Sneak Preview: How to Meet the Challenges of New Codec Adoption and Deployment
On Wednesday, February 26, digital video expert Jan Ozer will moderate the Streaming Media Connect panel "How to Meet the Challenges of New Codec Adoption and Deployment." Many of us want to see new codecs such as AV1 and VVC/H.266 succeed rapidly and bring the efficiencies and savings they were designed to deliver, but the reality is more complex. Codec adoption doesn't just depend on innovation; it's a marathon involving hardware readiness, market penetration, and achieving a 30% device compatibility threshold.
This panel assembles transcoding experts from key content owners and across the streaming industry to discuss the familiar and hidden challenges that complicate new codec adoption.
Confirmed panelists include:
- Behnam Kakavand, Video R&D Lead Engineer, Evolution
- Arnaud Leyder, CEO & Founder, Radiant Media Player EURL
- Boban Kasalovic, Senior Product Manager, Streaming, United Cloud
- Hassene Tmar, Technical Program Manager, Video Infrastructure, Meta, and Software Coordinator, AOM
Jan Ozer is the Founder of Streaming Learning Center. He's a digital video expert and frequent contributor to Information Today, Inc.'s Streaming Media magazine.
"HEVC rode the 4K/HDR wave to success, but AV1, VVC, and LCEVC lack an equivalent killer app," Ozer says. "With CDNs racing to the bottom on pricing and new royalty pools threatening to increase costs, codec adoption is no longer just about technical merit—it’s about survival."
As Video R&D Lead Engineer, Behnam Kakavand's role is to manage identification, prototyping and documentation of the next generation technologies that help Evolution keep bringing winning products to its users. This includes all related products and technologies, from studio cameras to the choice of CODEC and containers and delivery protocols. He has been in the streaming industry since 2010, working with various streaming services, including UGC live and VOD, premium VOD, cloud gaming, and live linear.
“We have been keeping a close eye on next-gen codecs (HEVS and AV1) for long while now," Kakavand says. "The goal is to be able to provide better quality to the users without incurring too much bandwidth costs, as well as opening new possibilities such as adding HDR to the mix. There are obstacles to overcome both technical and non-technical before the addition of a new codec for an already established service. 2025 seems to be the year that this addition will finally happen and we will be able to measure the benefits in large scale.”
Arnaud Leyder is a telecom engineer with 15 years of experience in the streaming media industry. Prior to founding Radiant Media Player, he worked at Apple, Brightcove, and Vivendi. For 10 years now, he and his team at Radiant Media Player have been working towards building the best possible HTML5-everywhere video player. He is committed to bringing innovative and reliable products with low-carbon footprint to the streaming media world.
"In 2025, given market fragmentation and new codec features, we can see the benefit of having a 'testing the waters end-to-end' strategy before committing any significant resources to an encoding pipeline," Leyder says. "How can I make sure my content will be presented to the viewer the way it was created? A simple content encoding strategy is not enough anymore, you need to have a progressive content encoding strategy: one that can scale with volume, new devices, latest codec features while still supporting legacy devices with a “lesser” viewer experience.”
Boban Kasalovic is a technology professional with 20 years of experience in TV production, broadcasting, and streaming industries. He currently manages the development of products in the Streaming department at United Cloud, the leading regional innovation center for developing telco and media products. He has been at the forefront of multiple teams in the company, driving the development of encoding and streaming solutions for a service that delivers over 1,000 TV channels to millions of households in the Balkan region and South East Europe.
"The live streaming industry is at an inflection point, balancing the need for higher efficiency, better quality, and lower costs," Kasalovic says. "Adoption of new codecs continues to have a huge impact in years that comes, especially when it comes to large-scale streaming. This is where our battle begins—not in impacting the end users, but in transforming the business itself."
Hassene Tmar is Technical Program Manager at Meta; he also holds the role of Software Coordinator within the Software Implementation Working Group at AOMedia. Prior to his tenure at Meta, Hassene held the position of Engineering Manager at Intel, where he led the successful open-sourcing of SVT-HEVC, SVT-VP9, and SVT-AV1 encoder implementations. Hassene holds a Bachelor of Applied Sciences degree in Computer Engineering from the University of British Columbia. Throughout his time at Meta, Hassene has been supporting multiple teams within the Video Infrastructure Group with the deployment of HDR, AV1 and the launch of Meta's Scalable Video Processor. Additionally, Hassene has been at the forefront of fostering academic collaborations between the Video Infrastructure team and various universities, with the aim of addressing the challenges of delivering video at scale.
"From the Meta side, AVC is not enough anymore," Hassene Tmar told a Streaming Media Connect audience in 2024. "We're at a point where we're hoping to move from the minimum codec requirement from being AVC to VP9. And so AVC will only [be used] as a legacy support. Then, VP9 will probably be the main portion. I know that our set of applications is a little different, but this is what we see on our side. It's been quoted publicly that more than 70% of our watch time on iOS is already in AV1, and that number is growing.”
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