As the creative advantages to 4K video streaming and production have risen, cost and complexity have fallen.

It seems like only yesterday that professional content creators began capturing and producing video in high definition, particularly in 1080p 60 frames per second (FPS). But technology is always on the march. Today’s live video streaming professionals are now retooling for the next industry standard, Ultra High Definition (UHD), or 4K. As the demand to stream 4K video rises, content creators need to keep up to avoid being outpaced by competitors.

In today’s social media environment, anyone with a good idea for a show or live event—and the best live streaming software—can become a live video streaming pro. Just check out all the live videos and podcasts being shared on Facebook, YouTube, and other online and social media forums. These platforms not only enable live streaming to a world of connected devices, but they also give users the means to invite and entice followers to watch what they’re streaming.

So, if you’re looking to begin a streaming media initiative, such as a video podcast series, bear in mind that your videos will be seen on the same screens that viewers also use to watch the high-value, premium fare high-end media pros are producing.

In this third in our series of posts on IP diagnostics, we’ll discuss analyzing stream timing with a waveform monitor like the Telestream PRISM. As before, the details are covered in our technical guide. This is but a taste of why a Waveform Monitor is a valuable addition to your tool kit and some of the features that PRISM offers.

Delays, Paths, and Order

In an IP network with many devices, every packet can take a different path from source to destination. That means that the arrival times of 2 consecutive packets are not deterministic. Another cause of unpredictability is congestion within a switch or anywhere along a path that delays a packet’s ultimate arrival. These delays cause packets to get to a destination device in a different order than they were sent. They also cause excessive latency or its inverse, burstiness. ST2110-21 provides a Virtual Reciever Model which we discuss in the paper you can get using the link below. In this post, we will provide a glimpse into using PIT Histograms to Diagnose Timing.

The root cause of many IP network issues is packet jitter. Excessive packet jitter leads to buffer over- and under-flows which, in turn, result in dropped packets and stalled data flows. In what follows, we will describe these issues and some of the ways that waveform monitors diagnose packet jitter problems.

One major pain point which has been constantly cited by broadcasters, post-production companies, and production companies during the last few years is the management of camera card ingest into editorial.

As organizations move to a complete file-based workflow the ability to efficiently process dailies/rushes for viewing copies, editing/finishing, and archiving is key to having a cost-effective workflow.

Written by Ken Haren, Director of Product Management for Cloud Monitoring Services

Background

In the past we’ve talked about how we’re entering the next phase of OTT monitoring. Here, we introduce an interesting use case that you may not think of right away when you consider a stream monitoring service like Telestream Cloud Stream Monitor – load testing origin servers and critical infrastructure in the distribution chain.

Guest post written by Ernie Sanchez, VP & COO, Cinnafilm

Content that originated at filmic rates of 23.976/24 FPS has been seen in broadcast for decades. Consequently, taking four frames at a filmic frame rate and generating five frames from them (29.97i or 30i) has been a regular occurrence in broadcast media for decades. Unfortunately, broken cadence can result during the process of preparing content for broadcast television.

Written by Reuben Cohn, Cloud Transcoding Product Manager

Many factors today are disrupting the status quo when it comes to doing business in general, and handling video specifically. The global pandemic has been highly disruptive to everyone of course, but there is also a continuing shift towards video being the preferred way of distributing and consuming information, advertising, news, social media, and personal communication. As video becomes more vital to more businesses, applications, websites, and communities, having an accessible and flexible way to implement broadcast-grade media processing in the cloud grows more important as well. Similarly, as the global pandemic has shifted focus onto remote operations and more agile ways of doing business, cloud-based solutions have also become even more vital.

Unlocking the True Potential of OTT Starts With Assuring Advertising Revenue

Consumer adoption of over-the-top streaming services grew dramatically in 2020, largely fueled by the outbreak of COVID-19 and people looking for safe and healthy alternatives to public activities. That looks to continue this year.