Viacom Offers Best Practices for Live Streaming Delivery
Live streaming is such a hot topic this year that the recent Streaming Media East conference in New York City offered best practices presentations for both live streaming production and live streaming delivery. Delivering the delivery presentation was Dylan Armajani, currently a digital workflow technologies specialist at Viacom. In his address, Armajani focused on HDS ("Basically the latest version of Flash," used for desktop and older Android devices) and HLS (used for iOS devices and most set-top boxes).
"What is HDS?" Armajani asked? "I like to describe it as basically RTMP on steroids. It's HTTP Dynamic Streaming. It requires a newer version of Flash player. You can basically wrap your content into H.264/AAC. You can also do VP6/MP3, but most people nowadays are going to do H.264/AAC for a variety of reasons that I'll get to later."
Armajani explained why he and the rest of the industry are so enthused about HDS:
"The difference between [HDS] and RTMP and what makes it so cool is it's actually little fragments. You're not just connecting to a single stream that is just coming from a CDN into your computer," Armajani noted. "Basically, I like to go with six-second fragments, so every six seconds my player is basically downloading a new six seconds of content. That means it's really convenient: Every six seconds my player can basically decide 'Do I need to go up? Do I need to go down bitrate-wise, resolution-wise?' and it can completely adapt to whatever environment you're in."
For more on delivering live video watch the full video below and download the PDF of Armajani's presentation.
How To: Best Practices For Live Streaming Delivery
This session provides best practices, lessons learned, and a general overview of the technical set-up for a professional live streaming production. Learn about transmission methods (IP, cellular, fiber, satellite), encoding on site or off, picking the proper encoder for the job (software vs. hardware), maximizing encoder & CDN efficiency, and delivering adaptive HD streaming to the desktop, mobile, and OTT boxes. Come learn how to improve your next live event.
Speaker: Dylan Armajani, Digital Workflow Technologies Specialist, Viacom
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