Streaming Sustainability and Imaginary Bridges in the Cloud

Only time will tell how successful new sustainability reporting standards ESRS E1 (European) and the SEC (US) mandate will be in the near-term in curbing greenwashing and improving sustainability requirements and adherence in the streaming industry, or how much of the long-term their failure might costs us.

Cloud-Based Streaming Production and the Sound of Inevitability

The production and communication tools we use are ever-more tied to the cloud, and to take advantage of it is to open a door of possibility and additional capability. Where do you want to go today?

5 Ways to Future-Proof Your Streaming Role with AI on the Rise

How do you keep your skills relevant and useful regardless of developments in AI, Machine Learning (ML), or more advanced automation in any process related to your role in streaming media? Whether you are a seasoned veteran or just starting out with your career, I recommend setting five goals for the coming year.

What The Growth of FAST Really Tells Us About Viewers

The popularity and growth of FAST shows us that viewing behaviour, despite the rise of streaming, hasn't really changed much at all. People want choice, but they want it in a way that meets their needs.

Preserving Our Inter-generational Legacy (or Streaming Media’s Feet of Clay)

So considering streaming, file transfer, or even leaving the long tail simply unused and archived as the storage media changes around it over years, there's much to think about for anyone wanting to leave a video as an intergenerational legacy.

What's the Point of Streaming?

You might think it's crazy of me, as the executive director of the world's largest streaming technical association, to ask the question in this column's title. But I think it's actually important that we do a gut check every once in a while.

Does Streaming's Future Success Depend On Discoverability?

The future of streaming is about unification built on top of a single open standard of content metadata. Right now, it's a matter of seeing the forest for the trees.

View From the Edge: IBC 2022

There is stress in big public streaming companies that is stifling their innovation completely at the moment. Billion-dollar contracts are cool, but disruption is cooler, and the Unicorns have done their disruption now, and it's time for other actors to take the stage. So what was disruptive at IBC 2022?

An Industry Welcomes Itself Back, Amsterdam Style

Anticipation is mounting for this year's IBC. After a reasonable-size crowd at the April 2022 NAB event in Las Vegas (by most estimates, about half of normal attendee count), we've had smaller events take place—including our own Streaming Media East 2022, held in Boston—from May onward that seem to have returned to normal.

Don’t Believe the (Financial) Hype

Dom Robinson writes about why it's important for the streaming industry to focus more on customers first over investors and share prices

The Closed Circle

Long gone are the days of three-channels-only broadcast entertainment options in most countries, yet we remain nations of cord-cutters. Whether we swore off OTA because of monthly costs, fixed schedules, or intrusive advertising, OTT has largely won out because viewers clearly wanted something else.

Get Back: Peter Jackson's 8-Hour Movie Suggests OTT Attention Spans Might Be Longer Than We Thought

Today, binge-watching is many people's favored mode of viewing. That's entirely our industry's doing (some might say fault), and it stands as a compelling counterpoint to the notion that we've devolved to the point where we're incapable of paying sustained attention to stories and storytellers.

How YouTube Encodes Videos

Looking for insights into exactly how YouTube encodes billions of videos? Jan Ozer went down the rabbit hole and shares what he discovered about AV1, VP9, and resolutions.

The Future Is Real Time, and It Starts Now

Where and how does "real time" fit into your workflows in this "COVID and beyond" era? Similar to global wars accelerating advan­ces in medicine such as plastic surgery, COVID has pushed all of us working in streaming media to rethink, innovate, optimise, and rebuild many components of our day-to-day responsibilities. 

Judging Apple's Advanced Video Quality Tool

As a metric, Apple's Advanced Video Quality Tool (AVQT) showed some bright spots, but it's hard to see it bumping VMAF or SSIMPLUS from real-world workflows without a lot more verification.

The Roaring—and Streaming— '20s

In this installment of 'View from the Edge,' our intrepid columnist goes out. In public. To a gig. There's nothing like it, he writes, and streaming needs to figure out ways to bring some of that live energy to folks who can't make it in-person.

Stay Connected

When it comes to industry events, perhaps the old 'normal' will become the new 'exclusive'

Live Production During COVID and Beyond

Lessons learned during the pandemic can provide guidance for how live producers can continue to not just survive but thrive.

New Rules of Codec Development

The game has changed for new codecs entering the market.

Ditch the Niche: It's Time to Come Up With a New Term

Calling some OTT services "niche" is an insult to not only the content they deliver but the audiences they serve. Isn't ESPN a "niche" service, too?