How to Meet the Challenges of Cloud-Based Media Creation

Nadine Krefetz writes about the ways of how to best meet the challenges of cloud media creation.

Michael Cerda, CPO for Streaming at TelevisaUnivision, Talks Building and Growing the World’s Largest Spanish-Language Streaming Service

Nadine Krefetz interviews Michael Cerda, CPO for streaming at TelevisaUnivision. He discusses the from-the-ground-up rebuild he implemented when he arrived at the company. He describes how—in just 9 months—his team assembled and scaled the tech stack dri­ving ViX, the world's largest Spanish-language streaming service, which haslive-streaming, AVOD, SVOD, and FAST offerings.

OBSBOT Tail Air AI-Powered PTZ Streaming Camera

This review will look at an interesting suite of products built around the innovative OBSBOT Tail Air PTZ cam, which has entered the NDI ecosystem. The individual cameras retail for $499, and OBSBOT lent Streaming Media three of them for this review, as well as a couple of accessories to show off how they can work together in a studio or field production.

Monetizing FAST and OTT with Metadata and User Data

Nothing makes recommendation engines—and every other means of profit-making leverage—go, go, go like data in its many varieties. Metadata in particular is the key to personalizing viewer experiences and optimizing content portfolios. AI plays an ever-greater role in enhancing the metadata quality and improving recommendations. As analysts focused on the M&E industry and insiders at major media companies playing critical strategic roles agree, data is also essential to understanding customer journeys and making informed decisions on how to reach and retain subscribers and, on the ad-supported side, deliver the right ads to audiences and the right audiences to brands.

Review: Magewell Director Mini

Magewell's new Director Mini is a mini marvel. This 5.5" "all-in-one" production tool with a $1,299 street price can mix multiple inputs and do picture-in-picture graphics, audio mixing, recording, streaming, and more, as IEBA's Anthony Burokas explains in this in-depth review.

Cloud Atlas: MovieLabs’ 2030 Vision Roadmap for Industry-Wide M & E Interoperability

MovieLabs' CTO Jim Helman discusses his experience creating standards for content classification for the Hollywood studios, as well as the MovieLabs ten-year strategy to bring interoperability to as many vendors as possible. The Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR) Helman helped create is a content ID which now holds more than 2.8 million records modernizing many aspects of production and operations. He'll also update us on the industry's response to the 2030 Vision strategy to bring interoperability to media creation technologies, requiring less custom engineering and better communications between software, infrastructure, and services.

Q&A: Caffeine CEO Ben Keighran Talks Fan-Focused Niche Sports Broadcasting

Caffeine is a well-funded, newer live broadcasting platform for fan-focused, niche content for interactive viewing. With the platform now surpassing 40 million users, most of its content consists of long tail and local sports programming. With $262 million in financing raised since 2016, Caffeine is emerging as a destination for "sports you can't find anywhere else." This Q&A with Caffeine CEO Ben Keighran explores Caffeine's unique approach to niche sports streaming and monetization model.

Review: NETINT Quadra T1U Video Processing Unit

This review will highlight the NETINT Quadra T1U and explore its capabilities as a video processing unit (VPU) for high-volume encoding and transcoding of single files, encoding ladders, and live streams.

The 2023 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards

The readers have spoken! Here we present North America's top tech solutions of 2023, as chosen by the readers of Streaming Media.

Glass-to-Glass Report: Comparing Low-Latency Streaming Providers

In this article, I examine low-latency services provided by streaming CDNs, removing actual vendor names and making conclusions based on delivery method. I'll start with a discussion of the basics of latency before moving on to the testing results and analysis.

State of Streaming Snapshot: Pinpointing Streaming’s Pricing Pain Points

Rising fundamental costs morph into rising platform costs for content owners and consumers

The 2023 Streaming Media 100: The Top 100 Companies in the Streaming Media Universe

The Streaming Media 100 is back—welcome once again to Streaming Media's annual list that foregrounds the industry's most innovative and influential technology suppliers, service providers, platforms, and media and content companies, as acclaimed by our editorial team. Some are large and established industry standard-bearers, while others are comparably small and relatively new arrivals that are just beginning to make a splash. All set themselves apart from the crowd with their innovative approach and their contribution to the expansion and maturation of the streaming media universe.

The Streaming Media 100 at IBC 2023

With IBC taking place September 15-18, just before the eagerly anticipated unveiling of this year's Streaming Media 100, which recognizes the 100 companies that matter most in this industry, I had the chance to surprise a number of deserving honorees with their awards, live and in person on the show floor.

Review: ViCueSoft CodecWar

CodecWar is an analysis service created by ViCueSoft, the developer of codec analy­sis tools VQ Analyzer, VQ DVK, and VQ Probe. As currently configured, the site's ideal users are researchers who are looking for a convenient way to compare codecs using relevant datasets and codec developers who are looking for a structured way to benchmark their codecs against others. In contrast, it's not a particularly convenient way for streaming producers to run experiments to optimise their encoding parameters, although it could grow into this.

Review: Ant Media Server (Enterprise Edition)

This review will highlight Ant Media Server and many of the features supported with the streaming server. Viewers will also learn how to configure the WebRTC streaming server on Amazon Web Services and how to get up and running with delivering live streams and video-on-demand streams.

Generative AI and the Future of Media Tech

Incorporating generative AI into our workflows has the potential to impact almost everything in media technologies, and I'll examine several of the possibilities in this article.

Tutorial: Advanced Live Streaming and Recording with the AJA HELO PLUS

Streaming engineer and strategist and Streaming Media The Video Doctor columnist Robert Reinhardt of VideoRx discusses some of his favorite features of the new AJA HELO Plus Advanced Streaming and Recording Appliance in this new tutorial video. A longtime user of the original HELO in his own professional live productions, discusses the new chassis design, new layout features for picture-in-picture and more, streaming to two destinations simultaneously, new SRT support, and more.

Leading Independent Channels Join Forces to Form the Independent Streaming Alliance (ISA)

Ten of the leading independent streaming platforms, including Revry, Vevo, Tastemade, and Trusted Media Brands, recently joined forces to create the Independent Streaming Alliance (ISA) to promote the value of independent streaming channels, provide in-depth research of their audiences for the advertising industry, develop best practices for independent streaming promotion and development, and find ways to partner with key members of the CTV landscape.

Revry CPO LaShawn McGhee Talks Global AVOD, Analytics, Content Curation, and Inclusivity

What's it like being CPO at a streaming network that's carving out a unique position in the global media and entertainment universe and managing an expanding array of ad-supported channels and a high-visibility roster of brand partners? To find out what that role entails, what drives the tech stack that keeps such a network humming, and how Revry develops, sources, licenses, and curates its diverse content offerings, I spoke with LaShawn McGhee, Revry's CPO and one of the company's four co-founders.

NubianTV Founder & CEO Darrin Leverett Talks Diversity in Black Programming & the Channel's Ambitious Expansion

Darrin D. Leverett, Founder and CEO of Nubian Television, discusses the importance of Black programming diversity and the ambitious expansion plans of the channel.