Multimedia content delivery and real-time streaming over the top of the existing infrastructure is nowadays part and parcel of every media ecosystem thanks to open standards and the adoption of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) as its primary mean for transportation. Hardware encoder manufacturers have adopted their product lines to support the dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP but suffer from the inflexibility to provide scalability on demand, specifically for event-based live services that are only offered for a limited period of time. The cloud computing paradigm allows for this kind of flexibility and provide the necessary elasticity in order to easily scale with the demand required for such use case scenarios. In this talk we describe how to deploy a transcoding and streaming-as-a-service platform based on open standards (i.e., mainly MPEG-DASH) utilizing standard cloud and content delivery infrastructures to enable low-delay and high-quality streaming to heterogeneous clients. We describe how to deploy it for video on demand, 24/7 live, and event-based live services. The talk also provides comprehensive evaluation results both with respect the transcoding/streaming and client adaptation behaviour. It allows attendees to identify bottlenecks in their transcoding and streaming workflows and how to use public infrastructure components and MPEG-DASH to overcome existing limitations.

1. © 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)

2. © 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

3. © 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

4. © bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 4
OPEN DIGITAL MEDIA VALUE CHAIN
Create
Content
Aggregate
Monetize
Distribute
Content
Consume
Content
Any Content Any Storefront Any Network Any Device
CDNsMedia
Protocols
Internet
Transport
DRM
Encoding
Encapsulation
Dynamic
Ads
Clients
Happy User

5. © bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 5
ADAPTIVE MEDIA STREAMING WORKFLOW
Source Transcoding Encapsulation Encryption
Origin
Server
HelperDistribution
Client
Linear: RTMP Push
VoD: FTP, HTTP, GCS, AWS
Unicast HTTP PUSH, FTP,
GCS, AWS, etc. w/
CDN Interconnect
HTTP GET small objects
Single highest-bitrate
stream (encoded)
Multiple streams at
target bitrates
Multiple streams at
target encapsulation formats
Large video/virtual
files and manifests

6. © 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

7. © 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]

8. © 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-bitrate
stream
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

9. © 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

10. © bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 10
LOW DELAY
» What is low delay?
» Encoding
› Small segment size with
open 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)

11. © bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 11
LIVE-EDGE-NUMBER
» liveEdgeNumber
› Add’l attribute in MPD
thanks to its extensibility
› SegmentTemplate &
“$Number$” identifier
for 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)

12. © 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 TV
surpasses Internet TV
only in quality, it delivers better “overall experience”
When comparing traditional and Internet TV,
which option is better?
Traditional Internet
Content 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

13. © 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

14. © 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

15. © 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)
› …

16. © 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)

17. © 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

18. © bitmovin, Inc. | Confidential | Patents Pending 18
bitmovin, Inc.
530 Lytton Avenue | Palo Alto | CA 94301 | USA
Schleppe Platz 7 | 9020 Klagenfurt | Austria | Europe
T +43 463 203014
E office@bitmovin.com
www.bitmovin.com | #SU11402CM
@bitmovin | facebook.com/bitmovin | github.com/bitmovin | slideshare.net/bitmovin
IMPROVES VIDEO QUALITY ON THE WEB