Why Partner? Edgeware and MediaMelon

As I've been working through partnerships between various professional transcoding and live encoding manufacturers, so that two companies can provide a joint testing solution for both areas of our comparative testing, I've been struck by the continued uptick in joint solutions.

One such joint solution, which I wrote about today for StreamingMedia.com is a combination of edge caching devices and deterministic middleware, with the two partners being Edgeware AB and MediaMelon, Inc., respectively.

You can read the technical descriptions of the joint solution at StreamingMedia.com, but here's a brief overview of the two companies:

Edgeware was formed about 4 years ago by networking and video professionals, who wanted to solve the challenge of addressing next-wave internet traffic. They felt much of the traffic going forward would be video, and they chose to design an appliance with caching ability. Since this first-generation 1U server used solid-state memory and had an FPGA for programming, IPTV was a natural target market. Edgeware's appliance had a Linux derivative with their own home-grown UDP stack and  file systems, and Nokia, Alcatel, Siemens all sell the appliance as solutions to large telecoms who want to offer walled-garden IPTV services. 

MediaMelon is backed by founder and chairman of Macrovision, with its main office in San Francisco and primary R&D in India. The company's deterministic algorithms, backed by significant viewer experience data, allows MediaMelon to offer its customers - many of which overlap the Edgeware customer base - a set of differentiated service including quality of service for UDP, TCP. MediaMelon, whether through its MediaMelonDirect, for media customers, or its MediaCloud SaaS / hosted solution for telecoms, ISPs and MSOs, leverages real-time viewing quality information and then serves up chunks of streams from a variety of locations across a CDN.

So when Edgeware wanted to move beyond walled-garden IPTV appliances and into the realm of TCP delivery of "web TV" on second-generation appliance, using RTSP and chunks of adaptive bitrate content, the two companies had complementary technologies. 

Yet, why did the Edgeware-MediaMelon joint solution make sense for customers and integrators, especially since both companies had a slightly different approach to addressing the joint solution? 

"From Edgeware's perspective," said Jon Haley, Edgeware's VP of  business development for WebTV and Over the top (OTT)," our VARs and system integrators are seeing huge demand for building out CDNs in local service provider markets and then adding in OTT services. The MediaMelon federated model really is unique, based on the quality metrics from a user's perspective (QoE), and matches nicely with our quality philosophy of pushing content further out into the network via our boxes."

In other words, for markets like Europe, which are highly fragmented due to language and/or incumbent state-run service providers, the joint selling of a federated model couldn't be accomplished just by Edgeware.

"It really is a natural partnership," said Kumar Subramanian, founder and CEO of Media Melon, "making it easier to jointly provide value to service providers who can quickly deploy a full solution of Edgeware boxes along with our SaaS hosted middleware. The value proposition of offering a large footprint due to the federated model is a significant solution to a significant problem."

Test Criteria - Professional Transcoding and Live Encoding comparison testing

As mentioned yesterday, two additional companies expressed interest in the comparative testing for professional transcoding and live encoding workflow systems: Sorenson and a new player in the space, Octasic (or 8 ASIC).

While neither of the companies has enough of a total solution to compete in this year's testing, both may have solutions in the near- to mid-term that would fill the gaps and allow them to compete during our second annual test, to be held in 2011. That still leaves 13 companies, including Ateme, Envivio, Harmonic, Inlet, Media Excel, Telestream, who are weighing their solutions against the test criteria.

What are the testing criteria?  Here's a generic overview of the way Transitions will test the various hardware-software solutions:

1. Transcoding: these tests come first, as a way to establish a baseline of quality, with speed secondary but almost equally important.

Here we'll look at things such as failover, including job completion and workflow steps; ability to transcode a single file to multiple adaptive bitrates.

On the speed side, we'll look at speed to transcode files from M2T (MPEG-2 TS), H.264 and another format back and forth to each of the other formats; whether the solution is capable of simultaneous transcodes; and we'll judge the speed of transcoding multiple files to multiple adaptive bitrates.

Resolutions to transcode to will be: 1080p, 1080i, 720p, several web and mobile rates.

Finally, we'll see the number of concurrent file-based transcodes that can occur, based on three workflows: Real-time, Faster Than Real Time, Real-Time xN

2. Live Encoding: after transcoding, we'll turn the testing criteria on its head and look at what each solution can do within a set period of time - specifically within the confines of live encoding testing.


Both tests will also assess performance, throughput and ease of use in setting up a variety of workflows, taking a holistic approach to pro transcoding and live encoding workflows. For instance, for clustering, we'll look at initial setup (3 total units, plus mgmnt node and 5 total units, plus mgmnt node), replacement of individual node(s) or the management node.

Part of the testing will take place in our lab environment, to allow for a common set of test criteria in a typical workflow. In another part of the testing, we'll jointly assess management, clustering and fail-over response, in your lab or quality control location – recommended, unless you want to ship a hefty rack of gear.

To keep the tests objective but still cover the testing time, a sponsorship model is being used. We've found with large groups of test candidates that a sponsorship with equal amounts paid by each sponsor - so that no one company dominates the report - works best.

That's the model we'll use for these tests, and more details on the approach, as well as examples of previous multi-party tests and test methodologies have been made available on request to all invited companies.

It continues

Two more companies have expressed interest in being included in the transcoding and live encoding comparison testing: Sorenson and a brand-new company in the space. More on that tomorrow.

Invitations sent out for professional transcoding and live encoding comparison

As mentioned in yesterday's blog post, a series of email invitations were to be sent out today, highlighting an invitation to a comparative test bed for professional transcoding and live encoding solutions.

The first wave of invitations went out at 2pm Eastern. Response has been solid and immediate, in keeping with the conversations at NAB. Two companies are already signed on, there's a verbal commitment from a third, and strong interest from the two others that have responded.

Invited companies, in alphabetical order, include: Ateme, Elemental, Envivio, Inlet Technologies, Media Excel, Optibase, Ripcode, Telestream, Viewcast. Many of these companies are well-known to workflowed.com readers, but a few have new product offerings that should make testing rather competitive.

The deadline for commitment to testing is May 6, so we'll let you know which companies chose to brave the comparison workflows.

It's Begun - Comparative Test Bed for Live Encoding and Transcoding

Earlier this week, I wrote an article for StreamingMedia.com entitled "Back to Basics: Hardware Acceleration" in which I discussed the often-misunderstood four areas where hardware acceleration is used for streaming media content: ingest, content creation, output (compression) and playback.

In the article, I mentioned:

Since ingest is the realm of specialized appliances such as Envivio's C4, Inlet's Spinnaker, or Elemental's Live appliance, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it other than to say I'll be digging into this topic in more depth with the Transitions consulting team-and a few key colleagues-over the next few weeks for an in-depth comparison of select hardware-accelerated live ingest and transcoding boxes.

That time has come.

More than a year ago, I realized that the streaming market, especially the market for professional appliances that did pro-level transcoding and live encoding, was ripe for a comparative study. Through Transitions, the consulting firm I co-founded almost a decade ago, I'd been involved in similar test bed comparisons for videoconferencing. While that project, like this one, was a private venture, it wound up getting a significant amount of press coverage, including NetworkWorld coverage.

While my personal code of writing ethics won't let me craft an article about Streaming Media or any other paid publication about a report Transitions generates, I still thought a comparative study of transcoding and live encoding solutions had merit, so I approached several companies last August about a methodical test bed approach, measuring a combination of speed / quality / ease of use to compare major transcoding and live encoding products against one another.

All were open to the idea, but the timing wasn't right for a variety of reasons. I talked to a few of these same companies - plus a few new ones - at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show in Las Vegas last week, and all expressed increased interest.

On Monday, I put together a presentation capturing the key thoughts; over the past two days, it's been shown to a few companies, asking for feedback and also suggestions on others who should be invited to join one or both of the tests - the first being transcoding, to establish a quality baseline, and the second being live encoding, to look at speed's effect on overall quality and timeliness of delivery.

What I didn't expect, when I tossed out the ideas this week on CPU, DSP, GPU and other processor types to test, was that I'd get the first two signed contracts before even sending the official invitation out to participant companies.

The invitation is set to be sent out on April 30, and on May 7, the day after invitation commitments are due back to Transitions, we'll be doing the first on-site analysis of a transcoding solution in sunny Portland.

Apparently there's more interest in this than I anticipated. . . .

I'll post the generic test criteria PDF tomorrow, along with the invite list for each test. [Update: the initial invite list has been posted, with scrubbed test criteria to follow, after invited companies have a chance to review the versions sent to each.]

iPad - Dead End for Flash?

[Update: It's getting ugly, as an Adobe rep responds.]

Between the launch of the iPad, on April 3, and the introduction of Apple's iPhone software version 4, on April 8, a significant amount of buzz was generated about CS5 Flash Professional's role in the iPad ecosystem.

The ability for Flash Pro to generate iPhone "packages" which allow some Flash content to play on the iPhone was first highlighted in October at Adobe MAX 2009 in Los Angeles.

I wrote about this "workaround" at the time, but interest in this topic was fairly low - until the iPad was announced without Flash support.

Between the sans-Flash iPad and the ongoing HTML5 video tag discussion, Apple continued to blow on the embers of its HTML5-CSS-JavaScript preference for iPad and iPhone delivery as the iPad launch date approached.

Based on the hype surrounding this "working around the web" from a Flash-iPad integration standpoint,  I wrote another article, positing on how Adobe could make Flash Pro relevant to the larger HTML5 development audience.

This week, the embers being fanned by Apple burst into a full-blown firefight. Apple's iPhone software version 4 has a modified licensing agreement, that states in part:

"Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs."

In other words, Apple's saying it's not how an iPad or iPhone package is compiled but also how it's written. Apple adds an example in its licensing agreement, directly following the portion noted above.

"(e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited)."

Jon Gruber at DaringFireball picked up on this with the title: iPhone Agreement Bans Flash Compiler that lists out a few integrated development environments (IDEs) that may cross the line Apple has drawn in the sand, but he saves the bulk of his blog post for the implications to Adobe:

"Wonder what Adobe does now? CS5 is this close to release and the iPhone compiler is the flagship feature in this version of Flash."

Going to be an interesting week at NAB, with the roll-out of CS5, discussion of the iPad's personal media consumption coup and the clash of the tech titans that is now beyond its flashpoint.

Update: AppleInsider notes that the issue here may be pre-emptive, since it only relates to iPhone software version 4.0, which will ship later this year, and that it also may be intended to address multi-tasking (although combining pre-emptive and multi-tasking in this case would be a misnomer). 

DVR usage continues to climb

A week ago, I wrote an article conjecturing that online video usage drives on-demand DVR usage. Now, according to a Nielsen "Three Screen Report" it does appear that online video growth and DVR usage are tied together:

"DVR and Online Video continue to show solid growth – up 21.1% and 34.9% respectively in time spent from Third Quarter 2008"

Thanks to @AndyBeach for pointing this one out.

Metadata: Certainly Not Boring

Especially in this interview that Peter Cervieri recorded at last week's Streaming Media West 2009 show.

Peter's interviews for his ScribeMedia.org often focuses on topics that are both timely and somewhat controversial, but metadata often doesn't fit in the latter category, unless you count Peter's triple-X rated title for the interview.

While my slightly-pseudo-Southern accent always reminds me that I talk a bit slower now than I did when I lived in my native New York, Peter did a good job of steering the conversation to cover many of the points from my recent metadata article: Metadata: What You Need to Know (And Why You Need to Know It)

Running time for the interview is 12:29

Perspective: Blame it on video

"Internet traffic is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 46 percent. Video is the driver. Make no question about that."

Robert Pepper, Cisco
Internet Governance Forum conference

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.11b0df967c4c85298aa30205bd42846a.01&show_article=1



iPhoned

The Third Wave?

I'm really starting to find patterns in the technology plays of the various Media and Entertainment (M&E) groups, aligning core streaming delivery of "traditional" CDNs,mobile and telecoms providers against those of traditional broadcast, cable and satellite.

Twice before I've seen reckless attempts at a land-grab. In 97-99, everyone claimed, but no one could do, full-screen (or even consistent quarter-screen) streaming to the desktop. Then, in the 2003-05 timeframe, a land grab was attempted based on technologies that were supposed to work in 97-99 began in earnest after the coders got to go home during the bust cycle of 2000-2003 and really do the coding.

This one's different, and I think the analogy of the wild west is somewhat spot on: if the first two land grabs were earlier speculators and later  homesteaders,  eking out a living under difficult - and sometimes deadly -  circumstances, this new land grab is about the army marching in full-force to subjugate the natives so that the army's settlers can live within newly defined and expanded boundaries.

Like the battles in California or in Texas, this land grab is not about just one army, but multiple armies clashing for the same land. In other words, this land grab is systematic, purposeful and very process oriented. Whether you call it manifest destiny or subjugation (neither of which I use lightly, given my partial American Indian heritage), the end game of this land grab is establishing a presence that spans decades, not year.

And the natives come out on the bad end of the deal, as do many of the speculators and some of the homesteaders. Even a few settlers die in the process.

I see all four of these groups, along with the armies they represent, lining up in formation: starting with the telecoms (remember the article I did a few months back welcoming the big boys?) and then moving into the traditional broadcaster and now the cable providers, these armies have labs to manufacture the stockpiles they need and smoke screens / diversions to use in the meantime.

It'll be quite interesting to see if any of the traditional streaming encoder box companies make it over into these bigger markets, because I'm seeing more and more products based around H.264 and other standards at shows like Supercomm, from companies with no tie to the "streaming industry" as we know it.

A few articles I've written in the past few weeks provide an inkling of where the next few battles may occur:

Cable

Consumer electronics

Mobile Broadcasting

[Update: in early December, I wrote about a battle between two of these armies here.]