Corey Smith is a senior service engineering manager with Microsoft managing the broadcast solutions team for Xbox Live. With over 90 live broadcasts Xbox Live is a global broadcast platform reaching millions of people. Corey and team have delivered some of the largest broadcasts on the internet. Throughout his career Corey has also been in radio broadcasting and media production. His broadcast solutions team employs an assortment of technology to scale and accelerate television experiences across the world.

Per the presenter's request, the slides from this presentation are not available for download.

Choosing the number of streams in an adaptive group and configuring them is usually a subjective, touchy-feely exercise, with no way to really gauge the effectiveness and efficiency of the streams. However, by measuring stream quality via metrics like PSNR, SSIM, and VQM, you can precisely assess the quality delivered by each stream and it’s relevancy to the adaptive group. This session identifies several key objective quality metrics, teaches how to apply them, and provides an objective framework for analyzing which streams are absolutely required in your adaptive group and their optimal configuration.

Trying to engage a live audience is difficult, even more so when that audience is online and not in front of you. Most of the burden for driving this engagement falls on the presenter and the content they’re presenting, but there are many ways a platform can enhance engagement during a webcast or video broadcast. This session provides the perspective from seasoned corporate users of what they want from their webcasting and online video platforms to drive better engagement from their audiences.

The rapid expansion of OTT offerings to the market is creating an abundance of choice for consumers, confusion, content overload and shrinking wallets. This session helps M&E companies and operators understand the software tools needed to build audience awareness and create known users for sustainable economic models. It explores the kinds of systems that companies need to get video to play across all devices, but also to build a sizable userbase and progressively move users smartly from freemium to advertising, pay-per-view, and subscription business models.

In this session, attendees learn the basics of how to develop a streaming channel for the Roku platform as well as more advanced tools and tactics. Roku provides an overview of its software developer kit and proprietary BrightScript language, educating attendees on the resources and services available to help manage channels, including integrated billing, and shares the best practices for creating a great streaming channel. The session also discusses the different ways to monetize content through advertising, on-device promotion and other marketing opportunities.

With the uncertainty surrounding HEVC, people in the industry are taking another look at H.264, and many cite perceptual quality optimization (PQO) as a potential source of improvement. This talk presents IQ264, EuclidIQ’s technology that integrates PQO directly into H.264 encoding, resulting in over 20% bandwidth savings relative to reference H.264 encoding at equivalent quality.

This session will cover a brief journey of where big data and the data storage industry is headed and how it will impact the Object Storage market.

This session examines different methods for ingest, transmission, and backhaul—satellite, fiber, cellular, and even good old-fashioned Ethernet—all of which should have a place in your live streaming toolbox. From small to large events, what are some of the ways we can utilize new technologies without sacrificing time-tested best practices? How do you balance budgetary concerns against redundancy and make sure your event goes off flawlessly? 

Hear from technical and product leaders within the multichannel network community on how to make the most out of one’s relationship with platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Learn how technical meritocracies, bleeding-edge product ideas, and unconventional integrations can lead to closer, more meaningful relationships with the platforms. Attendees hear from those who have successfully partnered with social media platforms and learn how to makes these organizations partners instead of pains.

When thinking about leading-edge technologies and future-proofing, there are many considerations that affect your deployment decisions, from the devices that you want to reach, to the quality level you are trying to deliver. A hot topic this past year has been the debate around Google’s VP9 video codec vs. HEVC for streaming in MPEG-DASH. Which will win out in the end? Is DASH catching on? Will the death of browser plug-ins finally herald the age of HTML5 video streaming, and how does WebRTC fit in? Our panel dives into these and other questions, helping you decipher which technologies are here to stay, and which should be forgotten.

The way consumers watch video is in flux, but what does that really mean for content producers and service providers? Is the current hot strategy for cable channels to provide streaming options the right move? What types of programming are keeping consumers tied to their service providers? In this interactive session, learn the answers to these questions and others by exploring the latest survey results on cord-cutting/shaving, TV Everywhere, mobile viewing, future viewing plans and more. The presentation breaks down the results by age demographics and features findings not previously released publicly.

This session explores the current status of HEVC, identifying options for encoding live and on-demand video using HEVC and discussing player options in the streaming and OTT markets. Topics include the comparative quality and usability of HEVC encoders—including encoders from x265 and MainConcept—and techniques for maximizing output quality using both codecs.

Streaming video is experiencing explosive growth worldwide. In response, leaders from across the ecosystem have formed the Streaming Video Alliance (SVA) to promote collaboration and create a new open architecture for streaming. This session will offer a new perspective on how industry collaboration will accelerate the future of streaming.

Media customers building for big screens, web experiences, mobile/tablet apps, and content for virtual and augmented reality are redefining the digital media landscape. New hardware and software options are bringing high-end digital cinema workflows to productions of all sizes and budgets. This presentation will highlight how to take ProsRes HQ workflow from source to destination in a matter of minutes.

Learn what it is like to don a production badge and take a backstage tour with the CTO of TourGigs. In this session, we will review what it takes to pull off a live multi-camera concert film, backhaul a compressed stream from a crazy location, and deliver it at scale to users on multiple screens. We will also cover different monetization models, rights management, policy enforcement, royalties, and why some shows go perfectly well and others go perfectly wrong.

With the explosive popularity of Meerkat and Periscope, Live Streaming has become the new live television while also adding a multidimensional, collaborative one-to-one layer to social media. Now more than ever before, content creators are moving towards becoming media companies that create and broadcast their own content from the palms of their hands. But is anyone really watching?  In this session, a representative from Al Roker Entertainment's Roker Labs discusses who is winning in the world of live streaming. Having created the first-ever index report quantifying live streaming amplification in July of this year, Roker Labs has since released subsequent reports that show how content creators are "owning" their verticals and using technology and social media to enhance their brand.

During this special luncheon presentation, speakers will present case studies detailing how they’ve leveraged software-defined video platforms from Elemental to take the variables out of the multiscreen/OTT content delivery equation. Gain insights about the single, unified software-defined workflow approach these major enterprises use to provide highly scalable conversion of large amounts of content and assure full redundancy across multiple regions, geographical locations or head-ends. Learn how they simplify support for multiple revenue-generation models.

Just when we thought the road map for HEVC was crystallizing, a series of disruptions are creating a new set of uncertainties. This talk presents the current state of the HEVC market in terms of point solutions within the end-to-end workflow. It dives deeply into discussing newly emerging challenges, and translates those into implications for HEVC’s value proposition. Attendees also get recommendations on the suggested road map for transitioning to HEVC and what other alternatives are available to content businesses for broadening reach and increasing service profitability.

We all know that great user experiences are critical to video consumption on mobile and set-top boxes, but how do we go about creating those? And what data do we have to support that investment? This session discusses how content owners can use UI to improve the content consumption experience by focusing on promotion, search and key features such as resume watching. Learn how to tie a multi-platform video experience together, balancing the capabilities of each platform/OS vs. keeping a common brand experience across devices. Data is also shared on the impact of relaunching platforms where the only change was a re-architected UI.

This session discusses how advertisers can more effectively and efficiently reach a buyer of a product or service with OTT than any other media. Over-the-top TV apps have access to an enormous amount of information about a prospective buyer of a product or service. By using real-time analysis of social media, geo-location, keywords, and historical buying habits, the metadata managed by an OTT platform can be used to predict real-time buying. As a result, this predictive buying translates into a higher cost per point/cost per lead that an advertiser is willing to pay for qualified buyers. Hear about some of the technology being used, the advertising research it enables, and benefits and challenges of this new advertising buying process.

This presentation helps attendees identify their unique requirements for an effective video management solution. It identifies the mistakes that many video management technology buyers make and provides best-practice advice on how to avoid these mistakes. It looks at the options facing buyers looking for new technology for video review, approval, and delivery. Attendees get advice on how to get to a vendor short list, submitting brief and useful RFPs, what questions need to be asked, and other tips to ensure the right solution is chosen.

With the emergence of over-the-top content delivery, there has been a significant transition of live production tools in to the live streaming and on-demand content creation markets. In this session, we’ll focus on some of these emerging technologies and detail they can be used in live streaming environments. This will include video acquisition, audio recording, live switching, and recording.

Gone are the days of needing a production truck to broadcast a live show, but there are still many challenges producers face when live streaming on the road. In this session you will learn some of the tricks of the trade in addition to some new portable production solutions to make your job easier.

Live event transcoding used to be simple: you did it all in-house and you needed capacious outbound bandwidth, all of which cost a fortune. Now there are more live encoding schemas than you can shake a stick at, including live cloud transcoding and packaging from traditional encoding vendors as well as OVPs, CDNs, and other service providers. In this session, Jan Ozer will survey the available encoding/transcoding options and service providers, and present a structured comparison that includes critical factors such as cost, stream redundancy, packaging flexibility, bandwidth requirements, DRM and captioning support, scalability, and player and distribution network integration.

In attempt to facilitate new modes of teaching, such as online and flipped classrooms, the behind-the-scenes process of building a course has quickly changed. On-demand video portals, recording studios, and web-conference sessions are working their way into many universities. This session explores the workflow universities have developed to deliver their online and flipped classes, along with the tech they use to make it possible. This session highlights what schools have found to be successful, efficient technologies and highlight lessons learned.

To deliver video ROI, global enterprises need to touch as many people as possible. Increasing video search, reach, access, and engagement are key.  Video captions are proven to increase video views and completions as much as 40%. And getting local culture right is critical for growing new markets, teams and  future revenues. Translated subtitles can connect your company to millions more hearts and minds. This panel of multi-national video pros will discuss what works, and doesn't, and share insider how to on questions like: Where's the most ROI? If quality is critical to your company, what are good enough translations? And what are the risks of missing deadlines, cultural faux pas, and brand damage of bad translations.

From Netflix, HBO and Showtime, to broader offerings such as Dish’s Sling, CBS’s All Access, Comcast’s Stream, and Apple TV, rumored to launch in the fall, there are a lot of OTT options. Are we ensuring differentiated experiences for consumers, or are we building a slew of “me too” services? With reports showing OTT revenues are expected to top $10B within the next few years, are content owners building a healthy marketplace with enough competition and differentiation for revenues to continue to grow? This panel explores the business strategies behind the unbundling and unraveling of the industry as it moves from cable to the cloud and the subsequent sprint to build new OTT experiences.

With so many devices, browsers and operating systems in the market, companies are often left with confusing choices when it comes to their video players. Do you use open source technologies, or are you better off with a proprietary player? Should you build your own, or use one from a third party? Can you use the same player stack across all the devices you need to support, or will you need multiple solutions? Is it viable to still stream to the desktop with Flash and Silverlight, or can you build a streaming solution without any plug-ins? These and other questions are answered in this how-to session that outlines your options and explores the code necessary to build a modern streaming player.

Everyone knows delivering your video at broadcast quality to any device, in the right format, globally is hard. But does it have to be? In this session, we’ll challenge conventional wisdom and show how, with the right processes, expertise, and technology in place, secure, monetizable video delivery to any device is easier than you think.

As the world moves to all video, all on demand, all the time, content distributors need to rethink their longer term architecture, content distribution, and storage strategies. Scality's software-defined storage solution, the RING, enables companies to change the way they do business. With the RING, companies like Deluxe OnDemand can use nearly any x86 servers to host their own origin storage with no limitations in performance, reliability, flexibility, and scale. With the new RING-based architecture in place, Deluxe has modernized their delivery workflow, increased their edge distribution options, and will save millions of dollars as a result.

There’s much more to producing and pulling off a successful webcast than setting up acquisition gear and pushing the stream. Today’s live webcasts generate significant amounts of metadata that must be synchronized with live streams, and the content itself must be properly protected for live delivery and packaged for VOD syndication. This panel will look at how to best address these challenges without slowing down the live streaming workflow.

Media customers building for big screens, web experiences, mobile/tablet apps, and content for virtual and augmented reality are redefining the digital media landscape. New hardware and software options are bringing high-end digital cinema workflows to productions of all sizes and budgets. This presentation highlights how to take ProsRes HQ workflow from source to destination in a matter of minutes. Learn how to process videos for new vertical placements on social and mobile media and best practices for getting the most out of your file based workflow.

Many publishers use multiple analytics solutions from various OVPs (client), CDNs (server), or other specialized providers, and thus find their data fragmented into silos and difficult to interpret. This presentation focuses on the software architecture and general approach BYUtv used to create an integrated analytics solution that combines video, page, and app performance data into a single data repository for all TV Everywhere platforms. Learn how to make the challenge of measuring video consumption, user behavior, and app performance easier across multiple devices.

This presentation discusses how TV networks, sports leagues, and MCNs distribute and monetize their content on Twitter. Hear how Twitter is envisioning and enabling the publishing and monetization of video at an even-greater scale going forward. Attendees learn some of the latest video trends taking place on Twitter, how content partners are using the platform, and which type of video content, from short-form video to live broadcasting with Periscope, is having the most success.

THIS SESSION HAS BEEN CANCELLED.

John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile, has more than 1 million Twitter followers and is redefining the wireless telco industry. His early-adopter personality keeps T-Mobile’s social media and corporate communicators on their toes, making sure they keep up with him. Legere recently has hyper-adopted Periscope and is using it to live-stream himself at all times of the day. This presentation shares a case study of enterprise usage of instant live streaming at T-Mobile and chat with Legere about his thinking for using this technology in the wireless industry.

OTT service providers have already gone ahead of the traditional VOD providers by providing 4K content to their subscribers. But is it giving the consumers the wow factor that they’re looking for, and is it really ultra HD? Internet deployment models have continued to push traditional broadcast video with more choices and evolved viewer experiences that are deployed quickly and often without heavy reliance on standards. What does this mean for ultra HD in OTT services? How does it scale across the industry and how is the term ultra HD ultimately defined? This panel features senior experts from content owners, studios, technology providers and service operators who give their individual perspectives on how ultra HD will scale across the industry and the evolution of the viewing experience within the next 5 years.

As momentum behind HEVC/H.265 grows, questions around the readiness of the new technology surface daily. The hype is compelling: better compression and faster/cheaper delivery over lower bitrates. For content distributors distributing content to mobile devices over congested 3G/4G/LTE networks, these traits are highly desirable. In this session, learn if and how H.265 compression and deployment options can be utilized in typical online streaming workflows, and, more importantly, if your target audiences can benefit. Up-to-date examples using FFmpeg with x264 and x265 output are compared for bitrate, compression time, and file size.

Attendees to this session will learn the potential pitfalls to avoid when broadcasting a live audio event. The session will explain the proper audio formats and audio player options to use when delivering a live audio stream locally or globally.

Best practices in achieving the highest quality video in the field and ultimate portability without compromise.

Today’s complex content monetization landscape confronts live streaming professionals with more technological and and strategic options than ever before. How can you determine which approach—advertising, subscription, transactional, or even branded—will let you maximize the revenue from your live events and channels? In this panel you’ll find monetization experts who will break down the challenges facing live event monetization and offer insights into innovative ways to make sure you’re not leaving money on the table.

The exhibit hall reception is the perfect location to meet with the leading companies in the industry in a relaxed atmostphere.

Don't miss the 2nd annual Streaming Media Beer Garden where we'll get the chance to sample a selection of good brews and yummy eats. It's a fun night under the stars at beautiful Hyatt resort with industry peers that you won't want to miss!