One of the biggest reservations buyers exhibit when it comes to video advertising is the fear of their ad landing in an inappropriate location. At the Streaming Media West show next week, (#smwest) this session of buyers, publishers and tech companies will explore the state of video brand safety today, and address the current fears around available video inventory. They’ll also explore the options advertisers have for controlling their ads, and how video can move toward 100% brand safe ad buying. Confirmed speakers include:

• Moderator: Mark Trefgarne, CEO, LiveRail
• Jared Skolnick, VP, Product Marketing, Undertone
• Michael Wann, SVP, Business Development, Demand Media
• Matt Tillman, VP, Product, Set
• Ryan Polley, VP, Corporate Development, comScore

It’s not too late to get a pass to the show and readers of my blog can register using my own personal discount code of DRF1, which gets you a two-day ticket to the show for only $595. That’s $300 off the regular ticket price and it gets you access to both keynotes, 35 sessions and how-to presentations, 100+ speakers and all the networking events, including the special MPEG-DASH event.

More and more content owners are leveraging cloud-based transcoding services to scale their video platforms and stay current with rapidly changing video technologies. At the Streaming Media West show next week, (#smwest) come learn the best practices for selecting and integrating cloud-based encoding services into your video workflow to optimize for speed and video quality. This session will explore the advantages and challenges faced by industry professionals who migrate their video encoding to the cloud. Confirmed speakers include:

• Moderator: David Zebroski, VP, Video Distribution, Scripps Networks Interactive
• Steven Sabonjohn, Director, Digital Media Engineering, NBC Universal
• Jeff Malkin, President, Encoding.com
• Dustin Encelewski, Director, Product Marketing, Elemental Technologies

It’s not too late to get a pass to the show and readers of my blog can register using my own personal discount code of DRF1, which gets you a two-day ticket to the show for only $595. That’s $300 off the regular ticket price and it gets you access to both keynotes, 35 sessions and how-to presentations, 100+ speakers and all the networking events, including the special MPEG-DASH event.

At the Streaming Media West show next week, (#smwest) streaming media guru Jan Ozer will discuss factors to consider when choosing an on-demand enterprise video encoding systems from the likes of Digital Rapids, Elemental, Harmonic, Sorenson, and Telestream. Factors incorporated into the analysis will include performance, output quality, quality control options, format support, expansion options, programmability, and other variables. If you’re considering buying an enterprise encoder or upgrading your current systems, you’ll find this session particularly useful.

It’s not too late to get a pass to the show and readers of my blog can register using my own personal discount code of DRF1, which gets you a two-day ticket to the show for only $595. That’s $300 off the regular ticket price and it gets you access to both keynotes, 35 sessions and how-to presentations, 100+ speakers and all the networking events, including the special MPEG-DASH event.

Apple’s live webcast of the launch of their new iPad mini was a failure today after multiple users, including myself, had problems getting the stream to start or staying connected to the stream once it began. I tried the stream in the Safari browser at 1pm ET and got the spinning wheel with the player trying to load, but it took till 1:14pm for the stream to work. Once it did load, it worked for a few minutes before I lost all audio. When the audio came back, the video looked bad with lots of pixelation and twice the video re-wound and went back to a point in the stream it had already played. At 1:26pm, the stream died for me completely and I could not get it back.

Akamai was delivering the live stream for Apple and clearly had problems. While I hear from customers all the time that Akamai’s HLS delivery is often not reliable, I’ve now experienced it for myself. While I only tested it on Safari, other viewers I was live chatting with during the event also experienced problems on the iPhones and Apple TV. Looking at Akamai’s chart at 1:43pm ET that shows the number of real-time connections to their network for live and on-demand videos showed 943,000 concurrent live video streams, for all of their customers combined. And their 24-hour peak was 1.3M. So either Akamai was not counting Apple’s live stream numbers in their chart, or it shows just how few people were able to get the live stream as Apple’s webcast alone should be in the multiple millions of concurrent connections.

As an industry, we’ve been streaming live events since 1996. This technology has been around for 16 years now and there is no excuse whatsoever for a live webcast not to work. Yet this is the same technology that Akamai and others keep talking about that is supposed to rival broadcast TV in terms of quality and reach? I don’t think so.

There has been a lot of discussion around how to provide measurable metrics for online video, with many companies such as Nielsen and comScore evolving to be the standard. But, with an industry overflowing with data, perhaps the issue is not that there aren’t measurement methods, rather there is no online video “currency” that is currently accepted by all. At the Streaming Media West show next week, (#smwest) one session will explore the efforts behind qualifying audiences for agencies and advertisers, and how it translates back to its effect on delivering streaming video to consumers. Confirmed speakers include:

• Moderator: Andrew Wallenstein, TV Editor, Variety
• Brent Horowitz, VP, Corporate Strategy and Business Development, FreeWheel
• Stephanie Fried, VP, Research Insights & Analytics, VEVO
• Frank Besteiro, Head of Business Development, AOL On Network
• Roland Hamilton, U.S. Managing Director, Dailymotion

It’s not too late to get a pass to the show and readers of my blog can register using my own personal discount code of DRF1, which gets you a two-day ticket to the show for only $595. That’s $300 off the regular ticket price and it gets you access to both keynotes, 35 sessions and how-to presentations, 100+ speakers and all the networking events, including the special MPEG-DASH event.

At the Streaming Media West show next week, (#smwest) social TV and smart TV guru Jeremy Toeman (see his Future of Smart TV news feed), who is also the CEO of Dijit, is moderating an entire track on the challenges cable, studio and digital distribution executives face when it comes to the connected TV landscape. Jeremy’s leading 5 sessions on the topics of:

• Social TV: Where’s the Money?
• Is there a Killer App for TV, Or is TV the Killer App?
• Smart TV or Dumb TV?
• Deconstructing Content Offerings for the Second Screen
• Virtual Coffee Tables and TV App Graveyards

Some of the questions that will be discussed include:

• In a world cluttered with badges, check-ins, stickers, hashtags, likes, plusses, apps, and so many other terms, is there any real money being exchanged in the world called Social TV?
• What are the current content, distribution, and consumer-facing challenges of TV in an app world?
• Can  second screen offerings really complement some content, like sports and reality TV shows?
• Is there a one-size-fits all answer or approach to TV apps? Is there an uber-TV app coming, or are we destined to have a dedicated app for each TV show we like, each network we watch, each movie we see, etc?
• Do people want smart TVs, or do they just want “feature” TVs? Will fragmentation kill the industry before it even really gets off the ground?
• TV is inherently a social medium, and people are tweeting and liking things, so there’s some smoke – but where’s the fire?

With speakers from Roku, Sling Media, Turner Sports, Snappy TV, Trendrr, DirecTV, Revision3, LG, Sharp, 2nd Screen,  BET Networks, the Connected TV Marketing Association, and others, the Streaming Media West show is the place to be in LA next week. And if you can’t make it to the sessions, stop by the show floor on Tuesday October 30th for the networking event. It’s free!

It’s not too late to get a pass to the show and readers of my blog can register using my own personal discount code of DRF1, which gets you a two-day ticket to the show for only $595. That’s $300 off the regular ticket price and it gets you access to both keynotes, 35 sessions and how-to presentations, 100+ speakers and all the networking events, including the special MPEG-DASH event.

As the industry rushes to make HTML 5 video available on more devices, there are many things to consider when attempting to do this in a scalable manner. At the Streaming Media West show next week, (#smwest) Brian Griffin, VP of Video Product Management, Global Digital Media, for Viacom Media Networks will present the end-to-end life cycle of building and deploying HTML 5 video solutions across multiple properties. Attendees will learn about GUI considerations, integrating advertising, reporting, attribution and QoS solutions, and secure content delivery. In addition, technical details of building and compiling HTML 5 video code, managing encodes, and distributing to multiple platforms will be covered.

It’s not too late to get a pass to the show and readers of my blog can register using my own personal discount code of DRF1, which gets you a two-day ticket to the show for only $595. That’s $300 off the regular ticket price and it gets you access to both keynotes, 35 sessions and how-to presentations, 100+ speakers and all the networking events, including the special MPEG-DASH event.