This course helps those new to streaming media get familiar with relevant terms, concepts, and technologies. The session begins with a definition of terms like codecs, container formats, and adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming, as well as encoding concepts like bitrate control (VBR, CBR) and frame types (I, B, and P). Then it details the key H.264 encoding parameters that impact quality and compatibility. Next up is adaptive streaming, including a review of available ABR technologies like HLS and DASH, how to formulate an encoding ladder, and how to use multiple DRMs to protect premium content. Then we review the technical requirements for ABR delivery to computers, smartphones and tablets, OTT devices, and smart TVs. We finish with a quick look at advanced codecs like HEVC, VP9, AV1, and VVC. You walk away knowing the technical requirements for delivering to all key platforms and an understanding of how to do so.

The concept of a single set of files deliverable to all relevant end points has been the holy grail since the dawn of adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming. By mid-2019, the Common Media Application Format (CMAF) will enable such a solution, slashing encoding, storage, and bandwidth costs for companies who deploy it. In this workshop, attendees learn how to create CMAF-packaged assets for HLS and or DASH and get a greater understanding of the benefits CMAF has to offer. We start at the industry baseline of H.264-based CMAF content, then offer insight and direction on how to handle more complex and emerging solutions. We will briefly cover how to extend what you learned to alternate codecs starting with VP9, then to 4K encoding, packaging, and delivery with HEVC or AV1. Then, we dive into what needs to happen next inside the video players to enable proper multi-bitrate ABR streaming with low latency. Last but not least, we cover the details around protecting your CMAF content with DRM, including what you need to know about CENC, CBCS, CTR, and working toward truly fulfilling the vision for unified common encryption DRM on the horizon.

The build vs. buy debate will never go away, but sometimes the perfect tool for content development and distribution already exists, is easy to learn and use, and fits within your budget. This workshop covers the latest developments in a number of tools that will help you at virtually every step of the streaming video workflow, from editing to analytics. This workshop is open to product owners, engineering staff, or others involved with delivering media—you don’t need a development background, just an interest in finding out how the latest tools can optimize your workflow. Nadine Krefetz and co-presenters cover the following types of tools: cloud-based switching products for multi-playout management; collaborative editing; UX prototyping; churn-busting analytics; artificial intelligence and machine learning; live and ondemand video libraries.

Every compression practitioner should understand what objective quality metrics do, how to compute them, and how to use them. This workshop guides attendees through the following steps: an introduction to metrics like PSNR, SSIM, SSIMPLUS, and VMAF, plus several 3D metrics; how to compute metrics with open source tools like FFmpeg and VMAFMaster, as well as third-party tools like the Moscow State University Video Quality Measurement tool and the SSIMWAVE VOD Monitor Inspector tool; how to interpret the results; how to use these tools to choose a preset, choose the top rate for video files, and build an encoding ladder.

Do you want to realize maximum business value from video machine learning solutions? To do so requires customization and model training. During this workshop, we go over core concepts that will help you in your customization and model training efforts. We also take a look at various options that are in the wild and ready for you to realize value from machine learning applications for video. We wrap things up with some hands-on demonstrations and customization and training tips and tricks. You walk away from this workshop armed with knowledge on how to get started providing your business value in this exciting area of video machine learning.

One of the most widely used tools with video encoding and deployment processes is FFmpeg, an open-source command line utility that can read and write just about any video, audio, or subtitle codec with just about any format, container, or protocol. Starting with core command line parameters, you learn how to read video files and output in various bitrates, codecs, and containers. The workshop then moves into more intermediate-level commands with map parameters and video filters. We look at more advanced utilization of FFmpeg as well, exploring composition of two video sources with text labels and placement and setting up multiple processes to output multiple bitrates for adaptive delivery.

From voice control of your living room to an increasingly personalized content viewing experience, customers are living in a golden age of entertainment. But building a customer-first experience doesn’t happen overnight—it takes hard work and a laser-focused strategy. This keynote with Amazon’s Sandeep Gupta will discuss how the company has evolved its hardware strategy and reimagined the ways voice can power a seamless entertainment experience for customers, leveraging strategic partnerships with would-be competitors and a user experience focused on content and discovery.

We all dream of broadcast-quality streaming of live TV. Flexibility and video quality—once considered trade-offs—have both become uncompromisable table stakes. As we enter more seasoned stages of cloud native-architecture and low-latency ABR streaming, content and services providers see the true promise of the ability to augment and scale video headends, optimize infrastructure, and enable fast and seamless delivery across multiple networks. So how close are we to going all-in on flexibility without compromising quality? And what potential could fully leveraging Kubernetes container orchestration unlock for the media industry?

More than 60% of U.S. households subscribe to at least one SVOD service, according to Parks & Associates; Deloitte says that the average subscriber pays for three services. As the total cost of those services approaches the cost of a cable TV bundle, might we see a reduction in subscriptions? Should we expect more bundling of SVOD services, with or without cable subscriptions? How can SVOD services prevent customer churn? Join our panel of industry experts as they discuss the implications of an increasingly crowded market.

Of all the blockbuster SVOD services coming soon, HBO Max is perhaps the most hotly anticipated, bundling the entire HBO service with new HBO Max Originals and a deep library of fan favorites from throughout WarnerMedia’s 100-year content collection. Jason Press is in charge of building the platform, and his team will use technologies such as machine learcning/artificial intelligence, high efficiency video encoding, and UHD/4K to make it happen. Join this fireside chat for a glimpse inside HBO Max before it launches.

The velocity of technological change and audience expectations aren’t slowing down, and launching an OTT service isn't a simple undertaking. Join this strategic session on building a future-proofed media app strategy to launch and connect with your most valuable audiences while maximizing your current and future tech investments. Jim Bennette shares the key steps from the important but often overlooked step of defining your goals, then examines the process from devising a holistic app strategy to successfully connecting with your most valuable viewers.

LinkedIn Live has quickly become one of the most valuable streaming platforms, reaching more than 600 million professionals worldwide. In this discussion you will not only learn about the value and engagement that LinkedIn Live is driving for key publishers, companies, and influencers, but also how you can become a part of the LinkedIn Live beta program as well. Join LinkedIn’s Streaming Producer, Chris Packard, on a journey into the world’s largest professional streaming network. 

Content delivery networks (CDNs) deliver vast quantities of data to an ever-growing, media-hungry audience. The sheer scale of operations and consumer adoption of these services is daunting. Forgotten when they work, yet in the spotlight if they fail, the CDNs have a thankless but critical role in our industry. In this session, Dom Robinson, chair of Content Delivery Summit and 25-year veteran in the CDN space, talks to executives from the leading CDNs about the state of the sector, the challenges being faced, new technology strategies, and which services are rising and falling in demand. If a CDN is a part of your ecosystem, then this broad discussion should touch on a variety of high-level topics that directly affect your business.

From delivery to improving end-user experiences, this covers how enterprises can support internal video activities at scale without harming the network. Focus is then placed on developing a secure-rich process for accessing and hosting video assets to be accessed by employees and stakeholders. This also includes covering value adds for end users, including using artificial intelligence to make content more accessible and discoverable through automated processes.

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 such as VMAF, SSIMPlus, and others, you can precisely assess the quality delivered by each stream and its relevancy to the adaptive group. This presentation identifies several key objective quality metrics, teaching how to apply them using commercial and open source tools and how to use them to fine-tune your adaptive bitrate ladders and encoding settings.

If content is king, then graphics are one of the most important technologies in streaming media. While sharp producers have been using graphical overlays forever, the Chromium Embedded Format and the rapidly growing esports market have thrust cloud graphics—which don’t require expensive on-prem servers—into the view of major broadcasters and OTT streamers globally. This workshop will feature a live technical demo, viewer research, and an overview of the vendors in the cloud graphics space.

The discussion around microservices has moved from theory and planning to looking at optimization for deployment for streaming within a microservices/services-oriented architecture. A year ago many were thinking about deployment in this new highly available, scalable and agile way; today, it has emerged as common practice, or at the least as a common strategy. This session examines some examples of microservices in action in a discussion with leading content publishers and goes deep into some realworld microservices architectures, exploring introspection, orchestration, containerization, and wider virtualization strategies.

In this session, we review every stage of the live- and on-demand streaming workflow and explore how open source options can be used in real-world implementations. We’ll examine tools such as FFmpeg, VLC, and NGINX, as well as open source codecs, and discuss our panelists favorites for solving specific challenges, the pros and cons of each, and compare them to some commercial offerings. While this session is of use for technicians and developers, the emphasis is on higher-level strategic questions about where and when open source tools can replace commercial offerings and thus reduce costs.

The promise of ATSC 3.0 is the ability to multicast not only audio and video, but data as well. If ATSC 3.0 can achieve this, plus allow for targeted personalized advertising, the broadcast world will have combined the digital promise of targeting with the scale of broadcast, essentially changing the broadcast vs. streaming playing field. How will this work with legacy CDNs and new 5G pipes? What does broadcast-as-a service mean? How do converged OTT-OTA apps work in the future? How does this help deliver the right content to the right audience?

With the introduction of myriad screens and technologies like time-shifting, DVR, and on-demand programming, the days of families gathering around the television to watch linear TV are gone. Consumers expect to bend “TV time” to work around their schedules, and they demand an ever-evolving set of intuitive yet cutting-edge features to constantly improve the experience. Philo CTO Ben Chambers walks us through how the team at the nation’s first entertainment-focused OTT service is approaching and exceeding consumer expectations.

Consumers’ video consumption habits are changing dramatically. Generation Z watches video in a completely different way than older generations, and it’s imperative that we reach them on their terms, with the type of content they want, in the formats that speak to them, on the devices they prefer. In this fireside chat, we talk with executives from Awesomeness about what works— and what doesn’t—with the next generation of consumers.

Many consumers are looking for alternatives to traditional cable and SVOD services, as well as skinny bundles that aren’t so skinny after all. Enter free, ad-supported services that offer premium content without the premium price tag. We talk about the challenges and opportunities facing AVOD services in today’s market.

As DRM becomes a global standard for content creators and consumers, the DRM lifecycle becomes more and more important. Implementing DRM into a complex video workflow can be a daunting task. That combined with the mandatory use of DRM for premium content leaves an OTT Operator with a lot of questions. In this session, we explore the “DRM Lifecycle” from content creation to editing to digital dailies to post to screeners and, ultimately, to consumer distribution.

Born with the iPad, Generation Alpha consumes video in ways that are even more radically different than Generation Z. So how do you create content and deliver it in a way that connects with viewers 9 and younger, while being respectful of the fact that these are just kids? Pocket.watch is the studio behind Ryan ToysReview, HobbyKidsTV, and EvanTubeHD, and this discussion with GM/SVP for Channels David B. Williams will shed light on the opportunities and challenges that come with creating content for the next generation.

As video offers proliferate, many have purely on-demand content while others include live programming. Understanding the nuances of consumer interest in live video, especially sports and news, is critical to securing content rights, designing offers, and targeting subscribers. For many consumers, interest in a favorite team or athlete is the primary driver for their live video subscription, while other consumers have virtually no interest in sports or traditional news and often find little value in live TV. This session explores findings from a new consumer survey from Altman Vilandrie & Co., including a deep dive into reasons for consumer adoption of live TV offers, and a panel discussion featuring top executives from the TV industry.

Having the right tools for the job allows you to work smarter, not just harder. When developing for and supporting some of the biggest live streaming events such as the Super Bowl, Olympics, and the World Cup, we have beefed up and refined the arsenal of tools we bring. This session covers some of the tools to monitor, debug, and identify to solve problems quickly and effectively for live and on-demand streaming content, then dives deeper into some key, often overlooked use cases.

Many streaming producers are attempting to enable viewers to interact with live streamers in relative real time through chat, Q&A, betting, bidding, and more. They all encounter the same challenge: reducing latency while syncing interactions between the live streamer and viewers. There’s currently a race between WebRTCbased approaches, which are very low in latency but hard to scale, and HTTP-based approaches, which are easy to scale but higher in latency. Neither is ideal. This session details approaches to achieving interactivity at scale using existing technologies.

This discussion details how video engineers should set up their CDNs for optimal delivery around the world. From multi-CDN to optimizing encoding and transcoding efforts, we provide actionable recommendations based on real, unbiased testing. Attendees walk away with insights regarding how to optimize their CDN(s) for media delivery.

This presentation details how to implement CMAF into a VOD workflow, and how CMAF saves storage space, reduces latency, and improves cache efficiency, which leads to better performance and the simplification of content encryption.

Per-title encoding techniques have progressed from theory to reality with real-world statistics to verify effectiveness. In this roundtable, panelists discuss how their technologies work and the overall impact on their encoding ecosystem and share case studies about how per-title encoding has saved bandwidth and/or improved quality of experience.

Dreams really do come true, and sometimes gamers get a chance for real-world action. In this case study, Torque Esports introduces World's Fastest Gamer, an online competition that lets casual mobile players and pro gamers become actual pros. Using advanced driving simulators, WFG teaches driving skills and turns talented gamers into motorsport professionals.

The latest innovations and growing affordability of livestreaming technology have opened the esports livestreaming market to the average consumers, allowing anyone to become a live streamer with the right tools. Learn how the latest technology developments have enabled esports fans to join YouTube, Twitch, Mixer, or other livestreaming services.

Streaming live video is just the beginning. To succeed today, it’s crucial to engage fans and keep them tuning in. Putting out a tune-in message isn’t enough anymore. You’ve got to get fans invested in the next match, engaging them on multiple platforms. Here’s how some leagues cater to their fans to create all-new experiences and lifelong engagement.

Don’t assume that young people today are going to watch the same sports that their parents follow. Young viewers are up for grabs, as the traditional sports world undergoes massive changes. Will today’s young viewers grow up loving basketball and football, or will esports eventually dominate? Here’s how leagues are securing the next generation.

Advanced technologies such as ultra-low latency, synchronized multi-stream, and 5G are transforming the streaming of live sports, offering new, superior experiences to traditional linear TV. However, as these technologies increase the value and consumption of live streaming, they present challenges in protecting high-value content. This session will focus on the new technologies that are transforming live sports video, as well as the what this means from a content value and content protection perspective.

Women now account for nearly half of all video game enthusiasts, and they’re turning their passion into successful careers—and vibrant communities—on Twitch. In this fireside chat, Vice President of Sales Katherine Bowe will lead a discussion with one of Twitch’s leading female content creators. Find the secrets to working with brands as a female broadcaster, building a community by streaming what you love, and more in this lively session.

What's happening in collegiate esports? How do new programs in elementary, middle school, and high school esports factor in? We look at the benefits to an esports and streaming program in schools and how it prepares students for jobs in the real world. We'll also discuss opportunities for streaming hardware and software vendors to sell into this new vertical within education.

While social media and entertainment get most of the attention when it comes to live streaming, it’s just as crucial to B2B and internal corporate communications. This panel of experts discusses how to effectively and efficiently connect to all of your internal viewers while also being able to scale for an external audience, as well as the myriad technologies that can be used from capture to distribution.

How reliable is your live-streaming production workflow? Learn how to use and configure the essential (and purposely redundant) components of a live streaming event system, including cameras, H.264 encoders/streamers, video switchers, video signal conversion, recorders, and more. Also learn how to best deploy the live stream to your audience based on business requirements: Do you utilize free social media outlets, work with a premium third-party streaming service, or build your own live-streaming infrastructure? Learn how to approach different live scenarios with the right gear to fit the budget you have.

Join us as we discuss the massive increase in live streaming viewership and the importance of your audience with one of the industry leaders in the tech space.

Millions of people around the world tuned in for the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup Finals in France between the USA and Norway. After the huge success of FOX Sports’ innovative broadcast of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, our panelists collaborated with FOX Sports to deliver new remote production capabilities and greater efficiencies for this year’s women’s final. Boasting more than twice as many streams as the 2018 World Cup, these panelists discuss how they enabled production teams in Los Angeles to begin editing multiple camera feeds within less than 10 seconds of the live action for highlights, playback, and bridge programming and employed new capabilities such as real-time direct-to-cloud archiving and more extensive—yet consolidated—monitoring.

As more people are turning to streaming as their main source of content, companies are dealing with the necessity of scaling quickly. On top of this, everyone is viewing from many devices, each with a specific set of quality specifications. With many viewers now getting their live events and sports coverage almost exclusively from streaming services this panel discusses the necessary tools to ensure a successful viewing experience.

Not all content is created equal. Gate and switch content to avoid getting trapped into expending resources needlessly. Reject or send the content to the appropriate encoder to optimize storage & transmission costs while ensuring video quality thresholds. Attend this session for your chance to win: 10 gift cards for streaming services ($25 value each)

In this talk, we will walk through the future landscape of major problems to solve in video encoding – what lies ahead in terms approaches to reduce bandwidth and encoding compute complexity, datacenter power consumption, codec adoption, quality measurements, and tools to increase differentiation across a range of industries.

Around the globe, OTT video consumption is rising steadily, with live streaming, in particular, attracting large audiences. This necessitates that operators adopt a holistic methodology to service assurance, for better visibility into what is happening with the live OTT workflow, decrease the chance for churn and maximize monetization. Monitoring solutions are a fundamental requirement today for both VOD and live OTT applications. This presentation will highlight challenges of live streaming and how monitoring can help by providing a centralized service assurance view, validation of where the issue is located, and increased flexibility via a software-based and cloud-deployable approach. Attend this session for your chance to win: Google Nest Hub ($129 Value)

Latency is one of the most important factors in delivering content to their users. There is a growing trend in the community of partners, customers, providers to meet the eyeball providers away from carrier hotels. The high density environments require a greater amount of power, cooling, redundancy that EdgeConneX has built for our customers since inception. We’ll discuss trends in key markets, and why EdgeConneX is recognized as the leader in this space. Attend this session to win: $200 gift card.

Designing great digital products -- because digital is always evolving -- is a never-ending proposition. Identifying what users really want is only the beginning. How can you make the UX definition and design process run more smoothly and deliver products which are both compelling, effective and technically efficient? We discuss latest practices for OTT products which will make everyone involved in the product life-cycle through to end-consumers happy with what you’re creating. Attend this session for your chance to win: A 1.5 day UX audit

At the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple announced the specs for a brand-new extension of their HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) protocol: Low-Latency HLS. While reducing latency for live streaming is a valiant goal (and one that we can get behind), this news interrupted an industry-wide effort to do so via chunked transfer encoding. With more viewers ditching traditional satellite and cable services each year, the race for speedier live-stream delivery is in full force. Apple Low-Latency HLS is an emerging standard that could very well lead the pack, but what are the pros and cons? The standard’s real-world appeal and long-term benefits are still playing out. Join our discussion and learn where the industry is heading, the overall adoption, ideal use cases, and what can be expected of low-latency HLS next. Attend this session for your chance to win:$250 Amazon gift card

As streaming media continues to take over the entertainment world, content creators and providers will require advanced infrastructure to keep up with production schedules and consumer demands. This session will examine how private networks can play a critical role in the life cycle of streaming content, from its creation, distribution and through consumption. We’ll discuss how PacketFabric enable powerful new workflows to quickly go from the camera to the cloud to the screen, by delivering reliable, flexible and high-capacity connectivity from production locations to cloud providers to CDNs, and beyond. Attend this session for your chance to win:Amazon gift card ($200 value)

Reliable, high-quality video viewing experiences are critical to video publishers. This presentation discusses how DLVR's integration on Azure offers a highly scalable, measured, optimized, and simplified multi-CDN service for large and medium-size Azure customers running video workloads. Attend this session for your chance to win: 3 Hydro Flasks ($35 value each)

With more subscription streaming offerings coming onto the market every year, subscriber engagement and retention is top of mind for OTT providers. In this presentation, Recurly will share the latest subscription OTT benchmarks on churn and subscriber retention as well as the strategies smart OTT providers are using to fight churn and accelerate growth. Attend this session for your chance to win: "Subscribe" T-Shirts ($10 value) and "Subscriber" tote bags ($9 value)

Celebrate the winners of the 12th annual Streaming Media Magazine Readers’ Choice Awards.

Advanced TV has opened up a new world of possibilities when it comes to the sports viewing experience. This includes new direct-to-consumer (DTC) platforms that let fans watch anytime or anywhere, second-screen experiences that complement the TV and in-person viewing experience, and more personalized content and ads that are relevant to the viewer. Whether you’re watching from the stands, from the couch, or on-the-go, new technology is delivering a heightened sports viewing experience for fans everywhere. In this session, Kiran Paranjpe moderates a roundtable of digital executives from sports organizations to discuss their successes and strategies launching and growing DTC platforms. Topics include streaming technology decisions, subscription vs. advertising revenue models, regional vs. global distribution models, and marketing DTC services effectively.

What delights viewers and keeps them engaged when it comes to the video user experience (UX)? This panel discusses the trends media companies are following when it comes to creating a oneclick environment, moving customers through a registration or transaction process, or simply structuring navigation so content can be more easily found. Are text-based navigation systems a bad idea? What about removing the program guide? If customers churn early and often when they’re not happy, what will keep viewers happy?

Study after study shows increased viewing for all OTT services on the TV screen, and not just SVOD services. In fact, ad-supported services are growing in number, leading to an increase in connected TV ad inventory. If you’re an ad buyer, how do you take advantage of this growing source of addressable ad inventory? If you’re a provider with inventory, how do you connect with the buyers? What are the issues with connected TV advertising, and how are they being addressed? Join this panel representing both the supply and demand sides, as well as content services and platforms, for answers.

Do vendor machine learning models not get the gist of your video? If so, it’s time to create a custom model. Don’t worry if you’re not a data scientist. These days, there is a growing number of solutions available for everyone. During this session, we take a look at some of these solutions, talk through what it takes to use them, and discuss some tips and tricks to keep in mind as you do. By the end of this session, you should feel empowered to start tinkering even without contemplating a data science degree.

Consumers were supposed to pioneer “extended reality” (XR), the umbrella term for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). Instead, things took an unexpected turn: Corporations and universities are leading the way for training, learning, and conferencing use cases. These experiences entail streaming a wide range of large media assets including video, images, audio, and 3D objects. This session features a discussion with one of the leading XR labs in the United States.

This presentation will fundamentally shift the way attendees think of playout in the cloud. Rather than building a schedule and expensively re-encoding assets in real time for broadcast, learn how to decouple the monolith of playout software into discrete components on top of AWS services. The approach discussed will open new possibilities of channel customization, personalization, and end-user quality, while also dramatically reducing running costs.

IP multicast is 31 years old this year. This session takes a rapid tour through multicast’s history; looks at some deployments and their successes and failures; and examines the emergence of IPTV, operator CDN, and application-layer P2P models. It then looks at why multicast adoption has been difficult, along with some of the technical and commercial challenges it has faced. Finally, it looks to the future and the re-emergence of interest with the hot new technologies in the space, including multicast-ABR, LTE-B, and BIER.

Is latency impacting your customers’ experiences and your business? The good news is sub-second latency is within reach. In this session, you learn about WebRTC, what it takes to support it and the available APIs from MediaStream to RTCDataChannel and more, as well as the protocols that make it real time such as UDP, DTLS, SCTP and everything in-between. This session also addresses workflow best practices and implementation options.

Ultra-low latency for live is the most important challenge that ABR streaming faces. THEO Technologies' HESP is a new streaming protocol, an alternative to HLS and DASH and streams over HTTP, that enables streaming services to be delivered with sub second latency, with a significantly reduced streaming bandwidth, at scale. Join the conversation to get the latest straight out of the THEO Innovation Lab.

5G marks a new era of cellular network connectivity. In this presentation, Jon Landman, VP of sales at Teradek, describes how 5G will make a difference for live streaming. Learn how you can use 5G to optimize your connectivity for more reliable broadcasts. Explore what exactly is 5G and how it differs from our current 4G LTE networks. Discover how you can combine 5G connectivity and HEVC compression to deliver higher-quality video while using less bandwidth.

Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, and other entertainment giants get most of the attention, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a place for niche services to not only survive, but thrive. It’s all about knowing your audience—not just creating a great video offering but building communities that deliver content of all kinds and invite user interaction and participation in curating the channels they’ve always wanted.

As Disney, WarnerMedia, Apple, and NBCUniversal prepare to launch direct-to-consumer (DTC) services—joining existing ventures like ESPN+, CBS All Access, and DC Universe—will existing SVOD and live-linear services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime be able to compete? Or will the DTC offerings falter against the incumbents? This session examines the pros and cons of DTC services and evaluates the likelihood of success in the crowded OTT landscape.

Server-side ad insertion (SSIA) claims to have superpowers: the ability to replace broadcast ads with or without SCTE markers, avoidance of viewer ad blockers, more standardized integration into each platform and better targeting and personalization are the superpowers SSAI brings to the streaming environment. The evil lurking in the wings is ad server ability to dynamically scale, mistaking true scale for fraud and getting standardized measurements to your partners. We also touch on reach, frequency and wholistic ad strategy to arm you with information for talking to business colleagues.

From the beginning of the online video revolution, personalized video has been one of our loftiest and hardest-to-achieve goals. This session examines the state of addressable television for both content distributors and advertisers today, as well as what we can expect in the near future and what sort of privacy and data collection issues pose challenges to truly personalized video delivery.

Quality of experience (QoE) is critical to all successful streaming services. Using worldwide benchmark data, this talk identifies the most important QoE KPIs for VOD services and discusses their regional impact. For example, in the U.S., buffering issues drive user churn, while in Asia, managing device fragmentation is key. It also reviews a number of metrics, explores benchmark data, and details how to best understand and leverage the relationship between QoE and data.

Hardware codecs in FFmpeg, like those from Intel and NVIDIA, deliver significant performance gains over x264/x265, but have a reputation for lower quality and use a completely different command set. This session benchmarks the performance and quality of these codecs and details the FFmpeg command syntax. Attendees learn when and how to use these hardware codecs in VOD and live encoding workflows.

Consumer devices have many different operating systems, firmware, and chipsets, which often require different codecs, packaging formats, and DRM schemes. To achieve optimal QoE for all viewers, distributors should customize delivery for each device. This session details how companies can leverage intelligence built into technology to understand the differences between platforms and automatically modify content as it’s delivered to achieve optimal QoE while minimizing encoding, packaging, and storage costs.

Heard of MPEG-5 part 2 (LCEVC)? And EVC? VVC, AV1, AVS2? Anyone getting an acronym headache? Alongside VP9 and HEVC, these next-generation standards are vying to be the successor to H.264, but will there ever be a single leader again? With the single-standard, single-resolution media delivery chain broken, operators and service providers are looking for the best tool for the job in every part of their ecosystem. Compression experts from Facebook and V-Nova discuss the reasons why and reveal some of the secrets of the latest standard in the MPEG family, LCEVC—a low-complexity enhancement for all codecs, even non-MPEG ones.

Not long ago, going live from a remote location meant driving up with a satellite truck. Well, those days are over. Today’s publishers are delivering live streams from challenging remote locations that a truck could never reach. These producers make it look easy, but it’s not. Learn how to overcome any obstacle.

Wagering and interactivity are about to become big parts of the streaming sports experience, whether that means adding onscreen trivia quizzes to keep fans engaged or betting for real money on a game’s outcome. Hear from the architects of our gambling future as they chart out a path for integrating bets and sports viewing.

In the days of ad skipping, sponsors want to create unskippable moments that put their products in a good light. As plenty of brands have found, viewers will welcome branded integrations when they’re done the right way. Here’s how to create authentic moments that fit in with the action, pleasing sponsors and viewers alike.

In these early days of sports streaming, executives are realizing that the production approach for OTT sports differs vastly from traditional linear television. One of those executives making the transition is DAZN EVP of Content Jamie Horowitz. In this fireside chat, Horowitz will discuss early learnings on how to produce a compelling experience for the OTT generation, what specific strategies DAZN is implementing to separate itself, and how the fan viewing experience on direct-to-consumer services will continue to evolve.

AI is now accelerating content discovery within the San Francisco Giants' vast media archive. Using AI solutions, the SF Giants can now bring its 60-year media archive to life and drive an advanced fan engagement strategy. AI enables rapid content search and accelerated asset sharing with media, global partners, internal stakeholders (including web and social media teams), and fans during live games in the ballpark.

In the online video world, there’s no such thing as niche. Formerly remote events are now as close as a cellphone. Viewers are discovering a range of unusual events like they haven’t seen since The Wide World of Sports, and they can’t get enough. Here’s how several niche sports used online video to tap into a worldwide audience.

Delivering reliable and resilient live streaming is a must for video providers, who depend on live video workflows being highly available and scalable with audience size so viewers never miss a moment of content. A truly resilient live video stream delivers a smooth and consistent experience for viewers, without gaps, stalls, or silences. In this session, learn how to use the AWS Cloud and AWS Media Services, like AWS Elemental MediaLive, AWS Elemental MediaConnect, AWS Elemental MediaStore, and AWS Elemental MediaPackage, to build highly available and reliable live video workflows in a cost-effective and scalable way, complete with monitoring, alerts, and security.Attend this session for your chance to win: Amazon Echo Show ($230 value)

In this session Idan Maron from Applicaster will highlight how leading media companies like Zee5, ProSiebenSat.1, DirecTV and others are maximizing their pre-existing workflows and resources, combined with best-of-breed third party tech, to build user-loved apps with Applicaster's app lifecycle management platform Zapp. Attend this session for your chance to win: Sony Wireless Noise Canceling Extra Bass Headphones ($250 value)

Streaming video is easy, right? However, delivering a seamless, enjoyable, and consistent video experience to users can be difficult - especially across a range of markets and platforms. Address the biggest and most common challenges in the video streaming market by measuring your viewers' Quality of Experience and video pipeline performance and using that data to derive actionable insights and make smart choices about how to optimize video encoding and playback. Attend this session for your chance to win: Notebooks for all attendees ($8 value each)

While there are plenty of tools for getting data into public and private clouds, professional media requirements are unique: File sizes are enormous and only getting bigger, video file specifications vary widely so file validation against exact specifications is critical, and metadata is core to unlocking business value so custom metadata entry is key. This session will discuss strategies to make it fast, easy, and secure to ingest content from around the globe. Attend this session for your chance to win: Roku Ultra ($99 value)

As an industry, we have latency on the mind. It’s a hot topic, and we hear big promises surrounding Low Latency being made throughout the industry. So, how can you move from promise to production? We will share our wealth of industry experience, being at the forefront of low latency development, and experience working together with different partners in the ecosystem. Attend this session for your chance to win: Notebooks for all attendees ($10 value each)

Today’s consumers watch hours of content, from different networks across a range of different devices. With so much content available at the push of a button and the opportunity to tailor it to individual user preferences, the industry is pushing to deliver high quality, highly personalized offerings directly to consumer screens. Although traditional broadcasters and other established content owners have access to some of the most valuable premium content, new entrants have used OTT to reach a wider audience. They are using cloud technology to scale and quickly introduce new functionality, allowing delivery over all networks to all devices and to introduce improved consumer viewing experiences (e.g. UHD and HDR content).However, the increasingly fractured user experience caused by separate applications leads to the question: what is the best way to deliver content to the consumer? This presentation explores how DTC and OTT aggregated services are enabling operators to deliver innovative consumer experiences directly to the end user, as well as outlining the opportunities and challenges for services a result of this competition. Attend this session for your chance to win: An international travel adapter ($15 value)

Launched in fall 2017, Journy is the leading ad-supported travel-entertainment network at the intersection of travel, art, and culture. Powered by Ovation, America’s only arts network, and designed for the conscientious traveler, Journy's programming centers world travel, cultural tourism, and global citizenry. The team at Journy presents a case-study on how the niche streaming service has leveraged its distribution, partnerships, and programming to grow their audience. The discussion includes the importance of co-productions, and a close look at their popular series “Chasing the Sun;” they are joined by EP/Creator and Host, Stephen Friedman. Attend this session for your chance to win:  Apple TV ($179 value)

Earlier this year Apple announced Low-Latency HTTP Live Streaming which can deliver broadcast-level latency using industry-standard protocols such as HTTP/2. The specification is evolving towards release and incorporating feedback from the streaming community. Join Roger Pantos from Apple who will give an update on LL-HLS and answer common questions about it.