December 21, 2019
By Timothy Fore-Siglin Contributing Editor, Steve Nathans-Kelly, Robert Reinhardt, Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen Conference Chair, Streaming Media and CMO, id3as
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SMW '19: Tim Siglin and Friends Wrap Up Streaming Media West

Read the complete transcript of this interview:

Tim Siglin: So, Tim Siglin, contributing editor, Steaming Media Magazine, founding executive director of not for profit Help Me! Stream, host of SMAF, Streaming Media Advance Forum, which we talked about earlier today, and of course your host for this Almost Live here at Streaming Media West 2019. I'm just gonna do a real quick recap of the last two days, and we still actually have a really good presentation that's going to be happening at 4 o'clock Pacific time this afternoon from Roger Pantos.

I will look at this camera briefly and then I will look back.

So, Roger Pantos, of course is the father of HLS. HLS is the segmented video technology that's used to do HTTP delivery of both live and on-demand content to iOS devices, Android devices, set-top boxes, and the like. One of the big issues with HLS is that it typically tends to be a two- to three-second segment, and you tend to need to have two or three of those in the buffer to start, so it has an inherent latency issue, but Roger Pantos will be talking about the idea of ultra-low latency for HLS in the coming months. And that's part of what his presentation will be at 4 o'clock this afternoon Pacific time.

From a recap standpoint, today we've had a number of really good interviewees. We started with Darcy [Lorincz]. Darcy was with Torque Esports. He talked about auto racing gaming, Fastest Gamer, I believe is what he called that. World's Fastest Gamer. Just talking about the sheer volume of people who are actually watching online, be it Twitch, be it other platforms like what Darcy's involved with, for Fortnite, for Minecraft, and then just friends competing against each other and drawing small audiences.

And then we had Peyote Perryman, and he has Digital P company, and when we first sat down to talk, I didn't have any idea what he did, but it turns out very near and dear to my heart. He actually does a lot of live streaming and television production of bass pro fishing competitions. Where I live in Tennessee, we have fairly large lakes, thanks to the TVA. Some of those are well-known bass lakes and there's a problem when you get out in the middle of those lakes where there's not a lot of connectivity, and he was talking about the challenges from a production standpoint of being able to live stream multiple cameras off a single competitive bass fishing boat in the middle of the lake and how they use cellular bonding and multiplexing to allow them to bounce off AT&T towers, Verizon towers, Sprint, et cetera.

We also had a few guests from Kaltura. Kaltura was one of our Readers' Choice winners. They actually won four: one for enterprise, one for education, one for webcasting, and I'm blanking on the fourth one, but they won four reader's choice awards, and they talked about each of those different categories, as well as the idea of AR, XR, and virtual reality as being a potential category in the near future.

We talked to Jon Landman from Teradek. Teradek actually provided the piece of hardware, the VidiU Go that we've used to do all of these live streams. We talked about HEVC, which is H.265, and how that's used for contribution and how end devices can receive HEVC content, but how CDNs aren't necessarily set up to deliver that.

We also had a chance to talk to Rema from FandangoNOW. She's the senior software engineer and she talked about transactional VOD, or transactional video on demand for being able to rent and or buy movies that have come out of theatrical release, and then more importantly, at least from my standpoint, we talked about the fact that she has the Fandango tech women and how she's working to provide mentorship opportunities for women in Fandango, and of course, as we're working with women in Streaming Media here at Streaming Media, to do that across the entire industry.

And then finally, we had Dom Robinson, who was part of Streaming Media Advanced Forum. Dom, of course, started the idea with SMAF, Streaming Media Advanced Forum. We also work fairly closely with the women in Streaming Media to have them as guests on the show, and in March we'll actually be having them hosting the entire show, and so Dom and I and Eric and Mark East will step away for that particular show in early March.

And then finally, my personal favorite, Yuri Reznik from Brightcove, who's a fellow with the company, does a lot of work in context-aware encoding, talking about now just how to encode the content, but also how that impacts CDN delivery, how it impacts the holistic view of how to deliver content. And that was actually a very interesting discussion for me.

Somebody who we've interviewed in the past, but who hasn't actually been on for interviews recently, we're gonna bring him up here right now. It's Robert Reinhardt. Robert, you no longer wear the white coat. You wear the black coat.

Robert Reinhardt: True, it does say the name, but it's not quite the same.

Tim: So, does that mean that you're a gray coat, as opposed to a black hat or a white hat?

Robert: Oh, that's a good point. I think it's more just I haven't paid to put the newest logo on a white coat yet.

Tim: So, I noticed something that you said on one of your Facebook posts, which was you really liked having a job where you could sit in the office for a little bit, and then go out and chop wood.

Robert: That's right.

Tim: Was that figurative or literal?

Robert: Both, actually. Depends on the day.

Tim: Okay, because when I grew up in upstate New York, the idea of chopping wood was not an enjoyable thing, but then again, you know, I was seven when I moved south, so maybe at my late 40s I might actually feel like chopping wood was something constructive.

Robert: I've always enjoyed it. I mean, for me it's just I'm not doing a whole lot. I don't like going to the gym, and if I could, maybe it's because I'm German. I like to be utilitarian.

Tim: There you go. You want to do the Hans and Franz.

Robert: I'm not gonna waste time doing something, it better be useful.

Tim: Yeah, speaking of Germans, we're gonna bring a non-German in here.

Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen: My wife's German.

Robert: I was just telling him that chopping wood I see as, I've never been a gym person, like going to the gym just to work out. I'd rather get something accomplished with that sweat, like chopping wood.

Tim: So, he posted on Facebook that he likes moving between sitting at a desk and chopping wood, and I asked if that was figurative or literal, and he said it's literal.

Tim: So how's the show?

Eric: Well, those are kind of like chunk segmented video, right, because you're taking wood and chunking it.

Tim: That's called a wood chipper and that was used in Fargo, which is in the north. So, how's the show been?

Eric: It's been great!

Tim: Awesome.

Eric: Really good. You know, I think the move here, we were of course wondering how that was going to affect things. Everyone, I think, has been really happy with the venue. It's not the beach, right? We all miss Huntington Beach, but it's been great being here in downtown L.A.

Tim: And apparently Nadine's gonna also walk through the shot, as well.

Robert: You gotta just keep walking and then come back.

Nadine Krefetz: I was told to do that.

Tim: Yeah, of course, as was he, as was Sheila, and Jose just chose to do it on his own, trying to break my stride. The only person who broke stride yesterday was Christopher Levy when the lady with a press badge came up and attempted to manipulate the camera. Thankfully we now have this little barrier around us to keep that from happening. That's a story we'll tell you off-air. Anyway, Tim Siglin signing out here and we'll look forward to seeing you in June in Boston for Streaming Media East 2020. Thank you.