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What the online video industry needs is simple standards for reaching all viewers. But when have standards ever simplified online video?
Proprietary technologies are inherently bad in the video space, except when they’re not. Standards inevitably simplify matters, except when they don’t. So it is with Flash, and its obvious successors, the Media Source Extensions (MSE), Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), and Dynamic Adaptive Streaming via HTTP (DASH).
MSE/EME/DASH are the standards that will enable web publishers to replace Flash in their playback architectures. MSE eliminates two of HTML5's most critical limitations by bringing standards-based adaptive streaming and live delivery to HTML5 browsers and devices. EME brings a single encryption API to HTML5 browsers, providing digital rights management (DRM), addressing another former deficit. DASH is the standards-based file format that will actually deliver the streams. The vision is one set of cache-friendly streams in DASH format that can play on any MSE/EME-compatible computer or device, which will replace the two streams most producers create today for Flash and HLS playback.
NBC caught a lot of flak for its live video streams during the London Olympics, but for Sochi, the network promises to stream every event live. Just like during the London Olympics, NBC’s partner for making these streams possible (and authenticating cable subscribers) is Adobe – and Adobe itself is partnering with Microsoft to power the streams.
Adobe’s Primetime platform will power the video delivery and video ads on the NBC Sports website and the NBC Sports Live Extra App for iOS and Android. All events will be available live and on demand.
In the back-end, Adobe will use Microsoft’s Windows Azure Media Services to power all of the encoding and streaming. This partnership, Helfand said, will continue even after the Olympics. As the broadcasters move from experimentation to going live with their online video streams for big events, he argues, they also need to ensure that the streams live up to their audience’s exceptions.
Adobe's plans for Primetime highlight both the strengths and limitations of HLS and DASH, as well as the fact that Flash isn't going away anytime soon. From a technology perspective, the Primetime player will support multiple existing streaming technologies, depending upon the platform. Not surprisingly, the iOS and Android SDKs support HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), with Android support provided by a full HLS (v4) video stack that will extend HLS compatibility back to Android 2.3, and avoid many of the problems reported with Google’s own HLS implementation. The recent big news is that Adobe will add HLS support to the Primetime Player by this summer (2013), but not to the Flash Player itself. Though on the desktop, Primetime licensees could also use HTTP-based Dynamic Streaming (HDS), the only single technology that could address all platforms will be HLS. Adobe plans to add DASH to Primetime (but not the Flash Player) by the end of 2013, but this will only extend to the desktop and Android versions of Primetime, not iOS--the Primetime SDK for iOS will only support HLS. According to Ashley Still, Adobe’s director of product management for video solutions, Adobe made this decision because DASH support on iOS would require client-side transmuxing from DASH to HLS, which could cause performance issues during some playback scenarios.
To simplify delivery workflows, we are enhancing our protocol support with Adobe Primetime: Adobe Primetime Player will support HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), in addition to the existing HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) on the desktopHLS will be available on all Adobe Primetime Player mobile platformsSupport of MPEG-Dash in the future
Color transformation and compositing can be securely performed by the hardware. This is different with H.264 decoding, since it opens room for driver vulnerabilities. As a result, H.264 Video decode is not available for DRM-protected content on the desktop.
The newly released JW Player 6 brings HLS support to the desktop. We talk with Wijering about how he did it and what the future holds for MPEG DASH.
LongTail Video recently announced the release of JW Player 6, a major upgrade to the company's popular free and low-cost video player. One key new feature is support for Apple HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), which enables desktop computers to play HLS streams, and for video publishers to support desktop and mobile viewers with one set of adaptive files. It also raises questions about the importance of the Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) spec, which was supposed to deliver the same capability, but is not yet available in the marketplace.
Surround sound has always been a double edged sword. If you have the proper setup in form of a surround sound receiver/speaker system it’s amazing, but unfortunately the majority of the audience does not - especially if you are distributing online video to the desktop. So is it worth the effort to support it? What are the options, and what formats should you use? Here is an overview of the current surround sound options with AIR and Flash Player.
Following up on the recent announcement that Adobe worked with NBC to provide live streaming for U.S. sports fans, Adobe has announced a similar cooperation with the BBC. Adobe has developed several products to track these moving targets, and the BBC and NBC are using their latest platform, dubbed Project Primetime. This integrated platform includes Adobe Media Server (AMS), Adobe Access DRM, the Auditude video ad platform and Site Catalyst analytics. The BBC’s requirement for games coverage was to simultaneously stream to smartphones, tablets and connected TVs with support for Windows, Mac OS, iOS and Android, as well as the TVs. The BBC also wanted to easily create highlight packages for on-demand viewing. The BBC will be using parts of the Primetime platform, not having the need to serve ads. The challenge was to create an efficient publishing platform for the relatively short timescale of the Games. They need to easily create highlights on the fly to deliver to their content management system (CMS). Adobe supplied the Primetime Highlights Server SDK to facilitate this process
HLS is available on iOS and Mac OSX Quicktime Player only. Onlinelib brings HLS to millions of devices with help from Adobe Flash Player. The HLS Streaming Solutions from Onlinelb are ready-to-go solutions : - HLS Player for Adobe Strobe Mediaplayback - HLS SDK for Developers - VCS HLS Hardware Analyzer - HLS Encoder for OSX - VCS Live HLS Encoder
At The Cable Show, Adobe introduces Adobe Media Server 5 (formerly Flash Media Server) and Adobe Access 4. Both include support for native Apple iOS apps. Adobe chose The Cable Show, currently underway in Boston, Massachusetts, as the setting to make three significant announcements. First, it's adding a component to Project Primetime for seamless ad integration. Announced in late February of this year, Project Primetime is a platform that lets media companies stream video to a landscape of devices, and includes content protection, ad insertion, and analytics. The new component, Primetime Simulcast, lets media companies replace broadcast ads with ads sold for the online market. READ ALSO : Announcing Adobe Media Server 5 and Adobe Access 4 http://blogs.adobe.com/ktowes/2012/05/announcing-adobe-media-server-5-and-adobe-access-4.html Adobe Announces Primetime Simulcast to Accelerate Online Ad Revenue for TV Content Owners http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/201205/052212AdobePrimetimeSimulcast.html
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"We recently announced the upcoming availability of Adobe Access (formerly Flash Access) DRM protection for native iOS applications. So what does this mean for your workflow? You can now finally reach a broad range of destination devices with a single, simple workflow, including Windows, OSX, iPad, iPhones, iPods, hundreds of Android smartphones and tablets (Android 2.2+), and televisions, including Samsung Smart TVs, TIVO and LG devices, and soon many more as part of project Primetime."
What Did We Do? We performed live streaming delivery tests, using RTMP and RTSP streaming protocols from a streaming server. We chose to use Flash Player for RTMP playback and the native Video app (an underlying player on most Android devices, not to be confused with the YouTube app) for RTSP streaming playback.
So What Did we Find? In our tests, several patterns emerged. First, on the performance front, content delivered in RTMP (the Flash Player "native" protocol) was consistently delivered at a higher frame rate than content delivered by RTSP to the native Video app, even when both were served from the same Wowza Media Server. None of the delivery solutions were perfect, by any means. Content played back as RTMP, RTSP and even HTTP dropped some number of frames for every clip played. That's to be expected in a mobile environment, and as mentioned above, our test clips were intentionally robust enough to tax the devices. Yet we were surprised to find that-although the content was streaming out from the server at full frame rates and resolutions-several devices just couldn't muster the performance necessary to play back content with the native video app and RTSP protocol.
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This solution demonstrates a DASH stream playing in Adobe Flash. The license key is exchanged between DRMtoday's cloud service and the Unified Streaming Platform. Live or on-demand content is encrypted on-the-fly and delivered for protected playback to any device supporting the Adobe Access DRM.
Adobe also announced a new cloud DRM service that’s designed to simplify the deployment of content protected videos across devices. Adobe Primetime DRM, the company noted, already s being used by companies including AT&T, DirectTV, Fox, Scripps Networks, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., Walt Disney Pictures, Hulu, HBO Go and Comcast. The cloud-based version will help content owners and distributors bring more premium content to more devices efficiently. Available as a hosted web service in the cloud, the DRM manager handles compliance and robustness, management and scalability, and ensures that new features can be added easily without the need to update software on an on-premises server.
StreamingMedia.com readers first heard about Adobe Primetime in February 2012, when Adobe announced the project and made the first parts of it available at that year's Mobile World Congress. Fourteen months later, Adobe is announcing the general availability of Primetime at the NAB conference. Primetime is a comprehensive modular tool for broadcasters streaming content online, and it includes components for distribution, ad insertion, DRM (digital rights management), and analytics. Because the platform is modular, broadcasters are free to choose the elements they need. They can also connect Primetime to other ad servers or analytics tools, if they prefer. Adobe's goal in creating Primetime was to help broadcasters further their reach, keep viewers engaged for longer, and help them monetize that reach and engagement. Adobe aims to keep distribution simple by letting one player and one workflow deliver video to all platforms. Primetime streams HLS video, which plays in a Flash player on the desktop. For now, Primetime supports live, linear, and on-demand video on Windows and Mac desktops, as well as iOS and Android mobile devices. Adobe announced that later this year it will expand support to include HTML5 on mobile devices, Roku, Xbox, and connected TVs. With this release, Adobe has also announced that Adobe Analytics (the new name for SiteCatalyst) is integrated with Primetime and offers granular data on individual viewer experiences right down to the 10-second level. Adobe Analytics is integrated into Primetime's media player.
The IAB’s Video Ad Serving Template, or VAST, was developed to provide publishers and advertisers with a common language for video player technology. In parallel, the Digital Video Multiple Ad Playlist, or VMAP, was created to detail ad insertion possibilities in instances where a programmer doesn’t control the video player or end-point distribution channel for content it owns. The purpose of these two standards is to make video advertising more scalable and straightforward for industry participants, and Adobe is happy to announce that our Adobe Primetime Ad Serving is fully VAST 3.0 and VMAP 1.0 compliant. It is capable of both generating and reading VAST 3.0 ad calls, and allowing for inventory rights sharing among programmers and distributors with VMAP 1.0.
For years, LongTail Video has offered its open source JW Player as a free alternative for businesses that don’t want to put their videos on YouTube or pay SaaS-based content management players like Brightcove or Ooyala. But it doesn’t have all the features and functionality they might like — for instance, built in support for Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) adaptive bit-rate protocol. The new version of the JW Player — JW6 — seeks to correct that, while also improving the UI and speeding up playback. MORE DETAILS HERE : http://goo.gl/DHH8c
Internet telephony and multimedia communication protocols have matured over the last fifteen years. Recently, the web is evolving as a popular platform for everything we do on the Internet including email, text chat, voice calls, discussions, enterprise apps and multi-party collaboration. Unfortunately, there is a disconnect between web and traditional Internet telephony protocols as they have ignored the constraints and requirements of each other.
Consequently, the Flash Player is being used as a web browser plugin by many developers for web-based voice and video calls. We describe the challenges of video communication using a web browser, present a simple API using a Flash Player application, show how it supports wide range of web communication scenarios in the cloud, and describe how it can interoperate with Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based systems. We describe both the advantages and challenges of Flash Player based communication applications. The presented API could guide future work on communication-related web protocol extensions.
Via Olivier NOEL
In just a few weeks, NASA/JPL was able to design, build, test, and deploy their web hosting and live video streaming solutions that were built using a variety of services on AWS. NASA/JPL’s live video streaming architecture was developed on a combination of Adobe Flash Media Server, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances running the popular nginx caching tier, Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon Route 53 for DNS management, and Amazon CloudFront for content delivery. AWS CloudFormation automates the deployment of live video streaming infrastructure stacks across multiple AWS Availability Zones (AZ) and regions.
The video player combines the video with the associated data that is available to the BBC, creating a much richer experience for its audiences, according to Perry : “Where we are able to show athlete performance data, the key thing is that we synchronise the data and video together so that you always see the stats appropriate for the point in the video that you are watching,” advised Parry. “So if you decide to watch a video from the start, we won’t give you the results from the end. And if you are watching live, we won’t show the result of the Men’s 100m before you’ve had a chance to watch it!”
Yospace, a U.K. content distributor specializing in the development of multi-screen streaming, is offering a HLS player for Flash it says “allows broadcasters and content owners to reduce the number of formats it needs to encode and store, while maintaining service for the huge installed base of Flash users during the transition towards HTML5.” The software behind the HLS Flash Player originally was developed as part of Yospace’s advertising-replacement system, which it says allows broadcasters to tailor online streaming of their linear channels to the interests of individual users. “The functionality has now been extracted and is available as an SDK for developers to make their Flash Player HLS-stream-compatible,” Yospace explains. The new player reportedly reduces the number of formats that need to be distributed and, thus, the CDN charges without reducing the service to any consumer. SEE PRODUCT PAGE : http://www.yospace.com/index.php/hls-sdk-for-flash-overview.html
Digital Rapids announces powerful new enhancements to the Digital Rapids Stream software for the company's StreamZ, StreamZHD and Flux encoding solutions. The same new capabilities are also available as applicable in the StreamZ Live family of live streaming encoders and the Digital Rapids Transcode Manager automated, high-volume file transcoding software. Recently-released or soon-to-ship new features include enhanced Closed Caption support for adaptive bit rate streaming and support for automated advertising insertion when streaming live with Adobe Flash technologies. Recently released new software updates add support for Closed Captions with Microsoft IIS Smooth Streaming technology and with HTTP Live Streaming through the optional iPhone/iPad encoding module. Expanded support for the use of cueing messages with Adobe Flash technologies enhances content owners' ability to monetize their media across multiple screens in fully automated workflows. Cueing messages in live input sources, commonly used in broadcast operations, can be detected to automate the insertion of cue points into outputs targeting Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR applications. Additional new features in the latest software updates include DFXP timed text file creation from live and file-based sources.
Harmonic today announced the release of the ChannelPort integrated channel playout device for Spectrum media server systems. Combining channel branding and master control switching with clip playout on the industry’s most trusted media server platform, the modular ChannelPort enables broadcasters, content owners, and service providers to speed the cost-effective deployment of new television channels through a simple incremental upgrade to their existing Spectrum architecture. [...] Support for standard tools such as Adobe Creative Suite ensures compatibility with all standard graphical formats, as well as familiar operation for broadcast graphics designers, who can author on-air templates directly in Adobe Flash Professional. Facilitating the addition of branding elements ranging from simple logos to complex effects and “live” text — and built on Harmonic’s market-leading media server technology — the new ChannelPort device serves as a reliable and functionally complete branded-channel playout solution.
Product page : http://www.omneon.com/products/media-servers/channelport.php
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