Facebook is a community of over 2 Billion people that are increasingly choosing video as a way to communicate and interact. This presentation will walk through Facebook video including upload, encoding, and a new product Live With. Live With is available for all profiles and pages on iOS, letting you invite a friend into your live video so you can hang out together, or broadcast the conversation to an audience. In this talk, Nick Ruff will discuss how Facebook bridged the trade-offs between video streaming technologies to enable real-time multiparty broadcasting.

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. 

This year's ceremony will take place directly following the morning Kickoff Session, so be sure to come early and get a seat!

In addition to the awards ceremony, 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.

To find out more about the 2017 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards visit here.

Facebook, Twitch, Periscope and YouTube Live. This session will demonstrate how to publish a video stream to multiple social media networks, simultaneously. We will explore common pitfalls and uncover the best practices and tools that will make sure your stream arrives properly, in compliance, and is configured with the proper codec and streaming profile. You will leave with an understanding of how to deliver a consistent and reliable experience for your social media audience.

In this presentation, attendees will learn how NASA and Amazon Web Services engineered a complete, resilient, and repeatable workflow that brought this industry-first event to viewers everywhere using scalable cloud and software enabled workflows. Among the many insights that will be shared: live 4K transcoding in the cloud; the role compression efficiency plays in on-going deep space discovery; overcoming bandwidth constraints on the ISS and on Earth; the implication of cloud-enabled live 4K video streaming for public sector applications in defense, security, first responders, law enforcement, energy and other segments; even how to get an encoder into orbit.

Per-title encoding techniques customize the encoding ladder to match the encoding complexity of the source, saving bandwidth on easy-to-compress videos and ensuring the quality of more complex footage. This session compares the efficiency, implementation issues, and costs of multiple commercially available and open-source alternatives, like Capella Systems Cambria Encoder, compression optimization from multiple vendors, and the alternatives available using Ffmpeg. Learn what per-title encoding is, how the various options work, and which is the best option for you.

VR and 360° offer brands and publishers new ways of telling stories and presenting live events to viewers. In order to be successful, though, there needs to be an understanding of not just the technology but the art of crafting immersive videos that will compel viewers to strap on that headset (or at least a Google Cardboard) for an experience that transcends traditional content. This panel features experts in both the content and technology to give attendees a full “field of view” into the emerging worlds of VR and 360° video.

Video content today is consumed on a wide variety of devices and the most common approach for reaching all these devices typically involves the creation of a dedicated application containing a dedicated native video player for every platform. While great for their viewers, most of the companies following this approach since discovered that each new device that they support introduces new technical and operational challenges. Although these challenges almost feel inevitable, there is a different approach available in the Universal Video Player, where one video player is used in all applications.

Using a Universal Video Player enables content owners to deliver a high-quality video viewing experience without any of the downsides associated with a native video player approach.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Three bags of Chokotoff Belgian chocolates ($15 value)

Hybrik powers some the largest video operations in the world, including Sony, Vevo, and Technicolor. Hybrik delivers a complete media processing solution including transcoding, quality control, and media analysis. And Hybrik is 90% less expensive than other cloud solutions. Come see why Streaming Media named Hybrik "Best of Show" at NAB!

Attend this session for your chance to win: iPad Mini ($350 value)

The market is thirsty for an open source, freely available, low-latency, UDP-like approach for streaming over the internet. This session will bring together SRT Alliance members and industry experts to discuss the SRT open source video transport protocol and how it optimizes streaming performance across unpredictable networks with secure streams and easy firewall traversal, bringing the best quality live video over the worst networks. The session will also discuss how UDP coupled with SRT is an ideal transport for video contribution and distribution and detail how the alliance is accelerating interoperability of video streaming solutions and fostering collaboration with industry leaders to achieve lower latency internet video transport.Consumption of video is changing as new platforms, formats, and industry dynamics evolve. From the dawn of 4K to Snapchat Discover, the quality, quantity, and sheer variety of video experiences are growing every day. This panel looks at the future of broadcast and video services in a multi-screen world, attempting to peer in to the near future to explore issues both at the fore, such as 4K, and still on the fringe, such as virtual reality.

Over the past year, videos depicting acts of violence and social injustice were captured live and shared on social media and news platforms highlighting the impact real-time news can have. Live video is playing an increasing role in the editorial strategies of digital publishers and broadcasters – their audiences expect a range of live coverage on multiple devices and platforms. They are still looking for breaking and key news events but now they also want to see political, cultural and religious events, red carpet coverage, product launches, technology shows, sports news and more. This presentation by the AP will highlight what audiences want from live video, how news organizations are incorporating it into their daily editorial strategy and how live video fits into a wider news agenda.

How To: Live Streaming Without The Big Price Tag

Facebook is a community of more than two billion people who are increasingly choosing video as a way to communicate and interact. In this talk, Amit Puntambekar will walk through some of the unique challenges with live videos and video encoding considerations for live streaming at scale.

In a world of ubiquitous OTT video consumption, tracking and matching content rights with viewers locations, subscriptions or devices, is a much taller order than for traditional set-top box based broadcast or pay TV. OTT TV also promises better monetization via the untapped potential of dynamic and targeted insertions. For broadcast linear channels in particular, rights resolution and smarter insertions require that channel providers deliver video with clean and reliable metadata to their OTT partners. This new distribution and decoration of linear channels is a key component of the OTT value chain.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Triple function flashlight/stylus pens

As ultra high-definition content is becoming available in streaming services, getting ready to protect this highly valuable content is more important than ever. Deploying forensic watermarking solutions is a key component of protecting this content. Hear about the different ways watermarking can be deployed into streaming workflows and how taking a 360° approach achieves the targeted security outcome.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Color-changing coffee mugs ($10 value)

Roku is the pioneer of streaming to the TV and offers a unique platform for content publishers and developers. In this session, Roku will provide an overview of tools available to publishers, how to make the most of them and what monetization strategy is right for your content. Some topics covered will be new enhancements to Roku Direct Publisher, advertising tools and capabilities and some updated features and content discovery.

Microsoft has been extremely busy this year with announcements on its collaboration strategy. So what does this mean for your enterprise video streaming strategy? This session will detail the features and functionality of Microsoft Stream as it exists today, the roadmap for Microsoft Stream, and how it may differ from your current implementation. Special detail will focus on Microsoft Stream live streaming functionality as well as integration Microsoft Teams.

Low latency and fast startup times are KPIs for most streaming video producers, particularly for live events. Though a series of structured tests that measure startup time, latency, and network overhead, this session documents the results achieved by reducing fragment sizes, using hybrid fragment sizes, adjusting player parameters like first variant retrieved and the number of fragments retrieved before playback starts, opening a persistent connection between player and server, and other experiments. Results will be shown for computer playback as well as tvOS and Roku. You'll learn the most effective strategies for minimizing startup time and latency without swamping your network with additional HTTP requests, and what you'll need to do to implement them in your encoding and delivery workflows.

As live event streaming explodes in popularity, latency—whether time to first frame or end-to-end—is the elephant in the room. Live event streams are competing not only with broadcast and cable, but also with social media, and viewers’ tolerance for long latency times is dwindling. In this session, learn about the various ways to reduce latency at all points in your live streaming workflow, from acquisition to delivery to video player.

Remarkably....the major advertising holding companies are pulling out of Cannes. Instead, they are retargeting those resources towards data platforms and artificial intelligence. When digital marketing flows disrupt TV media buying, will your clients be ready?

Viewers are already mobile first. That means OTT and TVOD producers need to shift their mindsets to put mobile strategies at the forefront of their planning and development. In this presentation, Phunware’s Daniel Blackburn breaks down this game-changing shift — and how content producers can succeed with a savvy mobile strategy from development to launch and user engagement.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Apple TV 4K (32GB) ($179 value)

Although the technology keeps getting easier to use, building end-to-end streaming workflows can still be challenging. In this session, we walk you through installing software and building numerous on-demand and live streaming workflows. Along the way, we cover options and best practices for each step. Applicable scenarios include enterprise video, mobile journalism, sporting events, concerts, education use cases, and many more. You learn about streaming formats and architectures (including on-premises vs. cloud vs. hybrid), plus technologies and solutions for specific needs.

The Summit comes to a close with a panel discussion examining the state of live streaming in 2017 and looking at where it’s headed in the future. Will its growth continue unfettered, or are there roadblocks that will slow the expansion? What are the key technical and business challenges it faces? And what role will new technologies like HEVC, HDR, 4K, and VR/360° play in the live streaming of tomorrow?