Beyond Standards: Moving Past MPEG to Create a Video-Friendly Web
As over-the-top video continues to grow in popularity—call it the "Netflix-ification" of the web—the streaming standards the industry relies on begin to feel the strain.
Codecs, caching, and transport are three of the major building blocks required for video compression and delivery.
Each has a unique role. Codecs are at the core of compression and decompression. They’re used to shrink the size of a video-on-demand (VOD) file or lower the bandwidth required to deliver a live stream across the web while still maintaining visual quality. The last two building blocks—transport and caching, the act of storing permanent or semipermanent content closer to the end user— have historically been considered outside the expertise of the streaming industry and more in line with routing and internet architectures.
But that is changing, thanks in no small part to the “Netflix-ification” of the web, as over-the-top (OTT) content continues to rise in popularity and puts stress on both the infrastructure and the delivery methods that the streaming industry has relied on for decades.
Alongside this need to rebuild the web to be more video-centric comes a parallel desire, at least by some— whether they need a working solution now or think they can capitalize on that very need—to escape the confines of standards-based video.
From streaming media’s early days—when codecs such as MPEG-1 faced off with Intel’s Indeo, Microsoft’s Windows Media, and RealNetworks’ RealVideo— there has always been an underlying tug-of-war between standards and advances, between open source and licensing, between one-size-fits-all and customization on a per-use basis.
The flag in the middle of the tug-of-war rope, dangling precariously over the mud pit that awaits the losers, is innovation. If the standards bodies win, with their decision-by-committee mentality that slows or even stops the pace of innovation, then the industry faces periods of time when inefficient technologies fail to keep pace with video consumption growth.
This article will explore some of the tensions around that tug-of-war scenario as well as a few of the players that stand to gain from the move away from standards.
The Culprit: VOD
Consumption of VOD content, by far the vast majority of media delivered online today via online video platforms (OVPs) and OTT service providers, has risen at such a rapid pace that new technologies are desperately needed to keep up with the growth.
For VOD content, the codec and its encapsulating encoder make up a key battleground. Encoders are used to compress files either faster or slower than real time, depending on the quality desired for the final encoded video and the need for bandwidth savings.
Standards-based video compression often comes from two groups: the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG).
The ITU is a 150-year-old organization based in Geneva that started in 1865 as an arbiter of telegraph standards. As a part of the United Nations, the ITU is tasked with making sure that telecommunications—from radio spectrum to telephone switches to more recent internet standards—interoperate with one another across the globe. The ITU has a Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) that ratified the ITU-T H.264 standard for use in telecommunications, namely in videoconferencing.
http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editor...12462.aspx
As over-the-top video continues to grow in popularity—call it the "Netflix-ification" of the web—the streaming standards the industry relies on begin to feel the strain.
Codecs, caching, and transport are three of the major building blocks required for video compression and delivery.
Each has a unique role. Codecs are at the core of compression and decompression. They’re used to shrink the size of a video-on-demand (VOD) file or lower the bandwidth required to deliver a live stream across the web while still maintaining visual quality. The last two building blocks—transport and caching, the act of storing permanent or semipermanent content closer to the end user— have historically been considered outside the expertise of the streaming industry and more in line with routing and internet architectures.
But that is changing, thanks in no small part to the “Netflix-ification” of the web, as over-the-top (OTT) content continues to rise in popularity and puts stress on both the infrastructure and the delivery methods that the streaming industry has relied on for decades.
Alongside this need to rebuild the web to be more video-centric comes a parallel desire, at least by some— whether they need a working solution now or think they can capitalize on that very need—to escape the confines of standards-based video.
From streaming media’s early days—when codecs such as MPEG-1 faced off with Intel’s Indeo, Microsoft’s Windows Media, and RealNetworks’ RealVideo— there has always been an underlying tug-of-war between standards and advances, between open source and licensing, between one-size-fits-all and customization on a per-use basis.
The flag in the middle of the tug-of-war rope, dangling precariously over the mud pit that awaits the losers, is innovation. If the standards bodies win, with their decision-by-committee mentality that slows or even stops the pace of innovation, then the industry faces periods of time when inefficient technologies fail to keep pace with video consumption growth.
This article will explore some of the tensions around that tug-of-war scenario as well as a few of the players that stand to gain from the move away from standards.
The Culprit: VOD
Consumption of VOD content, by far the vast majority of media delivered online today via online video platforms (OVPs) and OTT service providers, has risen at such a rapid pace that new technologies are desperately needed to keep up with the growth.
For VOD content, the codec and its encapsulating encoder make up a key battleground. Encoders are used to compress files either faster or slower than real time, depending on the quality desired for the final encoded video and the need for bandwidth savings.
Standards-based video compression often comes from two groups: the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG).
The ITU is a 150-year-old organization based in Geneva that started in 1865 as an arbiter of telegraph standards. As a part of the United Nations, the ITU is tasked with making sure that telecommunications—from radio spectrum to telephone switches to more recent internet standards—interoperate with one another across the globe. The ITU has a Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) that ratified the ITU-T H.264 standard for use in telecommunications, namely in videoconferencing.
http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editor...12462.aspx
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