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Featured Articles

Buyers' Guide: Live Streaming Software

This article takes a look at 12 options you can pick from when looking to produce live-switched video: Boinx mimoLive, Broadcast Pix ChurchPix, Ecamm Live, ManyCam, OBS Studio, PRISM Live Studio, Vizrt TriCaster, Telestream Wirecast, vMix, Vimeo Livestream Studio, and XSplit Broadcaster

The State of Streaming Sustainability 2024

How do others see us, and how do we measure our progress? New data on streaming power consumption will al­low the industry to target further reductions in power consumption while working toward longer-term solu­tions that reuse old technologies alongside current best practices as a way to extend the life of streaming tech for years to come.

How to Deploy GPAC for FFmpeg Packaging and ABR Distribution

As much as we love FFmpeg for transcoding op­erations, it can get frustrating when packag­ing your content for ABR delivery. By packag­ing, I mean formatting and segmenting your media files, creating manifest files for HLS and DASH, for­matting for CMAF, and managing multiple audio and subtitle streams. Fortunately, there are easier-to-use solutions that are equally open source and equal­ly free. In this article, I'll focus on GPAC, which is a great packaging alternative.

Welcome to FAST Times

2023 got everyone on the same page: FAST should be part of the me­dia mix whether you are a content provider, a broadcaster, or a distribution platform.

The State of Education Video 2024

Is the state of education video in 2024 the quiet before or after the storm? With a pandemic in the rearview mirror, we approach a crossroads where it will be determined whether enterprise-scale video hosting and management services will remain profitable at the prices that schools are willing to carry in the new normal. It's unlikely that we'll cross a point of no return this year, but I recommend keep­ing an eye out for signs that will either allay or am­plify concerns about the long-term future of schools having a degree of ownership and control of the vid­eo services they rely on.

The State of Enterprise Video 2024

Pricing, parity, and protection are three key themes in 2024's enterprise video market

The State of Edge Compute and Delivery 2024

In this year's State of Edge Compute and Delivery, I'm going to explore the three edges that seem to matter most for streaming: aggregation, on-prem, and regional.

How to Meet the Challenges of Cloud-Based Media Creation

Nadine Krefetz writes about the ways of how to best meet the challenges of cloud media creation.

Michael Cerda, CPO for Streaming at TelevisaUnivision, Talks Building and Growing the World’s Largest Spanish-Language Streaming Service

Nadine Krefetz interviews Michael Cerda, CPO for streaming at TelevisaUnivision. He discusses the from-the-ground-up rebuild he implemented when he arrived at the company. He describes how—in just 9 months—his team assembled and scaled the tech stack dri­ving ViX, the world's largest Spanish-language streaming service, which haslive-streaming, AVOD, SVOD, and FAST offerings.

OBSBOT Tail Air AI-Powered PTZ Streaming Camera

This review will look at an interesting suite of products built around the innovative OBSBOT Tail Air PTZ cam, which has entered the NDI ecosystem. The individual cameras retail for $499, and OBSBOT lent Streaming Media three of them for this review, as well as a couple of accessories to show off how they can work together in a studio or field production.

Monetizing FAST and OTT with Metadata and User Data

Nothing makes recommendation engines—and every other means of profit-making leverage—go, go, go like data in its many varieties. Metadata in particular is the key to personalizing viewer experiences and optimizing content portfolios. AI plays an ever-greater role in enhancing the metadata quality and improving recommendations. As analysts focused on the M&E industry and insiders at major media companies playing critical strategic roles agree, data is also essential to understanding customer journeys and making informed decisions on how to reach and retain subscribers and, on the ad-supported side, deliver the right ads to audiences and the right audiences to brands.

Review: Magewell Director Mini

Magewell's new Director Mini is a mini marvel. This 5.5" "all-in-one" production tool with a $1,299 street price can mix multiple inputs and do picture-in-picture graphics, audio mixing, recording, streaming, and more, as IEBA's Anthony Burokas explains in this in-depth review.

Cloud Atlas: MovieLabs’ 2030 Vision Roadmap for Industry-Wide M & E Interoperability

MovieLabs' CTO Jim Helman discusses his experience creating standards for content classification for the Hollywood studios, as well as the MovieLabs ten-year strategy to bring interoperability to as many vendors as possible. The Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR) Helman helped create is a content ID which now holds more than 2.8 million records modernizing many aspects of production and operations. He'll also update us on the industry's response to the 2030 Vision strategy to bring interoperability to media creation technologies, requiring less custom engineering and better communications between software, infrastructure, and services.

Q&A: Caffeine CEO Ben Keighran Talks Fan-Focused Niche Sports Broadcasting

Caffeine is a well-funded, newer live broadcasting platform for fan-focused, niche content for interactive viewing. With the platform now surpassing 40 million users, most of its content consists of long tail and local sports programming. With $262 million in financing raised since 2016, Caffeine is emerging as a destination for "sports you can't find anywhere else." This Q&A with Caffeine CEO Ben Keighran explores Caffeine's unique approach to niche sports streaming and monetization model.

Review: NETINT Quadra T1U Video Processing Unit

This review will highlight the NETINT Quadra T1U and explore its capabilities as a video processing unit (VPU) for high-volume encoding and transcoding of single files, encoding ladders, and live streams.

The 2023 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards

The readers have spoken! Here we present North America's top tech solutions of 2023, as chosen by the readers of Streaming Media.

Glass-to-Glass Report: Comparing Low-Latency Streaming Providers

In this article, I examine low-latency services provided by streaming CDNs, removing actual vendor names and making conclusions based on delivery method. I'll start with a discussion of the basics of latency before moving on to the testing results and analysis.

State of Streaming Snapshot: Pinpointing Streaming’s Pricing Pain Points

Rising fundamental costs morph into rising platform costs for content owners and consumers

The 2023 Streaming Media 100: The Top 100 Companies in the Streaming Media Universe

The Streaming Media 100 is back—welcome once again to Streaming Media's annual list that foregrounds the industry's most innovative and influential technology suppliers, service providers, platforms, and media and content companies, as acclaimed by our editorial team. Some are large and established industry standard-bearers, while others are comparably small and relatively new arrivals that are just beginning to make a splash. All set themselves apart from the crowd with their innovative approach and their contribution to the expansion and maturation of the streaming media universe.

The Streaming Media 100 at IBC 2023

With IBC taking place September 15-18, just before the eagerly anticipated unveiling of this year's Streaming Media 100, which recognizes the 100 companies that matter most in this industry, I had the chance to surprise a number of deserving honorees with their awards, live and in person on the show floor.