5 Great Reasons to Attend Streaming Media East
I'm exceptionally pleased to return to in-person teaching at Streaming Media East, which will be held on May 24–25, 2022 at the Westin Copley Place in Boston, MA. I'll be producing two 3-hour workshops on May 23, the Monday before the event, and presenting and/or moderating three sessions during the event. As usual, each one is designed to give you information and skills you can put to use as soon as you get back from the event.
Workshop: Advanced Codec Implementation & Production
May 23, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. EDT
This 3-hour pre-conference session is for those who want a deep dive into the current production and implementation status of codecs like AV1, VVC, LCEVC, and EVC. During the session, I'll cover:
- The comparative quality of H.264, VP9, HEVC, AV1, VVC, LCEVC, and EVC
- The encoding time for each codec, which translates directly to encoding cost
- Decoding requirements, and whether decoding can be performed in software or requires hardware
- Available live and VOD encoders for all newer codecs, plus availability within cloud encoding platforms
- The implementation status of each codec respecting chip and SoC support in mobile devices and smart TVs, plus operating system and browser support
- The royalty structure for each codec with the help of patent attorney Robert J. L. Moore of Volpe Koenig
- Encoding strings for open-source and other available software, and decoding strings for playback tests
- Third-party projections for codec deployment and adoption
You'll leave knowing when new codecs like AV1, VVC, LCEVC, and EVC will become relevant to your practice, what they will cost for encode/decode, how to encode with open-source and other options, how much bandwidth savings they will provide, and what it will cost to use them.
Workshop: Affordable Gear & Workflows for REMI Production
May 23, 1:00 p.m - 4:00 p.m. EDT
Before the pandemic, most production involved multiple speakers and production teams located in the same room or conference hall. Then the pandemic hit, and most production shifted to remote production, or REMI, forcing many of us to quickly become proficient on both sides of the camera. Here's the training you wish you had before the pandemic started.
It starts with production. You'll learn how to choose production tools like cameras, microphones, video mixers, and lighting implements, and how to connect and use them, including fundamental skills like white balancing, setting exposure, and framing the subjects with a DSL and camcorder.
Then you'll learn how to choose and use live streaming production alternatives for connecting your speakers into a single live feed you can broadcast to your viewers directly or via social media channels like Facebook and YouTube. We'll cover on-prem software mixers like Wirecast and vMix, hardware mixers like the ATEM Mini Pro, and cloud services like easylive.io. You'll learn how these options compare quality and cost-wise, and how challenging they are to operate from a technical perspective.
You'll leave knowing how to produce video that looks and sounds great, and how to convert multiple A/V inputs into a live stream you can mix on-prem or in the cloud, and distribute to viewers via social media and other available channels.
Presentation: Produce AV1 with Open-Source Alternatives
May 24, 1:30 p.m. - 2:15 p.m. EDT
For many VOD producers, it's go time for distributing video using the AV1 codec. According to www.caniuse.com, AV1 plays in 74.25% of available browsers, plus all newer Android phones and many smart TVs and living room dongles. Meanwhile, the Alliance for Open Media released version 1.0 of the SVT-AV1 codec, joining libaom-av1 as an affordable and increasingly speedy encoding alternative. This session will explore encoding with these two open-source alternatives, testing key options like presets, threads, available rate control options, and other parameters to arrive at the optimal command string for both encoders.
Presentation: Best Strategies for Reducing Bandwidth & Storage Costs
May 24, 3:45 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. EDT
While video quality is typically the primary concern of streaming producers, controlling bandwidth and storage costs is never far behind. If the latter is one of your KPIs, this is the session for you.
Intuitively, there are four straightforward ways to reduce bandwidth and storage costs:
- Trim the fat from your existing ladder
- Adapting per-title encoding
- Deploying a more efficient implementation of your current codec, and
- Deploying a new codec.
This session shows real-world examples of all four methods so you can return to your office with definite action steps to reduce these key operating costs..
Panel: Latency and Live Streaming at Scale
May 25, 11:30 p.m. - 12:15 p.m. EDT
This is a panel discussion that I'm moderating. Low latency has been top of mind for most live producers over the last few years. This panel explores issues like:
- How audiences and applications dictate the need for low latency and your ability to deliver with low latency
- What factors to consider to address streaming latency
- What practical steps you can take to reduce it.
This panel of experts discusses the key latency issues facing live streamers today, and how low you can—or need to—go.
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