Join Streaming Media Magazine editor, Eric Schumacher-Rassmusen, and emcee, Jose Castillo of ThinkJose, as we celebrate the winners of the annual Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards. 

In addition to the awards ceremony taking place at this year's Streaming Media West conference the winners will be featured in an article in Streaming Media magazine and on StreamingMedia.com, as well as in our Streaming Media Xtra newsletter.

Jeff Tapper is a SVP of Multiplatform Engineering at Viacom.  Jeff runs a team of engineers who are responsible for building and maintaining the Video Players, Identity, Advertising and Analytics components used by all of the Viacom brands.  Jeff has worked in the Streaming Media community for over a decade, and has been a frequent speaker at NAB, IBC and the Streaming Media East and West conferences.

LinkedIn is one of the first online broadcasters to use YouTube's recently added support for CEA-708, the standard for closed captioning for ATSC digital television (DTV) streams in the United States and Canada. This session will talk specifically about the encoders and signal flow, voice writing/respeaking method for generating captions & best practices to improve the quality of captions.

TV will change more in the next five years than it has in the past 50. From mergers and acquisitions, skinny bundles to internet TV services, the TV and media ecosystem is already beginning to evolve. As service providers and broadcasters look to cloud based TV services for their future, what are the best practices for making the transition from the technologies of the past to the cloud? What are the challenges and the opportunities ahead for TV and media players in the Internet era of TV?

Server Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) is an excellent path for content providers and distributors to a better user experience, higher overall video consumption, and providing less obtrusive ad delivery. This presentation will explain the differences between SSAI and Client Side Ad Insertion. Learn how SSAI works, its limitations, architecture readiness for migration, ad preparation considerations and possible changes to existing workflows. This presentation will also cover planning for target devices, platforms and video delivery methods and will highlight real-world use cases.

Content will always be king, but without a compelling viewer experience and Quality of Service and Quality of Experience insights, even the best content won’t keep viewers around. A bad user experience can be disastrous, as disgruntled viewers are quick to take to social media to complain about a poor-quality stream or slow start times. This session looks at ways to avoid those pitfalls and to make sure the entire viewing experience—content, stream quality, player, and social media interaction—is top-notch.

Live video is a key tool to engage with audiences and Facebook is poised to help you get the right people viewing your stream, interact with your content AND measure results. But there are two key things you need to stand out and be successful. This session will cover what they are and share how other Facebook Live customers are doing it right now.

This session will highlight today’s OTT ecosystem and explore why publishers need a holistic view of consumers’ Quality of Experience (QoE) in today’s open and unpredictable internet environment; discuss why consolidation is becoming necessary for many businesses to remain competitive in the evolving content delivery ecosystem, highlighting the growing trend of quadplay providers; and examine how companies are using data to adapt to the changing entertainment landscape.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Apple TV ($199 value)

During this session, leading content owners and distributors will join top technology companies to examine the elements essential to making VR not just a reality but also a viable business opportunity. The expert panel will define VR video and discuss the workflow required to deliver a high-quality VR experience. Considering audio, video and CGI, the group will cover capture and production, processing, delivery and consumption. The session also will address the importance of standards in scaling the VR business, current technical challenges, and how the industry can address those challenges via more concerted efforts - such as those undertaken in the past by the DASH Industry Forum and the Ultra HD Forum - to drive the technology forward.

Education video usage both inside and outside the classroom is on the rise. The process of creating, managing, and delivering live and on-demand content continues to evolve. What technologies and best practices are schools using? This session will explore successful workflows schools have developed to simplify video adoption and make the technology more transparent to educators and students. Our education panelists will also recommend crawl-walk-run implementation steps and share lessons learned.

Almost all of the commercial cloud encoding services, and many of the largest streaming producers encode in the cloud using FFmpeg. It’s cheap, relatively simple, and highly effective. To accomplish this yourself, you need two basic skill sets; first how to encode with FFmpeg, and then how to automate, schedule, and manage the encoding processes. This presentation will detail how to produce H.264 files with FFmpeg, and describe the tools and techniques available to simplify the automation and management of these encoding jobs for both live and VOD encoding.

Content owners behind some of the most innovative live streaming success stories—both live event and live linear—share what they’ve done, how they’ve done it, and what you can learn from their experiences.

This session will explore best practices for using live streamed video within a major corporation. For more than two years, Intuit has leveraged Ustream to manage the company's internal video communications across an international workforce. Intuit will share key learnings from live-streaming global conferences, routine business meetings, and investor calls, and Ustream will speak to the complex technology required to deliver successful video solutions at scale. Both speakers will explore the wide array of use cases for live-streaming within the enterprise, and opportunities for innovative applications of streaming technology.

Learn the ins and outs, as well as the opportunities and challenges, of producing and streaming live events on Facebook. Get practical tips and best practices on how to make the most out of this new and exciting global broadcast channel including how to maximize audience reach, and the best choices for production.

Using operational streaming analytics to monitor and support streaming media deployments is as important as—and in many cases more mission critical than—just deploying an in-player streaming analytics solution. In-player and last mile solutions focus on issues as they affect the customers, which is often too late and does little to improve customer retention and minimise churn. Operational streaming analytics alert content distributors and live streaming solution providers to delivery problems as they happen and provide immediate solution responses, before they become end user issues.

Attend this session for your chance to win: GoPro Hero4 Silver edition ($400 value)

Attendees to this session will learn about the exciting and unique new process of deploying OTT applications as well as managing and updating content to the Apple, Amazon, and Roku platforms. We will also discuss how brands/content owners are maximizing and commercializing OTT in the emerging direct-to-consumer medium.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Roku3 ($100 value)

This session will explore why publishers need a holistic view of consumers' Quality of Experience (QoE) in today’s open and unpredictable Internet environment. Learn how companies are using data to adapt to the changing entertainment landscape and how correlations can be made across the video delivery spectrum to understand the impact of experience as it pertains to the engagement of your audience. In this session, you'll hear from leading OTT providers, about the holistic and comprehensive picture QoE data provides that enables their services to ensure successful video delivery, engaged audiences, and exceptional viewer experiences.

A lot of recent changes are going on in the area of online streaming formats. Apple announced at WWDC 2016 the support of fragmented MP4, a key feature of CMAF, and others have demonstrated its usage on all major browser platforms. Video players now support HLS in HTML5 via re-multiplexing in JavaScript, so that HLS can be played using the HTML Media Source Extensions. In parallel, MPEG-DASH got a lot of traction for DRM-protected premium content, as all major Web browsers support now the HTML5 Encrypted Media Extensions. This panel will provide an overview about MPEG-CMAF, and discuss whether it is an opportunity to actually harmonize deployments that currently have to support both (and separate from each) DASH and HLS. Finally, we will also discuss potential threats on existing deployments having its clear focus on MPEG-DASH and DASH-IF.

This presentation will provide a brief overview of how modern video players work, what broadcasters should look for depending on their technical and business goals, and different open-source tools that are available. It will discuss compatible formats, codecs and supported DRMs, user performance, the ability of each media engine to handle edge cases, and the performance of the ABR algorithms. At the end of the presentation, broadcasters will better understand what tools are right for their needs and be able to evaluate the pros and cons of each solution available.

VR/360° video is still in its infancy, but it’s growing fast. It’s a new way of telling stories, and the one thing everyone agrees on is that live streaming is where it’s going to make its biggest mark. This session talks about the opportunities and challenges presented by 360° video, from both technology and content perspectives.

Check back soon for details regarding this Discovery Track session.

In this session you will learn how easy it can be to create and customize your offer and then build native applications for deployment on all app stores for personal devices, streaming players, smart TVs, and games platforms with Cisco’s cloud-hosted Infinite Video Platform.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Beats SOLO2 wireless headphones ($200 value)

Virtual Reality (VR) and 360-degree are emerging as two of the most innovative live streaming trends, powering events such as sporting events, concerts, corporate meetings, education, medicine, military applications, and many other areas. In this interactive session, you’ll get to try live demos and get more familiar with the technology as we walk through some common 360-degree live streaming workflows, including the Lollapalooza Berlin 2015 music festival that allowed virtual attendees to attend the live concert series and be immersed with the band on stage. Most VR technologies use industry-standard streaming protocols that can be implemented with common streaming servers and platforms. We’ll show a few examples of 360-degree camera examples, and also review how playback is achieved using common player apps.

Live streaming is growing faster and keeping viewers’ attention longer than VOD, and that growth shows no sign of slowing down. This forward-looking session examines the content types, technologies, and monetization strategies that will lead the way for the next 5–10 years and offers attendees insights into how they can win the live streaming game.

Private clouds built on object storage offer huge potential for more efficient, streamlined content delivery. This session will outline elements for success with this new architecture, including: applications that operate on objects vs files, web interface integration, and data management that integrates content delivery with the content production environment.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Beats wireless headphones ($300 value)