Streaming Media Unveils Best of NAB 2018

Streaming Media has chosen the best new products from the 2018 NAB Show, looking for stellar contenders that will lead us into the future of streaming. 

Editors and contributors for Streaming Media and Streaming Media Producer—including Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, Troy Dreier, Steve Nathans-Kelly, Shawn Lam, Anthony Burokas, Jan Ozer, Tim Siglin, Paul Schmutzler, and Jason Thibeault—created an initial list of worthy newcomers, with Schumacher-Rasmussen and Lam making the final cuts. 

Streaming Media Winners

Beamr Transcoder VOD

One of the first marriages of video optimization and encoding and packaging services, we saw Beamr Transcoder achieve almost 50 percent bandwidth savings.

Brightcove Content-Aware Encoding

Brightcove is offering content-aware encoding for the first time, and recently announced Young Hollywood as a client, which means it’s ready for prime time. Content-aware encoding does exactly what it sounds like—it allocates encoding effort based on the type of content, resulting in more efficient (and cheaper) encodes.

Elemental CMAF Video Processing and Delivery

Elemental enables CMAF for on-premises and cloud-based video processing and delivery, enabling one set of files to be delivered to multiple disparate targets using HEVC and multiple DRMs. This is what the industry has been waiting for.

Ericsson MediaFirst Encoding Live 

Ericsson lets producers mix SDR and HDR video in the same stream. Typically, they'd have to do that in post, or even worse—let the chips fall and have a jarring leap from SDR to HDR. With MediaFirst Encoding Live, they can deliver it all as part of the same stream seamlessly

Harmonic End-to-End UHD HDR Solution for Live Sports Streaming

One of the few (if not only) live solutions with content-aware encoding that can customize the data rate to optimize content quality. 

Telestream Lightspeed Live Stream

Lightspeed has been around a while, but the latest version is a one box-solution for closed caption encoding to multiple live streams, including 608 and 708 captions.

Witbe’s Datalab

Most quality of experience dashboards display the data that the QoE vendor think is important. Witbe Datalab lets users select from multiple visualization widgets so they can create a dashboard that tracks preferred key performance indicators (KPIs) 

Streaming Media Producer Winners

Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe embraces advanced artificial intelligence machine learning to automate time-consuming tasks like color matching and ducking dialogue under a music track. Adobe calls its AI Adobe Sensei.

Alteros 6.5 Ghz GTX
Alteros has created an innovative networked microphone system called L.A.W.N (Local Area Wireless mic Network) that allows mics to be linked together as a quasi WiFi solution. This avoids intermodulation issues that limit the number of frequencies that can be used simultaneously in a spectrum, and the first unit allows up to 24 devices to be connected.

Bird Dog

Bird Dog Studio, Bird Dog Mini, and Bird Dog Coms offer innovative NDI solutions for video transmission, tally, and audio intercom transmission over inexpensive ethernet cables. NDI workflows can combine multiple functions into a single cable, replacing separate video, tally, and intercom audio cables.

Blackmagic Design ATEM Television Studio Pro 4K 

This all-in-one 8 4K input video switcher and combined panel has two big improvements over previous ATEM models: Each input now has internal Teranex scalers so users can mix and match video sources of different resolutions. Also, the Fairlight audio mixer is built-in so users now have access to powerful audio processing like EQ, compressor, limiter, gate, pan, and more. All this for under $3,000.

Boxcast BoxCaster Pro and BoxCast Streaming Platform

The Boxcaster Pro is one of the first HEVC streaming devices and it comes with unlimited use of the BoxCast platform—which can ingest HEVC and operates on the Amazon AWS CDN—for one year.

JVC GY-HC900 Connected Cam
The JVC GY-HC900 brings the power of two-way video streaming to remote broadcasters and producers. This 2/3-inch sensor camcorder features built-in Wi-Fi, Zixi error correction, and 500ms latency for outgoing and incoming video. The HC900 can record both MPEG-2 and H.264 in up to 10 bit, 1080/60p 4:2:2. It also features an HDR recording mode and 120fps in 1080p resolution.

vMix

vMix 21 will feature three-way color shading controls on each input. This is usually a feature reserved for cameras with camera control units and the ability to shade individual video sources, and it makes it much easier to mix and match video cameras in a single broadcast and attain a unified look.