The panel covers questions about how smaller services can address Roku and Amazon Fire devices, what to ask when launching a new service and which parts of their services would they never want to buy in or outsource.

Ad insertion is a topic which is essential and complex. Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) is seen as an essential technology for many services as it provides protection against adblockers and can offer more tight management of how and when viewers see ads. But the panel has seen that ad revenues are lower for SSAI since there are fewer analytics data points returned although VAST 4.0 is addressing this problem. This has led to one of the panel members going back to client-side ads for some of their workflows simply due to revenue. Magnus Svensson points out that preparation is key for advertising: Ensuring all adverts are in the correct formats and have the right markers, having slides ready and pre-loading to reduce peaks during live transmissions.

The panel closes looking at their biggest challenges, often in adapting to the pandemic, and the ever-evolving landscape of transport formats.
Watch now!
Speakers

	Michael E. Bouchard Vice President of Technology Strategy, ONE Media, Sinclair Broadcast Group
	Magnus Svensson Media Solution Specialist, Eyevinn Technology
	Geir Magnusson Jr. CTO fuboTV
	Rema Morgan-Aluko Director, Software Engineering, FandangoNOW
	Darren Lepke Head of Video Product Management, Verizon Media
	Nadine Krefetz Consultant, Reality Software Contributing Editor, Streaming Media

Video: Is Too Much Choice No Choice At All? What Consumers Want In The Era Of Peak TV

Posted on 7th August 2020 by Russell Trafford-Jones

The number of streaming services continues to expand are we going back to the future with too much choice, just like cable TV packages with a thousand channels? Discovery will launch a direct-to-consumer service imminently and ViacomCBS Nordics are launching a new SVOD service to global markets, just to cite two examples of new launches after Disney+ proved that with the right brand and content, it’s not too difficult quickly rack up tens of millions of subscribers globally.

This panel from Streaming Media Connect discusses navigating the world of multiple streaming services and finding what you want starting with a look at the programmes that US respondents to an annual survey value most.
They discuss the average number of streaming subscriptions today in different demographics and how each of them expects this to change in the future with some suggesting an average of around 3, some more so. This reveals the question of whether YouTube is AVOD or SVOD, one service or millions. People will come back to a service depending on ‘how deep and hot often [it’s] refreshed’.

Ali Hodjat from Intertrust, highlights a 16% increase in content DRM licence delivery during the pandemic. Keeping DRM licences delivery smooth is essential for low-latency streaming. There has been a COVID-related boost in viewing, so Matt Rivet raises the question of whether this will reduce again. Sherry Brennan suggests it will go down, but the market share shifts which have happened are likely to remain, sports watching excepted. The reason for this is that the pandemic is likely to have prompted people to try new things, and many will find these suit them.

It’s estimated that 17% of video traffic is streaming of pirated material. Though many torrents are legal, there has been an increase in torrent downloads during the lockdowns. Ali and Matt discuss the question of whether discovery is a barrier to people accessing video legally. For those that have many services, ‘choice paralysis’ is a thing and does hamper selecting something to watch, particularly when not alone. Whilst getting consensus across multiple people is always difficult, it’s made no shorter when there are 200 options across 3 services. The panel starts with the principle that it’s “too hard to search” and discusses recommendation engines and the difficulty of tracking who’s watching.

Watch now!
Speakers

	Sarah Lyons Senior Vice President, Product Experience HBO MAX / WarnerMedia
	Randa Minkarah President, Chief Operating Officer & Co-Founder, Resonance AI
	Sherry Brennan Senior Media Consultant
	Ali Hodjat Directory of Product Marketing Intertrust
	Moderator: Matthew Rivet Director, Altman Solon

Subscribe to get daily updates