Video: Examining the OTT Technology Stack

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

Webinar: Reducing Churn, Building Engagement & Delighting Subscribers

The Streaming Video Alliance is back with the next in their webinar series and the focus turns to churn.

Viewer churn is the OTT killer. But keeping subscribers engaged and coming back to a service involves more than just great content. It requires a keen eye on the data—from ensuring a great Quality of Experience (QoE) to making smart marketing decisions about content to providing excellent customer service, data is key.

  • What should you be measuring?
  • What are the key metrics and their thresholds?
  • How do you implement all of this into an existing workflow?

This panel will explore the kind of data that can have a meaningful impact on an OTT experience, best practices for measuring different elements within the workflow, and the techniques to capture the data that you need.

Panelists include:
Aditya Ganjam from Conviva
Nick Nelson from OWNZONES
Jonathan Shields from Nice People at Work
and Brenton Ough from Touchstream

This topic will be moderated by Jason Thibeault, the Executive Director of the Streaming Video Alliance.

Webinar: Leveraging Data and Analytics to Improve Quality of Experience and Quality of Service

Date: Thursday July 12th, 11AM PT / 2PM ET / 19:00 BST

Data-driven insights can empower decision makers to enable a better online viewing experience for their audience, optimize their business, and create a competitive advantage in the industry. When it comes to online streaming, there are key metrics you should review to ensure audience engagement and provide high-quality experiences.

This webinar will provide insight into how you can leverage data, addressing the following topics:

  • How webcasting quality of experience (QoE) and quality of service (QoS) dashboards can provide the most critical information needed to troubleshoot live presentations in real time
  • How video publishers can use data and analytics in managing and improving their service
  • How QoE and QoS impact your audience and bottom line
  • How to drill down to the individual user level to gain 360-degree insight into viewer experience
  • What metrics and data points are the most important for video publishers and OTT services
  • How can QoE analytics be used to design streaming infrastructure and improve streaming performance.

REGISTER NOW to attend the webinar “Leveraging Data and Analytics to Improve Quality of Experience and Quality of Service.”

MODERATOR SPEAKERS
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Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen
VP / Editor
Streaming Media
Shaun Brown
Sr. Webcast Producer
MediaPlatform
Dina Durutlic
Product Marketing
Akamai
Kumar Subramanian
CEO
MediaMelon, Inc.
Brenton Ough
CEO
Touchstream