Technology*Focus*before*investing*on*Infrastructure*for*IPTV*/*Mobile*TV

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Manish Chauhan manish .chauhan@me.com

Published on Date: 14th May, 2015

Introduction

Being an Investor/ Content Owner/ Broadcaster / Service Provider in Indian Media Market; all way long planning to distribute TV - Content on different new Media Screen parallel to satellite distribu-tion is a strategic call along with infrastructure investment & should need to evaluate the technology adoption depends on selected hybrid business model .

New Media business model will be sure different from traditional model as revenue generation mode and flow may be differ and more calculative depending on the govt. rules and regulation, monitoring authority in countries, user classification, type of content, advertiser etc…

So while taking a decision on technology model & workflow for multiscreen delivery content, operat-ing from parent location & distributing to the globe with different revenue-generation model from country to country; one should clearly consider required feature & technology integration before jumping with crowd.

CMS COMPUTERS LTDBroadcast & Media Divis ion

M e d i a & B r o a d c a s t D i v i s i o n ( N e w M e d i a G r o u p ) , C M S C o m p u t e r s L t d . N e w D e l h i , I n d i a .

What should the next generation multiscreen content delivery model look like? This model would need to comprise of an integrated platform to control TV, VOD & OTT based services (which are in broadcast or internet silos in the current infotainment landscape).

The platform would need to support device authentication, identity management, content security, management and delivery over IP across multiple connected devices such as Hybrid/IPSTB, Connected TVs, PCs, mobiles, Tablets, Smart-phones and consoles. As a multi-device environment, it should be able to utilize a common service protection framework, offering common domain (account, user, enti-tlements) and offer management services (such as subscription, purchases and workflows), and lever-age a common set of APIs across each of the device specific clients. The platform must seamlessly in-tegrate multi - screen TV features like single sign on, VOD multi-screen bookmarking, user profile management (with playlists and last viewed features), device identification & capability, apart from third party products such as recommendation engines.

Lets have a generic and brief look on the major consideration of required feature, technology and model for delivering content to universe on multiscreen.

What are the different modules required for multiscreen delivery?

Video Platform

Video platform is a modular system that exposes different web-services and that may be deployed in several deployment modes to support different levels of scalability.

Video platform may have different editions based on deployment,

1. SaaS Model,

2. Self-hosted Model / On- Premises edition,

3. Hybrid edition

Content Delivery and Streaming

Content delivery and streaming is based on optimizing and reselling tier-1 CDN services, including that of :

CDN Services: Akamai, Limelight Networks, and Level 3 Communications.

The streaming infrastructure ensures the best media delivery performance possible, even when work-ing with high volumes of content and audience and when utilizing different streaming methods.

Streaming Methods:

1. Live Streaming

2. RTMP : (Real Time Messaging Protocol) which is a system for delivering on-demand and live media to Adobe Flash applications.

3. HPPT5 Streaming : Broadcasting of ID3 metadata embedded in the HLS stream

4. Progressive Streaming.

So; platform can be integrated with any CDNs of your choice and delivery to utilize their local stream-ing facilities.

There can be 2 alternative content delivery paths via CDN:

1. U s i n g y o u r l o c a l s t o r a g e a s t h e C D N o r i g i n - t h i s i s t h e s t a n d a r d d e l i v e r y m o d e f o r p u b l i s h e r a c c o u n t s h o s t e d o n a n y r e p u t e d S a a S p l a t f o r m .

2. U t i l i z i n g p u b l i s h e r s ’ s t o r a g e a c c o u n t s o n t h e i r C D N t o b e u s e d a s t h e C D N s t o r-a g e o r i g i n , w h i l e s t i l l m a n a g i n g t h e i r c o n t e n t l o c a l l y

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Media Ingestion and Transcoding (Key Points)

1. Broadcaster has to applies different transcoding process after media uploaded as per the ac-count’s transcoding settings,

2. Uploaded video files are transcoded into the required formats and codecs to enable web pub-lishing in adaptive qualities and on multiple devices (including different mobile and iOS de-vices), while supporting all popular media codecs.

3. Each media file are being handled according to its type based on a set of pre-defined adjust-able parameters, such as transcoder type, quality (bit rate), aspect ratio, and video viewing optimization.

4. These parameters can be set by publishers / Broadcaster to provide the best streaming and ed-iting capabilities required to support their media workflow needs.

5. Each source file could be transcoded into multiple flavors –for example, files with different bitrates, dimensions, and quality. During playback the player selects the most appropriate fla-vor for playback based on the viewer ’s available bandwidth, player dimensions, and CPU us-age.

6. Here broadcaster required a technology, which combines several transcoding components with in-house utilities and shell scripts.

7. Then broadcaster needs to pre-integrate with commercial transcoders.

8. And required an advanced ingestion options which is capable to support the ingestion of mul-tiple flavors that were generated on the publisher ’s local transcoding engine, as well as further automating the ingestion workflow by utilizing ingestion drop folders’ mechanism.

Media Manipulation

The core capabilities of media manipulation includes thumbnail generation, image cropping and resiz-ing, video trimming, video clipping, video transitions, video overlaying (annotations), video effects, audio and voice control, video speed control and more has to be as features of Apps based media player.

In addition, the platform must supports conversion of Office documents (PPT, DOC, XLS, PDF) into SWF files that are playable in the players, as well as synchronization and playback of the converted documents with a selected video, creating a single user interface for a synchronized view of video and document content.

Media Management

The platform should have a feature to provide a comprehensive set of media management capabilities and tools. Publishers should able to easily upload their media, manage and populate a comprehensive set of metadata fields, and organize their media within playlists and gallery widgets while applying filtering criteria and paging options.

In addition, broadcaster must include feature of media moderation tools enabling publishers to im-plement safe and controlled UGC functionalities within their web sites too.

User Management

The platform must provide user administration capabilities allowing publishers to provision multiple user accounts and assign each user to a pre-defined or custom role. Publisher admins can define spe-cific user roles for providing different levels of permissions to content management and administra-tion functionalities according to their specific organizational needs.

In addition; broadcaster must able to relate their internal user identifiers to the media uploaded to the system and, by doing so; to enable user specific media functionality, as well as media related social

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networking activities on their web sites.

Account Management

The platform must provide publisher administration capabilities and tools. Publishers / Broadcaster wish to fully manage their accounts, to ensure publisher-level web security while relying on their unique identifiers and secret keys, to configure their specific server settings and more. Administrators of self- hosted deployments of platform must manage multiple accounts for publishers.

Advertising & Monetization

Media players must have built-in support for in-stream and companion rich-media advertising. This enables publishers to implement an advertising solution supporting a wide variety of ad formats and ad sources.

Media players may include the following advertising modes: Simple advertising deployment, Overlay ads, Ad timing configuration, Companion ads, Ad frequency configuration, and Ad reporting and ana-lytics.

Apps based Media player must also supports (PPV) pay-per-view functionalities, like blocking unau-thorized access using increased security hashed URL’s and Server Secrets. A ‘free preview’ feature should enable publisher to configure the occurrence and duration of free previews before a fee is charged.

Web Video Analytics

There is a need of built-in web video analytics infrastructure combined with required customized re-porting tool. These technologies provide publishers the ability to track and understand their end-users’ video related behavior, and to better monetize their web media services.

Web analytics reporting tool includes user-specific as well as aggregated indicators for media analytics and audience measurement, including:

1. Number of contributors,

2. Number of syndications,

3. Top played content,

4. Number of plays,

5. Media plays latency,

6. Media play drop-offs,

7. Number of user interactions with media,

8. Media indicators per media type and more….

Media Syndication and Distribution

Broadcaster must think of integrated social syndication technologies within its players, allowing end-users to :

1. Easily distribute videos to their own web sites,

2. The most popular social networks sites and blogging platforms,

3. Simply distribute videos to their friends via emails

4. Locally download videos for their personal use.

A. In addition to social syndication platform must provide capabilities and tools for enabling automated multi-destination syndication and distribution of content.

B. Publishers are able to create playlist based syndication feeds for maximizing their content's reach and

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generate traffic back to their site.

C. Access Control can be set for each content item/group to limit the access to specific countries, domains or times (scheduling).

The integrated well mention content distribution infrastructure enables media companies and content creators to create and automate customized video packages to send to distribution partners directly

Administrators are able to control the destinations for each video package, and for each distribution destination admins can control the video qualities, multiple thumbnails in different sizes, metadata, scheduling data, and more.

Styling and Branding

The basic tools to customize the style, branding and functionality of the apps based video player, as well as that of additional widgets (for example, the Upload/Import widget, and the Screen Recorder). This allows publishes to maintain a consistent user interface, and opens up monetization opportunities by way of custom skins that can be sold to prospective advertisers.

Widgets

The platform should include self-contained, client-side components called Widgets, which implement specific Application Program Interfaces in Flash or HTML.

Widgets should be customized, skinned and easily embedded within publisher ’s websites. Widgets feature should rely on advanced web technologies, encapsulating graphics, media functionalities, and workflow events control

Screen Recorder and the HTML5 Player.

Many times publisher implement internal hooks to enable the widget’s integration with a 3rd party plug-in applications. Such plug-in applications are then used to provide widgets functionality with complementary media services.

Examples of 3rd party services as a plug-in are:

1. Doubleclick for Publishers (DFP) ad services powered by Google,

2. Ad services powered by Adap.tv,

3. Ad services powered by Tremor Media,

4. Ad services supporting VAST based ad servers,

5. Media social syndication services powered by Gigya

6. Subtitle editing services powered by PLYmedia.

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Overview of Functional ComponentsThe required components must be deployed as part of the core platform and some are optional, whereby the decision for their deployment is derived from the applicative needs and/or from the nec-essary scale of the deployment. Required Core / Optional components are operable as part of SaaS edition / on premises deployment.

Required ComponentsThe following components must operate within online video platform:

Web ServicesApache server and web services layer in the form of a set of Application Programming Interfaces (API) as a single access point for client-server applicative communication. Web Services should be deployed on front-end server/s (traffic distributed by load balancing equipment).

Batch Jobs ServersScalable middleware entities deployed on back-end server/s. Central orchestration of atomic batch services such as media import, media info extraction, transcoding, server notification and others. batch jobs should be deployed on a backend server.

Transcoding EngineThe Transcoding Engine provides optimal video quality while maintaining minimal storage costs. The engine analyzes each source file, and determines the optimal output files required for high-quality delivery to any device. The transcoding engine performs all media transcoding tasks, by utilizing open source and or commercial transcoders. The engine is CPU intensive and can either be deployed on a backend server at a local deployment or can be distributed using independent transcoding servers de-ployed in a cloud solution.

Shared StorageA dedicated disk space that is shared and accessible by all of Core & Application servers within a spe-cific deployment. The Shared storage holds all content and application files, including: media assets, HTML5 Player, Flash widgets/applications, skins, thumbnails, players/playlist configuration files (UI conf) and all other related components. The shared storage may be deployed as part of a local deploy-ment or using independent storage within a cloud solution.

Operational DatabaseThis is the applicative database, used for storing and managing content related data (metadata, identi-fiers, URLs etc.) as well as application and business logic supporting data. The operational database should be deployed as part of a local deployment, preferably on dedicated server/s utilizing a master/slave topology.

Search serverFull text search servers based on the Sphinx open source solution / Elasticsearch BV/ PyCon/ Air-mozilla/ JSON and Java API/ Lupy/ Sphider/ Cluster Point Server for fast indexing and search.

Site Admin ModuleThis module is responsible for operating Admin Console, enabling site administrators to monitor and operate their own deployment of online video platform. For full monitoring, it is important to deploy this module on a local separate server.

Media Analytics ModuleThis module is responsible for processing and aggregating media analytics data into

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Optional Components

MediaSpace (optional)MediaSpace is a fully customizable media destination site for the organization. MediaSpace is an out-of-the-box video-centric site that can serve as a repository for media collections across the organiza-tion or a full-featured "internal YouTube. It can be integrated into the local authentication environ-ment for role-based authentication, or use it as a public destination site. It should be easily configured and branded, and requires minimal resources to get up and running while allowing extensive customi-zation.

Document Conversion Module (optional)The Document Conversion Module converts various document formats into a Flash based swf docu-ment, later to be used within the Dynamic Player as a synchronized slideshow alongside a video. The supported document formats include the following: MS Office documents (for example. Word, Power-Point), Open Office documents, and Adobe PDF. The document conversion process can be distributed using independent document conversion servers deployed in a cloud solution.

Video Recording Module (optional)This module is responsible for recording web camera streams; it is an optional component to be de-ployed only when there is a need to support video recording functionalities. Using a Red5 or local FMS of any provider is possible as well.

Lecture Capture (optional)A function of easy capture in class, at home or on-the-go with automated publishing and interactive viewing within the LMS and Open source Media Space video portal.

Web ConferencingWhether you’re using WebEx, Go2Meeting, Lync, Peoplelink, Vidyo, Clearone or others, web-conferencing connectors functionality maximize the effectiveness of your web-conferences and signifi-cantly & must reduce storage.

WebcastingWebcasting supports internal delivery, ingest from different encoders and source types, archiving of webcasts to your VOD portal and enhanced interactive features. This all makes it easy for your or-ganization to optimize internal communication and increase return on investment for customer facing communications.

Live StreamingThe integrated live streaming platform enables you to broadcast live events or 24/7 broadcasts to any screen. Live streaming supports both passthrough and cloud encoding with multi protocol output for HLS, HDS, MPEG-DASH and Smooth Streaming. Live streams can be delivered through a Content De-livery Network (CDN) such as Akamai, as well as support internal delivery in diverse network topolo-gies with support for CDNs and Multicast. Live streaming must also supports Live to VOD with a sin-gle embed code, instant provisioning and live captions passthrough.

DRMIrdeto/ Exinom/ EZDRM/Widevine Implementation Partner that is authorized to provide DRM serv-ices enabling its customer to integrate their device specific applications with DRM packaging and li-cense services according.

Thankyou, Pls Share your review at manish.chauhan@me.com or contact : +91 9990311699

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