© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 1

Live Transcoding and Streaming-as-a-Service with Low Delay and High Quality of Experience

Christian Timmerer CIO | Head of Research and Standardization & Assoc.-Prof. at AAU Klagenfurt

christian.timmerer@bitmovin.com, @timse7

www.bitmovin.com | #SU11402CM

@bitmovin | facebook.com/bitmovin | github.com/bitmovin | slideshare.net/bitmovin

LIVE, LOW DELAY, HIGH QUALITY – HOW?

Acknowledgments: Ali C. Begen (some slides adopted from joint OTT tutorials at ACM and IEEE events)

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 2

VIDEO DOMINATES THE INTERNET

» Real-time entertainment› Streaming video and audio› > 70% of Internet traffic

» All delivered over-the-top» MPEG Dynamic Adaptive

Streaming over HTTP (DASH)› Coding format agnostic

» DASH Industry Forum› Interoperability Points (IOPs) for

common codecs and others (v3.2)› E.g., AVC/H.264, HEVC/H.265, and

AAC, MPEG-H Audio

Global Internet Phenomena Report Africa, Middle East, and North America, December 2015

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 3

OTT – ADAPTIVE MEDIA STREAMING

Adaptation logic is within the client, not normatively specified

by the standard, subject to research and development

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 4

OPEN DIGITAL MEDIA VALUE CHAIN

Create Content

Aggregate

Monetize

Distribute

ContentConsume Content

Any Content Any Storefront Any Network Any Device

CDNsMedia Protocol

s

Internet Transpor

t

DRMEncoding

Encapsulation

DynamicAds

Clients

Happy User

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 5

ADAPTIVE MEDIA STREAMING WORKFLOW

Source Transcoding Encapsulation Encryption OriginServer

HelperDistribution

Client

Linear: RTMP PushVoD: FTP, HTTP, GCS, AWS

Unicast HTTP PUSH, FTP,GCS, AWS, etc. w/CDN Interconnect

HTTP GET small objects

Single highest-bitratestream (encoded)

Multiple streams attarget bitrates

Multiple streams attarget encapsulation formats

Large video/virtualfiles and manifests

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 6

SIMPLIFIED WORKFLOW

It should be as easy as…» specifying the input and integrating the output within

the customer portal» Any content, anywhere, anytime, any device, any user –

allowing for a universal media experience

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 7

… AND IT SHOULD BE FAST, REALLY FAST!

141x Real-Time Transcoding

https://twitter.com/bitmovin/status/639505160088256512 [Sep’15]

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 8

Standard Delivery Infrastructure (CDN)Source Transcoding Encapsulation Encryption

Multiple streams: video [bitrate (32000-20000000), profile (baseline, main, high), preset (standard, professional, premium), height (128-7680), width (96-4320), frame rate (1-120), codec (h264, hevc)], audio: [bitrate (8000-256000), sample rate (0, 8000, 11025, 12000, 16000, 22050, 24000, 32000, 44100, 48000, 64000, 88200, 96000)]

Single highest-bitratestream

Multiple streams at target encapsulation formats: dash, hls

Multiple streams with multiple DRM formats: MPEG-CENC, Widewine, PlayReady, PrimeTime, Fairplay

Bitmovin Cloud Encoding REST API

Player

Player API

Heterogeneous Clients with Bitmovin HTML5 Adaptive Player

Bitmovin REST API: Statistics, Analytics (and Payment, Impressions)

BITMOVIN SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 9

LIVE

» What is live?› OTT services typically seconds

(sometimes) minutes behind broadcast› Clients w/o synchronized playback

» Live edge in OTT (DASH/HLS)› Determine segment number that has been just written

» Make it easy to setup a live stream

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 10

LOW DELAY

» What is low delay?» Encoding

› Small segment size withopen GOP structure

› Avoid 404 – use virtual segments› Live edge hint – latest segment number

just been written upon manifest request» CDN support!» Player

› Utilize live edge hint› Push segments into decoding chain

while downloading› Adopt advanced networking techniques› Partial (or no) encryption (of first n

seconds)

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 11

LIVE-EDGE-NUMBER

» liveEdgeNumber› Add’l attribute in MPD

thanks to its extensibility› SegmentTemplate &

“$Number$” identifierfor URL templates

» Startup delay introduced by live-edge calculation and/or searching the timeline would decrease to zero

» Deployed within Bitmovin Cloud Encoding demonstrating its scalability

» Optimize other end-to-end components (ingest, CDN)

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 12

INTERNET TV VS. TRADITIONAL TV IN 2010

» Areas most important to overall TV experience › Content› Timing control› Quality› Ease of use

» While traditional TVsurpasses Internet TVonly in quality, it delivers better “overall experience”

When comparing traditional and Internet TV, which option is better?

Traditional InternetContent 7% 79%Timing / Control 7% 83%Quality 80% 16%Ease of Use 23% 52%Control (FF, etc.) 9% 77%Portability 4% 92%Interactivity 31% 52%Sharing 33% 56%Overall Experience 53% 33%

Source: Cisco IBSG Youth Survey, Cisco IBSG Youth Focus Group Sessions, 2010

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 13

QUALITY (OF EXPERIENCE)

» Quality is like an Elephant …

The blind men and the elephant, Poem by John Godfrey Saxe

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 14

QUALITY OF EXPERIENCE

» COST Action IC1003 – QUALINET (http://www.qualinet.eu/)

“the degree of delight or annoyance of the user of an application or service. It results from the fulfillment of his or her expectations with

respect to the utility and/or enjoyment of the application or service in the light of the user’s personality and current state”

» QoE influence factors› Any characteristic of a user, system, service, application, or context› Grouped into human, system, and context

» QoE features› Perceivable, recognized and namable characteristic of the individual’s

experience› Depends on the level of direct perception, interaction, the usage situation

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 15

QoE FOR OTT SERVICES (DASH)

» Different application domains have different QoE requirements › Need to provide specializations of the general QoE

definition› Take into account requirements formulated by means of

influence factors and features of QoE» QoE influence factors for DASH› Initial/start-up delay (low)› Buffer underruns, stalls, freezes (zero)› Quality switches (low)› Media throughput (high)› …

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 16

START-UP DELAY & QUALITY

» ”Quality adaptation in video streaming and its influence on QoE is not well understood so far"

» Low start-up delay› Download lowest quality representations first› Start playback once enough segments are available &

download add’l low quality segments in background› Switch up to higher qualities later

» Bad for quality configure➙ …› Start-up delay: buffer threshold before playback› Preferred start-up quality: overwrite built-in adaptation

» Enable custom adaptation logics

Seufert, M., et al., "A Survey on Quality of Experience of HTTP Adaptive Streaming", IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, vol. 2014 (2014)

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 17

QoE FOR OTT – A RULE OF THUMB

» Startup delay (low) but› Live vs. on-demand› Short vs. long-tail content

» Buffer underrun / stalls (zero)» Quality switches (low) and media throughput

(high) – high audio/visual quality› But not always!

» Mobile access› Energy- and cost-awareness

Main QoE factors for DASH

© bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 18

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IMPROVES VIDEO QUALITY ON THE WEB