Choosing the number of streams in an adaptive group and configuring them is usually a subjective, touchy-feely exercise, with no way to really gauge the effectiveness and efficiency of the streams. However, by measuring stream quality via metrics like PSNR, SSIM, and VQM, you can precisely assess the quality delivered by each stream and it’s relevancy to the adaptive group. This session identifies several key objective quality metrics, teaches how to apply them, and provides an objective framework for analyzing which streams are absolutely required in your adaptive group and their optimal configuration.

The rapid expansion of OTT offerings to the market is creating an abundance of choice for consumers, confusion, content overload and shrinking wallets. This session helps M&E companies and operators understand the software tools needed to build audience awareness and create known users for sustainable economic models. It explores the kinds of systems that companies need to get video to play across all devices, but also to build a sizable userbase and progressively move users smartly from freemium to advertising, pay-per-view, and subscription business models.

In this session, attendees learn the basics of how to develop a streaming channel for the Roku platform as well as more advanced tools and tactics. Roku provides an overview of its software developer kit and proprietary BrightScript language, educating attendees on the resources and services available to help manage channels, including integrated billing, and shares the best practices for creating a great streaming channel. The session also discusses the different ways to monetize content through advertising, on-device promotion and other marketing opportunities.

The way consumers watch video is in flux, but what does that really mean for content producers and service providers? Is the current hot strategy for cable channels to provide streaming options the right move? What types of programming are keeping consumers tied to their service providers? In this interactive session, learn the answers to these questions and others by exploring the latest survey results on cord-cutting/shaving, TV Everywhere, mobile viewing, future viewing plans and more. The presentation breaks down the results by age demographics and features findings not previously released publicly.

Streaming video is experiencing explosive growth worldwide. In response, leaders from across the ecosystem have formed the Streaming Video Alliance (SVA) to promote collaboration and create a new open architecture for streaming. This session will offer a new perspective on how industry collaboration will accelerate the future of streaming.

Media customers building for big screens, web experiences, mobile/tablet apps, and content for virtual and augmented reality are redefining the digital media landscape. New hardware and software options are bringing high-end digital cinema workflows to productions of all sizes and budgets. This presentation will highlight how to take ProsRes HQ workflow from source to destination in a matter of minutes.

Just when we thought the road map for HEVC was crystallizing, a series of disruptions are creating a new set of uncertainties. This talk presents the current state of the HEVC market in terms of point solutions within the end-to-end workflow. It dives deeply into discussing newly emerging challenges, and translates those into implications for HEVC’s value proposition. Attendees also get recommendations on the suggested road map for transitioning to HEVC and what other alternatives are available to content businesses for broadening reach and increasing service profitability.

We all know that great user experiences are critical to video consumption on mobile and set-top boxes, but how do we go about creating those? And what data do we have to support that investment? This session discusses how content owners can use UI to improve the content consumption experience by focusing on promotion, search and key features such as resume watching. Learn how to tie a multi-platform video experience together, balancing the capabilities of each platform/OS vs. keeping a common brand experience across devices. Data is also shared on the impact of relaunching platforms where the only change was a re-architected UI.

This session discusses how advertisers can more effectively and efficiently reach a buyer of a product or service with OTT than any other media. Over-the-top TV apps have access to an enormous amount of information about a prospective buyer of a product or service. By using real-time analysis of social media, geo-location, keywords, and historical buying habits, the metadata managed by an OTT platform can be used to predict real-time buying. As a result, this predictive buying translates into a higher cost per point/cost per lead that an advertiser is willing to pay for qualified buyers. Hear about some of the technology being used, the advertising research it enables, and benefits and challenges of this new advertising buying process.

To deliver video ROI, global enterprises need to touch as many people as possible. Increasing video search, reach, access, and engagement are key.  Video captions are proven to increase video views and completions as much as 40%. And getting local culture right is critical for growing new markets, teams and  future revenues. Translated subtitles can connect your company to millions more hearts and minds. This panel of multi-national video pros will discuss what works, and doesn't, and share insider how to on questions like: Where's the most ROI? If quality is critical to your company, what are good enough translations? And what are the risks of missing deadlines, cultural faux pas, and brand damage of bad translations.

From Netflix, HBO and Showtime, to broader offerings such as Dish’s Sling, CBS’s All Access, Comcast’s Stream, and Apple TV, rumored to launch in the fall, there are a lot of OTT options. Are we ensuring differentiated experiences for consumers, or are we building a slew of “me too” services? With reports showing OTT revenues are expected to top $10B within the next few years, are content owners building a healthy marketplace with enough competition and differentiation for revenues to continue to grow? This panel explores the business strategies behind the unbundling and unraveling of the industry as it moves from cable to the cloud and the subsequent sprint to build new OTT experiences.

With so many devices, browsers and operating systems in the market, companies are often left with confusing choices when it comes to their video players. Do you use open source technologies, or are you better off with a proprietary player? Should you build your own, or use one from a third party? Can you use the same player stack across all the devices you need to support, or will you need multiple solutions? Is it viable to still stream to the desktop with Flash and Silverlight, or can you build a streaming solution without any plug-ins? These and other questions are answered in this how-to session that outlines your options and explores the code necessary to build a modern streaming player.

Many publishers use multiple analytics solutions from various OVPs (client), CDNs (server), or other specialized providers, and thus find their data fragmented into silos and difficult to interpret. This presentation focuses on the software architecture and general approach BYUtv used to create an integrated analytics solution that combines video, page, and app performance data into a single data repository for all TV Everywhere platforms. Learn how to make the challenge of measuring video consumption, user behavior, and app performance easier across multiple devices.

OTT service providers have already gone ahead of the traditional VOD providers by providing 4K content to their subscribers. But is it giving the consumers the wow factor that they’re looking for, and is it really ultra HD? Internet deployment models have continued to push traditional broadcast video with more choices and evolved viewer experiences that are deployed quickly and often without heavy reliance on standards. What does this mean for ultra HD in OTT services? How does it scale across the industry and how is the term ultra HD ultimately defined? This panel features senior experts from content owners, studios, technology providers and service operators who give their individual perspectives on how ultra HD will scale across the industry and the evolution of the viewing experience within the next 5 years.

We often take for granted the cornerstone that all content services hinge on, which is DRM. Long considered a solved problem, there are significant technology shifts underway that are poised to disrupt the status quo and potentially require reengineering, or even re-architecture, of license servers on the back-end and apps on the front-end. This session discusses the impact of EME and HTML5 and what it means for service providers and app developers. Learn the impact of mandatory hardware-based DRM protection and its impact on OEMs and content owners.

In this session, industry experts share how they've been able to launch live-to-VOD services without a complete overhaul of infrastructure by applying software-defined video solutions to easily migrate from one type of scenario to another. Panelists describe how they use OTT workflows to create catch-up TV assets across existing broadband infrastructures. Among other tips, they share how they've employed JIT packaging for workflow simplification, cost reduction, and content production and how they're combining embedded encryption and decryption with JIT DRM wrapping.

As operators transition to all-IP they are looking at opportunities to conserve access network bandwidth. Multicast-assisted ABR (M-ABR) is a low cost and easy to deploy solution that allows operators to see multicast gains on all in-home devices leveraging their TV Everywhere infrastructure. This panel, organized by CableLabs, will discuss how M-ABR can be deployed over any multicast-capable access network and effectively extends the operator's CDN into the home by caching content on the gateway. Learn how multicast-assisted ABR allows operators to transition to all-IP, which enables it to be used in the short-term or as a long-term solution to bandwidth conservation on the access network.

While there has been much attention placed on new revenue streams created from the move to OTT content delivery, there has been less discussion of how the move to OTT requires a shift in the way publishers and syndicators conduct business. No longer are publishers going to rely on traditional syndication deals centered around content or catalogs, but rather the syndication of the consumer viewing experience. Join Conviva’s Chief Strategy Officer, Keith Zubchevich, where he’ll discuss Experience Syndication and the future of broadcast consumption.

See how to take any 4K camera and desktop encoding software as input, and then use Wowza technologies to create multiple quality levels to support adaptive bitrate streaming, record the video for later on-demand playback, and deliver the live feed with global any-screen streaming using H.264, H.265, or VP9.

Stream stitching and server-side ad insertion are picking up steam as approaches that let content owners beat ad blockers on the desktop and provide better ad delivery on the mobile web-among other benefits. However, the technology is still early in its adoption curve, with a lot of innovation in the works to drive its deployment across more devices and use cases. This session reviews the data to see where server-side ad insertion and stitching have been helpful to publishers and broadcasters and explore how it is evolving to support analytics, interactivity, programmatic and other components of online video advertising.

For TV Everywhere to reach adoption, the current authentication process needs be made as user friendly as possible, removing any obstacle standing between consumers and their content viewing experience. In this strategic session, we look at the recommended best practices that the OATC (Open Authentication Technology Committee) has proposed to achieve such Friction-free authentication and discuss a set of guidelines that aim to create a seamless user experience in the first instance.

As Microsoft's new Windows 10 operating system begins rolling out to all their devices, what is the impact to media apps, media consumption, and content owners? Client features such as Cortana and system-level notifications combined with new Azure services hope to enable more intelligent, more personalized viewing experiences. This session discusses what the adoption might look like, what new features will be of interest to consumers, and how Windows 10 enables a deeper intelligence in the apps we use to watch our content.

YouTube and Vine stars are rewriting the rules on how audiences discover and engage with content, leading to a swath of non-traditional pathways for exploration by brands, marketers, and fellow creators. It is a world devoid of the gatekeeping that dominates traditional media, allowing creators and brands to build direct relationships with the most engaged consumers. With that opportunity comes all the challenges of social media (community management, publishing strategy), plus an added layer of responsibility to the audience members themselves. In this session, successful creators and business leaders discuss how to work with video stars, what advertising means in this new space, and how the deep connection between stars and their superfans drives engagement with brands.

It goes without saying that consumption of video is changing as new platforms, formats, and industry dynamics evolve. From the dawn of 4K to Snapchat Discover, the quality, quantity, and sheer variety of video experiences are growing every day. This panel looks at the future of broadcast and video services in a multi-screen world, attempting to peer in to the near future to explore issues both at the fore, such as 4K, and still on the fringe, such as virtual reality.