Thursday at 2pm ET, I’ll be moderating a special StreamingMedia.com webinar on the topic of “Simplifying Encoder Purchase and Configuration Decisions with Real Time Quality Metrics“. Encoding is a crucial element in multiscreen video production. It can be the difference between happy viewers and efficient operations, or a failed video business. But selecting the right encoder and configuring it properly has historically required testers to spend enormous amounts of time visually inspecting their encoder’s output to find the optimal configurations – more art than science.

In this webinar, IneoQuest will introduce you to real-time, non-reference based quality measurement technology that will inject science back into encoder selection and configuration. Using this new technology, you can:

• Compare encoder stream quality from different vendors side-by side, in real-time, ensuring an apples-to-apples comparison.
• Rapidly test different configurations side-by-side, to immediately gauge their effect on quality and bitrate.
• Create quality scores that can be used to measure the delivered quality of your video, and benchmark the effectiveness of your delivery infrastructure.

For anyone responsible for video compression, this is a must-attend event. Register Now to attend this FREE live webinar.

Beamr, the company that claims to reduce video file sizes by up to 50%, has announced the acquisition of Vanguard Video, the venerable encoding technology and solutions company. Beamr is not commenting on the deal size, only stating that they raised another funding round of $15M led by Disruptive Growth, with participation from their existing VC’s Marker, LLC and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors fund.

The transaction strengthens Beamr’s place in the ecosystem, complementing its media optimization solutions with core video encoding functions.  The fit of Beamr with their image science capabilities, and Vanguard as an expert in video encoding, makes sense. Beamr Video works as a full reference optimization process, requiring a first pass encode before the optimization step can be completed. So it is no surprise the company realized an opportunity to bring to market a whole solution, combining the first pass encoding step with the second pass optimization step.

For those not familiar with Vanguard Video, I’ve been watching them for years.  Netflix, IBM, Imagine Communications, Intel, Microsoft and dozens of leaders in the space all leverage their encoding technologies and SDKs to build commercial products, and power internal encoding operations. The company offers comprehensive video codec solutions and possesses deep domain knowledge and expertise in the areas of H.264 and HEVC video encoding. Beamr feels that with an encoder as part of their solution, they will now be able deliver on the holy grail of ensuring the absolute highest quality at the lowest bitrates, which equals no more wasted bits.

The Beamr quality measure operates in a closed loop; meaning artifacts are never introduced during the optimization process. This approach represents the purest form of content adaptive optimization, which is getting a lot of attention these days from Netflix, YouTube and others who are breaking away from preset recipes to follow a content adaptive methodology. Marrying Beamr Video with a best of breed encoder like Vanguard is an excellent way to ensure the highest quality for a given bitrate.

Vanguard Video is respected as a leading codec technology vendor and their customers are some of the biggest names in media & entertainment. At Streaming Media East 2014, Netflix gave the company a strong endorsement for the work they are doing in the area of HEVC and 4k. There is enough uniqueness in Beamr and Vanguard Video’s solutions and technology that we may be witnessing the formation of an up and coming encoding products company where consolidation in the encoding space, could spell opportunity for Beamr. Networks are under constant pressure from the massive growth in streaming video. Demand for higher resolutions and better quality is exasperating the congestion that plagues ISP’s, mobile networks and CDN’s. Consumers are no longer as forgiving to subpar video quality as they once were.

The question of how to reliably trade-off video quality with constraints of the network, is one current encoder state of the art cannot address. Though HEVC shows nice signs of promise, Beamr reports that in addition to the benefits of HEVC over AVC, Beamr Video cuts the size of HEVC files by an average of 30%. As proof, M-GO demonstrated 4k HEVC files in the Technicolor booth at CES 2015 and NAB 2015; whereby using Beamr Video, they streamed the equivalent quality of 15 Mbps at 10.6 Mbps and 9.5 Mbps respectively to a Samsung television.

Networks will continue to be under pressure as video use ramps, and consumer quality of experience expectations rise commensurately. Content owners and distributors are working to improve streaming performance. But to satiate the ever-growing appetite for high-quality video on overloaded networks, encoding and optimization solutions will be central to solving first world and third world video delivery challenges. First world being congestion, and third world being infrastructure cost. The ratio of data per pixel will need to decrease from the level it is today while video quality must remain the same, or improve.

In addition, consolidation in the encoder market, such as the acquisition of Elemental by Amazon, is shifting the politics inside large accounts. It is becoming more difficult for some companies to do business with certain vendors over fear that doing so will feed a competitive attack. For example, does a cable company want to buy encoders from an Amazon-owned company, when Amazon the parent is investing billions in their own direct to consumer video service? Potentially not. This window of opportunity may be the real reason for Beamr’s move into encoding. By aggregating their unique optimization IP and rolling up one of the industries most lauded codec engineering teams, they are positioned well to take advantage of industry consolidation and a big technology inflection point as we transition from H.264 to HEVC.

Based on what I’ve seen out of both companies, this move brings together two capable teams.  Beamr and Vanguard combined means they count more than 80 employees, located in Palo Alto, Tel Aviv and St. Petersburg, Russia.  I don’t know the size of the encoder R&D teams at other vendors, but I have to believe with an engineering and codec R&D team of more than 60 people, and with the customer profiles they have today, Beamr with Vanguard is a company not to underestimate. By combining the intellectual capital, codec expertise and technology strengths of both companies, Beamr seems well positioned to offer a product portfolio for the needs of the industry today and in the future. The only question is, do I continue to review Beamr as a media optimization company or an encoding vendor?  It seems the later is the most appropriate fit from here on.

2025 marked the 30th year of the streaming media industry and for many who weren’t around in the early days of the Internet, the history of how the streaming media industry started isn’t a story they know. Fewer still are aware of the role that RealNetworks and Microsoft played in growing the industry and helping to foster the adoption of streaming media content, thanks to their deep pockets and marketing muscle in the late 90’s. If you didn’t work in the streaming media industry during that time period, you would have no idea just how fierce the battle between Microsoft and RealNetworks really was. Words can’t describe how competitive the market was at the time or the amount of advancements that took place in the industry within a two-year period. You really had to live through it and be working in the industry during the early years to appreciate it. So for those that want a history lesson, or want to re-live the old days, here’s how it all started.

Progressive Networks is considered by many to have started the streaming media industry with their launch of RealAudio 1.0 in April of 1995. While they ushered in the era of the early days of the industry, with audio only streaming, they weren’t the only company at the time working on streaming technology. Others including Vivo, Xing, VDOnet, VXtreme and Microsoft were also developing their own platforms. Xing, which had an MPEG tool suite at the time, launched their StreamWorks platform, which supported not just audio, but video as well, just after Progressive Networks. So while many want to point to just one company that founded or started the industry, the fact is that no single entity or person deserves all the credit.

Microsoft was already working on video technology as early as 1993, when their video for Windows development kit was sent to developers that year. Microsoft’s video server technologies, originally code named Tiger, (because it sliced data into “stripes” for storage) led to its innovation in streaming media and was first demonstrated in 1994. Microsoft tried to provide the answer with “My TV” Microsoft Interactive Television, or MITV for short, but aside from the catchy acronym, MITV didn’t have much going for it. Progressive Networks spent more money and had an aggressive expansion plan and out executed everyone else. Progressive Networks got all the traction in the market and quickly became the default platform in the industry. Continue reading »

Thursday at 2pm ET, I’ll be moderating a special StreamingMedia.com webinar on the topic of “Technical Challenges of Large-Scale Live Events“, with speakers from MLB, NHL, Yahoo and Level 3. This is a new webinar series we are starting at StreamingMedia.com where end-user customers from the broadcast, media, and publishing verticals will present and discuss best practices on a host of streaming video topics.

The first webinar in the series, sponsored by Level 3, will take place Thursday and will be devoted to the topic of live streaming. Hear from Omer Luzzatti, Senior Director, Head of Video Platform at Yahoo; Joe Inzerillo, Executive VP, CTO at MLB.com; Grant Nodine, SVP, Technology at National Hockey League; and Jon Alexander, Senior Director, Product Management at Level 3.

The webinar will explore techniques successfully used to provide a satisfying live viewing experience at very large scale. Learn from experts who have conquered the myriad technical challenges—how to present live video to many people, in many formats, on many devices, over many networks—all at the same time. Specifics such as encoding, transcoding, bitrate variation, distribution, mass authorization, and more will be discussed.

Register Now to attend this FREE live webinar.

Over the past few weeks, complaints related to IPv6 connectivity between Cogent and Google have increased, with the dispute now being made public. While reading through some NANOG emails, and my further dialog with other NANOG list readers, it appears that Google may be selectively blocking IPv6 routes through their transit providers. Initially some thought it was an error, but it now appears to be engineered this way. Here is how Google officially responded to the issue through a NANOG list member:

*From Google (re: Cogent): Unfortunately it seems that your transit provider does not have IPv6 connectivity with Google. We suggest you ask your transit provider to look for alternatives to interconnect with us.

Cogent is technically a Tier 1 backbone provider and has (or should have) a full Internet routing table. If they do not have the IPv6 routes from Google, then something, or someone is specifically blocking that connectivity. Google goes on to say:

*Google maintains an open interconnect policy for IPv6 and welcomes any network to peer with us for access via IPv6 (and IPv4). For those networks that aren’t able, or chose not to peer with Google via IPv6, they are able to reach us through any of a large number of transit providers.

Technically since Google uses transit to reach Cogent through one of Cogent’s peers, Google is accountable for this connectivity and appears to have purposely blocked it. So the questions to ask is, why? Possibly to motivate Cogent “to look for alternatives to interconnect”. In other words, Google creates an IPv6 blocking situation to welcome Cogent into giving settlement free peering to Google. Google has always paid for some transit in the past and appears to have created this IPv6 outage in order to change their existing business relationships.

Cogent historically has been the “poster child” around peering disputes and it is important to understand their side of this which is described in this next email that was also forwarded to the NANOG mailing list:

*Dear Cogent Customer, Thank you for contacting Cogent Customer Support for information about the Google IPv6 addresses you are unable to reach. Google uses transit providers to announce their IPv4 routes to Cogent. At this time however, Google has chosen not to announce their IPv6 routes to Cogent through transit providers. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you and will notify you if there is an update to the situation.

Regardless of what one may think of Cogent’s peering dispute history (and perhaps the bad boy reputation played into a who’s-to-blame strategy), this actually follows the hypothesis that Google was the original instigator in the IPv6 blocking and appears to have created this problem to order to coerce a financially beneficial solution – for Google. As multiple Cogent customers told me via email, the situation is unfortunate for them because in certain locations, there aren’t any other providers to pick from. Cogent has had the same peering dispute with HE for many years, but HE is a lot less visible in the daily life of the average user than Google.

It’s hard to know for sure who is at fault without all the details. The problem creator (Google) or the network provider with a peering dispute reputation (Cogent). However, as IPv6 traffic grows, this strategy of IP blocking could cause negative impact and outages with customers and slow the adoption of IPv6. And, this Google event should come to the surprise of Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, Vint Cerf who has been very vocal about promoting the future of the Internet over IPv6.

Given the migration to IPv6, some networks have more IPv6 Google traffic than IPv4. And as IPv6 takes a larger role in the Internet these “peering playbook” tactics could have consumer impact along with IPv6 adoption impact. If not properly managed with DNS, this could cause customer impact if quad-A records are preferred and unreachable. When a non-Tier 1 blocks part of their routing table from their Transit provider, they are not carrying a full Internet routing table and preventing consumers from getting to Google services over IPv6.

Of course, if Comcast, Verizon or one of the ISP was using this IPv6 tactic to their benefit, Internet advocacy groups and the media would be calling for their heads. Yet no one seems to have noticed what Google is doing, and is complaining about it, other than Cogent’s customers being impacted by Google’s tactics. So the question people should now be asking is, “Who is blocking IPv6 routes and why?”

We have a special streaming devices pavilion at the Streaming Media East show that allows thousands of attendees to get hands-on with more than 50 of today’s leading hardware devices and OTT platforms. You can test out any combination of gaming consoles, stand-alone streaming boxes, and smart TVs, with every streaming service in the market. It allows you to compare 4K and HDR side-by-side, learn how to cast content from small screens to TVs and gives you the opportunity to hear from many of these companies directly. No other show in the industry has anything like our demo area.

This year we “hope” to expand the pavilion to allow attendees to experience VR, and will try to showcase VR technology and content from some of the leading broadcasters and developers in the space. Much of this will be dependant on when HTC/Valve, Sony and Facebook make their hardware available in the market. If you are interested in getting involved in the VR demos, with content or with technology you want to showcase, please contact me. (917-523-4562) I’m looking to make the VR experience the best it can be for our attendees and show them what the future of this industry will look like.

Thursday at 2pm ET, I’ll be moderating a StreamingMedia.com webinar on the topic of “The State of Global Streaming Formats and its Implication for Publishers and Developers“. There is a lot said about what media formats are available, but not a lot of data on what is actually being used. With a global reach and thousands of publishers, Encoding.com has a unique view of the formats that are used to deliver media and entertainment content. This webinar will present their view on the state of the market for web, mobile and OTT distribution.

The webinar will also discuss how factors like native browser support, developer adoption and the desire for enhanced web media experiences drives the usage trends highlighted in this report and how these trends are accelerated by the cloud.

For anyone responsible for multiplatform, multiple device delivery, this is a must-attend event.

Register Now to attend this FREE live webinar.