Video: EuclidIQ Partners to Provide End-to-End OTT Encoding Solution
Tim Siglin: Welcome back to Almost Live here at Streaming Media West 2016 in Huntington Beach. I've got with me Frank Capria. Frank, you've recently joined EuclidIQ. What's your title with the company?
Frank Capria: I'm the Chief Product Officer.
Tim Siglin: Okay and your background was in the industry with Avid, is that right?
Frank Capria: Correct.
Tim Siglin: Okay, so what is your focus at the company with products? Are you trying to roll new products out or...?
Frank Capria: We're trying to productize existing technology. This company is 15 years old, has a lot of intellectual property, several patents, it's now time to productize them.
Tim Siglin: Tell me a little bit about what the EuclidIQ Technology is.
Frank Capria: The core technology is IQ264, an optimizing technology for the X264 encoder, so think of it as a plugin to X264. It uses the human visual system, perceptual quality optimization. To analyze each frame of video, what's important to the viewer, make that determination and devote more data to those macro blocks. It's part of optimizing the quantazation.
Tim Siglin: That's fairly hardcore mathematics. As you said it's a plugin for an encoder and X264's encoder you work with. How are you productizing that because that would seem like you'd either have to be an encoder manufacturer or an online video platform or something to use the product?
Frank Capria: Correct. What we're doing now is we've partnered to put IQ264 at the center of the encoding process for OTT providers. We've been able to build a complete pipeline of partners and a complete ecosystem that allows us to provide an end-to-end OTT solution, so we're solving two problems. We're improving the viewer experience and we're also simplifying the process for the content owner to monetize their properties.
Tim Siglin: What is that product called?
Frank Capria: That's called OptiiQ.ly.
Tim Siglin: OptiiQ.ly. I remember looking at it in the booth. It's spelled O-P-T-I-I-Q-L-Y.
Frank Capria: Yes.
Tim Siglin: You got the IQ in there in the middle of that?
Frank Capria: Of course. Everything's going to end in IQ.
Tim Siglin: In IQ. Okay, so OptiiQ.ly is a video platform that has the IQ264 technology and better than that?
Frank Capria: In the encoding process, so it can either be live or VOD.
Tim Siglin: Do potential users of it get a chance to sign up for a free trial? What's the process that they go through to test it out?
Frank Capria: They can easily test. They can send us their content, have it encoded, take a look at it. They can use our online cloud encoding systems themselves. Upload a file or drag and drop a file into our system, it will spit out the file. We take a look at it, you analyze it and then from there we talk to them about what their ... We make it so easy for them that once they decide that's the viewer experience they want, their decisions are, "What platforms do I want to be on? What is my monetization model going to be? Is it going to be SVOD? Is it going to be pay per view? Or will it be advertising or will it be some hybrid model? You know, have subscriptions subsidized in advertisement model.
Tim Siglin: Sure. Essentially for them the decision is the devices they're going to be on, the platforms and whether they want to do advertising based or subscription based?
Frank Capria: Correct.
Tim Siglin: Now what about social media, I understand you all are sort of moving into the social media field as well?
Frank Capria: As we working for OptiiQ.ly, as we were building that out, we began to realize that we had to build a cloud-based encoder that was scalable and to test that, we started just encoding and sending our encoded material off to social media and we made a rather simple discovery that our stuff just looked better than what came off of the camera roll of the phones that we were shooting with at the time to do our test, and so we found a real need there to answer the problem of, "Why does my video off of my phone always look worse on the social media platform than it did on the back of my camera?"
We've simplified the process of social media publications, so you shoot once on your phone. You select the video, you send it up. You only send it once to our cloud and from there we will publish to your social media accounts.
Tim Siglin: Okay, so that social media model is similar to your OTT model in the fact that you upload the content once and it publishes out to ... Rather than to multiple device tags, you're doing it to multiple social media?
Frank Capria: Right.
Tim Siglin: Okay, good.
Frank Capria: We're launching at the consumer level to start to show that the system can scale, implementally scale and we do plan on offering an enterprise version and that product's called UptiiQ. U-P-T-I-I-Q.
Tim Siglin: I-I-Q, again the IQ in there. What about HVEC? I know IQ264 is 264-based, have you ... We've talked to several people and some see the trend in HVEC, others don't see the trend. What are you all saying?
Frank Capria: We've talked to the same people probably because the jury is out. I personally believe HVEC will come.
Tim Siglin: How?
Frank Capria: The question is when.
Tim Siglin: When?
Frank Capria: I don't expect it to be quickly. I expect people to stay with 264 indefinitely. There are some providers that seem very committed to 264 almost indefinitely. We do have an IQ265 product in the pipeline. It has begun testing. It's all internal. We will be ready and we will respond to the market as needed.
Tim Siglin: Okay, very good. Again, this has been Frank Capria, Director of Product at EuclidIQ and this is Almost Live at Streaming Media West 2016.
Related Articles
From spatial to temporal to perceptual, optimizing video depends on how it's measured. This how-to guide explores recent advances taking place in video quality.
13 Apr 2017
Microsoft's Andy Beach and Streaming Media's Tim Siglin discuss the latest strategic developments around live-streamed and VOD esports in this interview from Streaming Media West 2016.
19 Nov 2016
DVEO CEO Laszlo Zoltan explains to Streaming Media's Tim Siglin how DVEO, with products in multiple categories, works to establish a beachhead in the server market, in this interview from Streaming Media West 2016.
18 Nov 2016
Yahoo's Omer Luzatti and Streaming Media's Tim Siglin discuss the rise of Facebook Live, who else has a shot at live UGC market share, and the challenges of scaling in this interview from Streaming Media West 2016.
16 Nov 2016
Brightcove's Matt Smith and Streaming Media's Tim Siglin discuss the death of Flash, the dawn of DASH, the impact of VPAID, and monetization in this interview from Streaming Media West 2016.
14 Nov 2016
Bitmovin CEO Stefan Lederer describes Bitmovin's enterprise focus, cloud encoding and player infrastructure, DRM, 24/7 worldwide support, and increasing attention to VR 360 in this wide-ranging interview with Tim Siglin at Streaming Media West 2016.
14 Nov 2016
In this interview at Streaming Media West 2016, Mirror-Image CEO Gustav Vik and Streaming Media's Tim Siglin discuss Mirror Image's innovative edge-caching model, and new Ad Block Override solution.
14 Nov 2016
LinkedIn's Heather Hurford and Streaming Media's Tim Siglin take a deep dive into the current challenges of closed-captioning live-streamed video in this interview from Streaming Media West 2016.
11 Nov 2016
Epiphan's David Kirk gives Streaming Media Producer's Tim Siglin the skinny on Epiphan's new 4K-capable streaming appliance, the Pearl 2, at Streaming Media West 2016.
11 Nov 2016
Ustream's Alden Fertig and Streaming Media's Tim Siglin discuss Ustream's expansion into VOD and enterprise since being acquired by IBM Cloud Video in this interview from Streaming Media West 2016.
10 Nov 2016
In early 2016, Wowza unveiled the GoCoder SDK, which accelerates live streaming mobile app development, and challenged users to create the best GoCoder app. The winners were revealed in this interview at Streaming Media West.
09 Nov 2016