New processors and consumer devices are making big bets on HEVC, even as AVC remains ubiquitous. Despite some risk, HEVC can add significant value in certain use cases. In this presentation we present the forecast for HEVC uptake from an objective and reliable perspective. We also provide an update to our long-trusted recommendations on choice of codecs and architectures for popular applications in the context of ongoing trends such as 4K, virtual reality, and virtualization.

The video viewing landscape is broader than ever, and is constantly shifting under the feet of content developers and providers. This session will discuss major trends in video viewing, including pay TV subscribership, OTT services, TV Everywhere, multitasking, content discovery and device viewing. Learn about new topic areas, like measuring the impact of "skinny bundles" and "virtual MVPDs," that have the potential to shake-up the TV industry. In the session, experts in video content and distribution will discuss detailed data from Altman Vilandrie & Company's latest survey of U.S. consumer video viewing habits and debate the current state of video – and where it's going in the future.

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 PSNR, SSIM, and VQM, 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, 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.

Streaming company-wide meetings, training, and other events through your internal network saves on time, travel costs and resources. This session looks at real-world architectures being used for distributing streams to all screens within an enterprise setting. You’ll learn about how peer-to-peer and multicast technologies fit in, and how to reach remote and mobile workers. Our panelists will recommend ways to increase quality and broadest audience reach, and share best practices and lessons learned.

Google has announced that Chrome will be “HTML5 By Default” as of Q4 this calendar year, meaning that users will need to click to allow Flash content to be played. This is obviously a major concern for the streaming industry, as Flash remains the dominant player technology today. There are native HTML5 solutions available for streaming video, but so far, the adoption has been low. This session reviews the state of the video player industry and compares a few open source and off-the-shelf solutions that can help keep those videos streaming.

Video content has seen significant improvement by the introduction of UHD video, high frame rate and high dynamic range. This presentation will showcase the improvements these features add to the video watching experience. It will also cover the video encoding techniques (encoding standards, bitrates and encoding parameters) used today to deliver high bitrate demanding video to the end consumer and challengers this process faces. Finally it will go through some recommendations for the encoding stage for both VOD and live streaming applications.

As the content ecosystem prepares for HDR, 4K/UHD, and even 8K at scale in an on-demand, any device world, the risk of high-quality pirated content rises in tandem, putting the evolving business models and infrastructure investments at immediate risk. Forensic watermarking is positioned as a requirement in Movielabs' Enhanced Content Protection Guidelines to mitigate the ravaging effects of un-monetized distribution. However, getting the technology widely deployed is challenging due to misaligned priorities among the many players in the value chain who must implement or enable the technology and related services and policies. On this panel, we bring together key experts from leading companies in the forensic watermarking ecosystem to discuss the technical, business and practical challenges of implementing such a system at scale.

The Humane Society of the United States is the nation’s largest and most effective animal protection organization. They have gained significant insights into live streaming by going live via Facebook, Periscope, and Youtube around the world. Their live events have reached millions, exposing their brand to new members, allowing them to engage, converse, and convince these community members to take actions and support their cause. Each livestream event has taught them valuable lessons about what to do and what not to do, and they will share these lessons in this case study presentation.

The video compression industry often encounters claims that some new encoding technology is X% better than previous state-of-the-art encoders, where “X” is some large number. In reality, arriving at a percentage gain is a complex process, depending on the reference (“baseline”) encoding, the encoding settings, the encoding bitrates, the video content being encoded, the method of comparison, and the comparison metrics. This presentation explains how to perform subjective evaluation of encoding technologies using a practical subjective test methodology that is credible and leads to meaningful results. The talk presents several examples of encoded bitstreams to be scored subjectively, shows how to score those bitstreams based on the artifacts present, and illustrates how to collect subjective scores and derive meaningful gain metrics from them.

Streaming continues its rapid evolution, moving away from proprietary core technologies and towards open standards. Which leading-edge technologies (H.265, VP9, AOMedia Video, WebM, DASH, fMP4 HLS, CMAF, HTML5 & WebRTC) should you be adopting to future-proof your streaming deployments so you reach your targeted devices and deliver a great user experience? We’ll look at the royalty-laden HEVC vs. royalty-free VP9 vs. the new open-source AOMedia Video for streaming with MPEG-DASH. Which will win out in the end? How will Apple’s adoption of fragmented MP4 for HLS impact DASH adoption? Will the death of browser plug-ins finally herald the age of HTML5 video streaming, and how does WebRTC fit in? Our panel will dive into these and other questions, helping you decipher which technologies are here to stay, and which should be forgotten.

This presentation covers how broadcasters can improve quality of service by making small changes to their ABR algorithms and analyzing via an effective AB testing workflow. We begin by offering practical feedback on how Dailymotion was able to improve QoS significantly via small player-side ABR iterations, explaining what metrics were used and the results obtained. In the second part of the talk, we delve into how to build an effective AB testing analytics stack, honing in on the tools needed and the appropriate environment to be able effectively analyze our actions and make changes in real time.

This presentation will focus on best practices around reliable live streaming of critical, high importance global events with multiple redundant signal pathways. Learn how to overcome challenging on-site environments like flakey internet, failing encoders, faulty cables and failing CDNs. Learn some best practice tips covering the gamut of on-site challenges (cameras, switchers, signal paths, ingest/uplink) to reliable end-user playback (transcoding/transmuxing, reliable playback engines, CDN selection). Find out how you can implement backups and redundancy at every possible level of your live workflow. The presenters will also cover best practices (and caveats) around successful leveraging Facebook Live - Facebook's native new entry into the live streaming category that is gaining enormous traction and engagement right now. Learn from our experiences (and the odd failure) to make sure your next event is a resounding success.

Building a great Roku channel has never been easier. In this session, Roku will unveil new methods to quickly publish on the Roku platform and monetize with video advertising. The presenter will discuss these new tools and some of the ways that developers and content creators can build their audiences on the Roku platform.

Today there’s a huge range of different devices, platforms and environments on which users want to watch videos. Therefore it’s important to use a technology and a streaming standard which fits for all devices. HTML5 is now replacing Flash. But there are problems and challenges especially when it comes to playback of DRM protected content. Stefan Lederer will present solutions that enable browsers to deliver adaptive streaming and DRM without plug-ins.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Bitmovin branded t-shirt

Discover how ABC’s Dancing with the Stars and the Rio Olympics used 360º streaming technologies, like the Teradek Sphere, to provide their viewers with unique second screen content. Join us to learn all about real-time stitching, proper rigging, and network management for 360º productions.

In 2016, The New York Times created a new team to build a faster, cloud-based and reliable video publishing pipeline. This presentation will walk through the set of microservices being developed by the NY Times Media Factory team to create an elastic and reliable solution that can be used across the globe. Learn about content acquisition; transcoding; distribution; APIs and how the NY Times is support a set of new requirements such as adaptive streaming and VR/360° videos.

LinkedIn is one of the first online broadcasters to use YouTube's recently added support for CEA-708, the standard for closed captioning for ATSC digital television (DTV) streams in the United States and Canada. This session will talk specifically about the encoders and signal flow, voice writing/respeaking method for generating captions & best practices to improve the quality of captions.

Using operational streaming analytics to monitor and support streaming media deployments is as important as—and in many cases more mission critical than—just deploying an in-player streaming analytics solution. In-player and last mile solutions focus on issues as they affect the customers, which is often too late and does little to improve customer retention and minimise churn. Operational streaming analytics alert content distributors and live streaming solution providers to delivery problems as they happen and provide immediate solution responses, before they become end user issues.

Attend this session for your chance to win: GoPro Hero4 Silver edition ($400 value)

Attendees to this session will learn about the exciting and unique new process of deploying OTT applications as well as managing and updating content to the Apple, Amazon, and Roku platforms. We will also discuss how brands/content owners are maximizing and commercializing OTT in the emerging direct-to-consumer medium.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Roku3 ($100 value)

A lot of recent changes are going on in the area of online streaming formats. Apple announced at WWDC 2016 the support of fragmented MP4, a key feature of CMAF, and others have demonstrated its usage on all major browser platforms. Video players now support HLS in HTML5 via re-multiplexing in JavaScript, so that HLS can be played using the HTML Media Source Extensions. In parallel, MPEG-DASH got a lot of traction for DRM-protected premium content, as all major Web browsers support now the HTML5 Encrypted Media Extensions. This panel will provide an overview about MPEG-CMAF, and discuss whether it is an opportunity to actually harmonize deployments that currently have to support both (and separate from each) DASH and HLS. Finally, we will also discuss potential threats on existing deployments having its clear focus on MPEG-DASH and DASH-IF.

This presentation will provide a brief overview of how modern video players work, what broadcasters should look for depending on their technical and business goals, and different open-source tools that are available. It will discuss compatible formats, codecs and supported DRMs, user performance, the ability of each media engine to handle edge cases, and the performance of the ABR algorithms. At the end of the presentation, broadcasters will better understand what tools are right for their needs and be able to evaluate the pros and cons of each solution available.

Check back soon for details regarding this Discovery Track session.

In this session you will learn how easy it can be to create and customize your offer and then build native applications for deployment on all app stores for personal devices, streaming players, smart TVs, and games platforms with Cisco’s cloud-hosted Infinite Video Platform.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Beats SOLO2 wireless headphones ($200 value)