Larry Kless' Weblog

Monday, January 28, 2013

2013 Online Video Predictions, Trends and the Shape of Things to Come

As we reach the end of the first month of the year, and look back on 2012, the future becomes more clear. In 2012, we saw much of the same activity in the online space as previous years, with more churn and consolidation, more funding and innovation, coupled with the exploding growth of online video consumption. The industry grew another year and took bigger steps to the future.

It's become tradition on this blog to present the annual collection of online video predictions from around the web. This time last year, I offered advice on Why Online Video Platforms (OVPs) Should Give a Puck, and pay attention to the three I’s: immersion, integration and implementation. Several reports in 2012 looked at the top OVPs and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) in the market and ranked them according to their implementation skills, innovation and market share. In a November 2012 report by ABI Research, Brightcove led Ooyala in implementation and Ooyala narrowly beat Brightcove on innovation, with Kaltura in third. In Frost & Sullivan’s independent analysis on the global OVP market, Brightcove was recognized as the market leader with the 2012 Market Share Leadership Award. Earlier this month, Frost & Sullivan also recognized Limelight as 2012 Global Product Line Strategy Award recipient in the OVP market.

The money flowed in 2012, with Cisco's whopping $5 billion acquisition of software firm NDS, Brightcove's $30 million acquisition of Zencoder along with a 41% increase in earnings, Ooyala's $35 million in Series E funding, LiveU's $27 million round, Kaltura's $25 million round, Visible Measure's $21.5 million, Tubemogul's $20 million in Series C, WeVideo's $19.1 million round, Chill's $8 million in Series A, Conviva's $15 million investment from Time Warner, Spreecast's $7 million in Series A, Keek's $7 million round, DramaFever's $6 million round, Longtail Video's $5 million in Series B, ShareThrough's $5 million in Series B, TVinci's $4.5 million round, and many more. ABI Research estimates that the combined global market revenue of video delivery and management would reach $2.1 billion by the end of 2012, and will grow to over $4 billion by 2017.

Now in 2013, we've gone beyond the Fear and Loathing in Online Video and codec browser wars from a few years ago, and as Jan Ozer recently noted, WebM: It's Forgotten but Not Quite Gone. As we move forward, the industry looks to a new online video standard in H.265 High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), which was just approved as an ITU standard this past week, although according to Dan Rayburn, HEVC (H.265) Adoption Is At Least Five Years Away For Consumer Content Services. As we move beyond the PC era, with mobile devices and tablets poised to surpass Notebook PC shipments in 2013, voices of reason within the online video industry, like Brightcove's Jeremy Allaire says, the industry needs Bipartisan Solutions to Ending the Religious Wars over Mobile Platforms. Allaire says the future is, "hybrid apps. It's not HTML5 vs. native, it’s actually both HTML5 and native."

Viewing trends are shifting as distribution models change, with YouTube and Facebook dominating the media and entertainment space. According to comScore, "82 million U.S. Internet users watched 38.7 billion online content videos in December, while video ad views totaled 11.3 billion." While the average duration of online content video was 5.4 minutes, long-form content viewing also is growing with Netflix dominating the competition having record earnings 33 million subscribers worldwide (27 million in the U.S.) That's great news for the online video and OTT-video industry, because based on forecasts by Informa Telecoms & Media the global online video market will be worth $37 billion in 2017.

Roku's Anthony Wood says, the future of television is coming faster than you think and that not as futuristic as you'd think, where we'll be able to watch every movie ever made, in any language, day or night. Over the last year, Intel has been working on its own virtual MSO/cable TV service and will soon roll out its set-top and service box city by city. As OTT delivery and subscription models mature we'll start to see more content owners unbundle their offerings. Even HBO is pondering the possibility of a standalone offering which would challenge the status quo. But cord-cutters will have to keep dreaming for now, since cable and satellite operators will block the channel from going direct to consumers since it would cut into their subscription base. Also, stay tuned to what Netflix and Amazon are doing around original programming, which will cause further disruption to content subscription and distribution models.

While online video still remains a fraction of total TV and video revenue, it's growing, and online video advertising will continue to mature as marketers and publishers come to better understand video metrics. According to Frost & Sullivan, online video viewers are watching more video ads, but Ooyala's Bismarck Lepe maintains that the focus has to be about personalizing the viewing experience. he says, Advertising in Videos Could Be Better Targeted and It’s High Time We F**ked With the Magic. Lepe states that, "metrics that provide a more granular understanding of viewer preferences, behavior, device, location and other metrics can dramatically optimize online video advertising efficacy and reach."

As video gets more social, there's also been a lot of talk and jockeying about who will become the next “Instagram for video”, which Sorenson Media's Peter Csathy says, most mobile video “contenders” miss the mark, "because they fail to focus on the fundamental differences between video and still-image content." The real contenders can be identified "by three engaging content types", says Csathy. "Think of them as the three “M’s” that have a real chance to succeed massively at scale: music (a community of interest), meaning (social causes), and moments (private sharing)." With Twitter's release of Vine last week, iPhone users may have just met a new contender to apps like VMIX's video editing app Givit, but Csathy's verdict is that it's not "Instagram for Video" Holy Grail. If 2013 follows the funding trends of 2012, I'm sure we'll see a lot more competition in this space over the next year.

Back in 2009, Cisco predicted that video would be 90% of all consumer Internet traffic and 64% of mobile. Now, a few years later Cisco says online video is going mainstream driven by 70% of U.S. broadband consumers who are watching 100 minutes of professionally produced Internet video every week.

So as we look forward into 2013, at the shape of things to come for online video, one thing is for certain – "content is king" and it always will be.

Online Video Predictions

6 Online Video Trends to Watch in 2013 from Patrick Hurley

2013 Online Video Industry Fortunes: An Introduction - By Joel Unickow: Leading Executives of the Online Video Industry give their prediction for what's to come in 2013

Online Video Advertising and Marketing

Video Predictions 2013 | Tremor Video

2013 Video Predictions by Tremor Video from Tremor Video on Vimeo.

Digital Predictions 2013 from Soap Creative

Tech

Trends, Shifts and Disruptions

Photo credit: Inhabitat Green Designs
Photo credit: Brightcove Blog

Thursday, December 27, 2012

OTTCONversations: Andrew Kippen, Boxee - Reinventing Broadcast Television

I caught up with Andrew Kippen, VP of Marketing at Boxee, earlier this year at OTTCON 2012 to talk about the future of television and how Boxee is reinventing broadcast TV. In January 2012, Boxee Inc. released Boxee Live TV, a new product that added live TV content from the big networks: NBC, ABC, Fox, CBS to the Boxee experience. According to Kippen, this $50 add-on solution to the Boxee Box combined the best of everything available Over-the-Top and live broadcast TV. However, since my conversation with Kippen, Boxee discontinued the original Boxee Box it released in November 2010, to make way for a new streamlined $99 Boxee TV box, which was met with strong criticism from both Boxee users and technology blogs like Streamingmedia.com and Popular Science.

The new Boxee TV includes an an antenna to pick up live HD channels and added a subscription-based cloud DVR with "no limits" and built-in Internet apps like Netflix, VUDU, YouTube, Vimeo and Pandora. Boxee also struck a deal with Walmart to sell the new Boxee TV device direct to consumers in time for the holidays. Kippen says that Boxee's major consumer markets are the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and is available in 35 countries, giving it a much broader footprint than other companies in the space.

In his recent article, Tim Siglin points out, that two main features of the new Boxee TV aren't even available in all markets.

"For the company to avoid disappointing customers again, it would make sense to have the most important features -- the USP, or unique selling proposition -- ready to go at product launch. Yet, the two primary features still aren't available, almost a month after launch: live television pause and cloud- or network-based DVR (nDVR). Those two features, which the company touts as part and parcel of the "Boxee Rebellion" on its packaging, are not ready for widespread use. In fact, the nDVR functionality that Boxee calls unlimited DVR is only available in beta in eight cities in the United States: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C."

Siglin added that there's also a mismatch in the Boxee-Walmart retail strategy, because Walmart has a limited presence in many of those urban markets and faces a big hurdle to sell to sell the Boxee TV to its rural markets, where the unlimited DVR service is not yet available.

Although, the Boxee TV blog states that:

"As we begin service in these markets we assume there’s going to a few growing pains so we’re marking the service as BETA, but most users should have full functionality (and it will be FREE during this period)."

While Boxee continues to innovate its product and strike deals with content providers, many of its early adopters have expressed their frustration at being abandoned. The company started with an agnostic business model and a free software-based OTT social media center and devoted user community, but has phased out the software platform, and locked out popular features and development as the Boxee platform matured over the last few years.

Boxee CEO Avner Ronen wrote on the Boxee blog:

"Our small team has poured our hearts and souls into the Boxee Box and it has been great to meet users from all over the globe. Some loved it, some wanted more features, others complained, but everyone was passionate. We hope you have enjoyed it and will continue to use it in your living rooms, dens, bedrooms or wherever else you set it up."

Kippen says that Boxee's focus has been to extend the feature set, streamline what they do to make it simpler and easier to use, and bring in as much content as they can. He says that the company has always seen Boxee as an ecosystem play.

"We want to be the experience that you have on your TV, on your mobile device, your tablet," Kippen says. "We could be on a set-top box, Blu-Ray player or game console. We really see Boxee as a great way to access all that content that's coming from the Internet, and now from your antenna or cable system. We do a great job of bringing that all into one place. So I think for us, we would really like to see Boxee in a lot of those different devices, and also powering more innovative experiences between different screens."

According to Kippen, it all comes back to storytelling, which has grown beyond the traditional linear narrative into a transmedia experience.

"How do we take storytelling to the next level to where it's more than just a TV show, more than just a website or an iPad app," asks Kippen. "How do we create a story arc that goes across all these different platforms?"

Kippen is confident that Boxee can be a great way to experiment and build those experiences out.

About Boxee
Boxee Inc. is helping people fall in love with TV all over again. We believe TV should be personal and delivered on your schedule. That’s why we created the world’s first cloud DVR that allows you to record an unlimited amount of TV programs to the Internet, and then watch on your TV, computer, iPad…pretty much anywhere. Boxee also lets you watch shows from broadcast TV channels and shows & movies from online services like Netflix, VUDU and YouTube. Boxee is made with love in NYC.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

OTTCONversations: John Gildred, SyncTV - OTT Video is Replacing Traditional Broadcast TV

Earlier this year at OTTCON 2012, I met up with John Gildred, Founder and CTO of Silicon Valley-based SyncTV, to discuss how OTT video is replacing traditional broadcast TV. According to Gildred, media consumption methods are changing, and mobile devices and OTT video is the main driver behind the shift. OTT is on the path to replace conventional TV, but for now, it's becoming a strong supplement to legacy broadcast platforms. Gildred says, video is such a focal point of what's going on and live television is going to be a big component too. An important theme in 2012 is making Over-the-Top technology be suitable for a full multi-channel live television services, and VOD, network DVR, accessibility on any device with all the things you would normally expect.

Another trend, Gildred says, is that broadcasters and content providers will seek and leverage OTT cloud-based video services.

"They may know they need a CDN, they know they need an app, but they don't necessarily know how to tie the billing in and the customer management, and the entitlement and the DRM, and there's so many other pieces they don't always know they need to have."

Those other pieces include; flexible CMS, VOD and live transcoding, rights management, availability windows, billing, branded apps, analytics and integration.

Gildred wrote, on the the SyncTV blog,

"As more people begin looking for alternatives to bundled cable subscriptions, some networks are exploring ways to retain the attention of a changing viewer base. A few prominent networks have also released apps for connected- device and TV app stores." "New standards, like MPEG DASH, and initiatives allow digital TV – think digital cable – to be shown over the Internet, and on connected devices. The idea is based on the different ways in which viewers receive content into their homes. Some watch digital TV. Others stream content, but often to a computer, or computer or connected device (and the required pile of hardware and cables) hooked up to a TV. Hybrid broadcasting would allow viewers to watch all of their streaming and digital broadcast content through one device."

The SyncTV provides an OTT platform for broadcasters and content providers for pay TV and pay-per-view. Gildred has experience working with companies like NBC Universal; France’s largest broadcaster, M6; AVAIL-TVN; LimeTV. SyncTV is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California with representatives in France, Spain, UK, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and China. Earlier this, SyncTV's parent company Intertrust Technologies Corporation, signed a patent deal with HTC, giving it a 20% stake in SyncTV.

About SyncTV
SyncTV and its content distribution platform offers video content and service providers a turnkey solution for extending their offerings to millions of viewers across the Internet. SyncTV partners with television networks, broadcasters, content distributors, and content producers worldwide to distribute media across all forms of entertainment media including Internet-enabled connected TVs, Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, smartphones, tablets, and more. In addition to Dream Link Entertainment, SyncTV works with many of the world’s top entertainment studios including NBC Universal, Jaroo, Kidlet, Wieder.TV, Aim Flicks, Oasis TV, The Concert Channel and Bollywood Nirvana. Based in Sunnyvale, CA, SyncTV is a subsidiary of Intertrust Technologies Corporation (www.intertrust.com. For more information, visit www.synctv.com or follow @SyncTV on Twitter.

Sunday, September 30, 2012

OTTCONversations: Sean Knapp, Ooyala - Developing the Next Generation of Connected Media Experiences

I caught up with Sean Knapp, Co-founder and CTO of Ooyala, earlier this year at OTTCON 2012 to talk about some of the latest trends in multi-screen video delivery, monetization and personalized video experiences. Knapp was there to speak on the executive panel discussion, "Over-the-Top TV 2.0 – Developing the Next Generation of Innovative Connected Media Experiences."

According to Knapp, a lot of questions are being asked as the growth in online video explodes across the web and devices, in particular, how do we make online video more monetizable and more of a revenue stream? How do we solve this problem of the old adage of, analog dollars to digital pennies and now, justifiably digital dimes, and how do we make that digital dollars?

Video has to be more of a personalized experience

Five years ago online video consumption was only 1% of video viewing, and today that's grown to 9%. That brings with it, some very serious implications, as Knapp notes, "We're no longer in an experimental phase, we're in a viable revenue stream phase. But we're also in a potential cannibalization phase."

Knapp says, video has to be more of a personalized experience for each consumer and each piece of content on each device. Whether it's a mobile phone, tablet, set-top box or PC – they all provide an opportunity to engage the consumer in very different ways that ultimately will build a much stronger one-to-one relationship with every consumer.

"This has huge potential for the market, but it does require a shift in mindset from broadcast, which is a one to many – to personalization, which is a one-to-one dialogue with each and every consumer."

Online Video is still only a small percent of the market, but it's growing...

If you go by hours of content consumed, YouTube is 2.7% of all video viewed online based on statistics from earlier in the year. According to comScore's most recent comScore Video Metrix, an all-time high of 188 million U.S. Internet users watched 37.7 billion online content videos in August 2012, while video ad views totaled 9.5 billion. The notable findings showed that 87.3% of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video, and video ads accounted for 20.1% of all videos viewed and 1.4% of all minutes spent viewing video online.

While the growth of online video viewing has seen a hockey stick trajectory over the last few years, Knapp notes that it serves as a really good reminder.

He says, "In the online world, we often times get caught up in this whole notion of revolutionary technologies and revolutionizing industries. We could go check Merriam-Webster, but I'm pretty sure "revolutionary technology" requires more than 2.7% of the market share."

That's not to underscore the impact that YouTube has had for the industry, and he acknowledges that it's been an incredible catalyst for the market and has accelerated huge massive growth and consumer adoption.

"But I think it serves as a very good reminder that we have a very long way to go, and that we're in very early innings. What is happening now in online video is that we're moving away form the early adopters, from the user-generated content and simpler business models, and we're actually taking that large body of content that you and I and every consumer has watched for decades, and we're helping that transition to screens. That's the great opportunity here. It takes a different approach and harder product and technology to build to do it, but that's really the promise of online video."

Also, with the growing adoption of OTT services, like Netflix, which boasts 27 million streaming members in the United States, Canada, Latin America, the United Kingdom and Ireland, it's clear that we're quickly moving into the next generation of connected media experiences.

Will all video be available over IP in the next few years?

During his OTTCON panel discussion, Knapp and his fellow panelist were asked their opinion of Anthony Wood's prediction that in four years time, all video will be available over IP.

Knapp says, "It depends on the definition. WIll all content be available over IP in four years? Yes, I think so. Because in four years I think we'll have solved a large number of these monetization problems. Will all content consumption be over IP? Absolutely not. I think we can expect in the next four years that we'll move from approximately 9% in the U.S. to a little bit internationally, to breaking through the 50% barrier in four years. I think it will be a significant turning point, obviously, but again it's very much dependent on availability of content on devices and the appropriate revenue models for that content."

Knapp believes that it will be a long time before all content consumption shifts to IP. But the primary need today is the availability of content, in new packages or bundles and through different monetization models.

What are Ooyala's customers asking for now and in the future?

Knapp says that along this evolutionary path the needs of the market are evolving as well. Three or four years ago, the needs of the market were largely around content management. Today, the needs have evolved to the second phase, he calls reach. Even though, content publishers can extend their reach across all connected devices, there's still a lot of fragmentation in the "10 foot" experience, and these problems are hard to solve. How do you create an engaging experience for consumers while keeping the performance fast and tightly integrated with your monetization model?

Knapp says that it's all about optimizing the experience for the consumer. Different customers have arrived at this set of needs sooner than others, and ultimately, two years from now all anybody is going to care about is the third phase, which is monetization.

"The reach problems will largely have been solved to some varying success. But the primary focus will be on monetization. How do I ultimately monetize my content better? The trick isn't, how do I show more ads or how do I just increase the CPMs of my current ads? That's absolutely part of the picture, but there's a lot more to it than that."

Knapp says it's more about using your analytics wisely to help you decide, how many ads should I show and where? And for each and every consumer, how do I change that? Some consumers respond differently to pre-rolls than overlays. It all depends on where they're at in their consumption cycle, and what state of mind the consumer is in.

"We're recommending content, and trying different pieces of content, and if we're in this exploratory phase, we should actually monetize less aggressively. Whereas, if we're in the recurring consumption phase, we should actually monetize more aggressively. And this is where the big opportunity is, that a few customers are starting to get to, but we will see this as the dominant need in the next two years."

Knapp says Ooyala designed its platform with studios, media companies and brands in mind, which has helped it attract big customers, including ESPN, Miramax, Bloomberg, Yahoo! Japan, Victoria’s Secret, Telegraph Media Group, The North Face, Rolling Stone, Dell, and many more on a global scale.

Where is Ooyala going and where will it be in four years?

As CTO and President of Technology, Knapp oversees Ooyala's technology and product roadmap. He notes that since its inception, Ooyala's focus has always been on how do they help their customers make more money. Not just in the short term, by showing more ads, but in the long term through better user experiences.

Ooyala is well known in the market for their analytics, their approach to data and monetization, and Knapp notes,

"We will continue to make major investments around monetization. It is the fastest growing and largest component of our R&D expenses. We all see this as a key component, not to just grow Ooyala's business but to growing the overall industry."

Just this past June, Ooyala announced that it had raised $35 million in new capital to drive standardization of its platform for online video streaming, monetization and discovery.

Where is content going and how will it change?

Knapp says that if we look at the introduction of online video, we're largely seeing the consumption of similar forms of content, and now we're simply seeing a transitioning of screens. Content producers are creating new forms of the same content, like the print industry had done when it when digital. We're staring to see major consumer brands like Victoria Secret, Dell and REI advertise through branded entertainment or tightly integrated into long-form content.

"We're seeing budgets shift as a result, while at the same time we're seeing premium content you and I consume everyday simply move to these same distribution channels. So it is the introduction of new content, but largely it's the same form."

The only caveat, he says, is that we're seeing mobile devices more clip based. ESPN as an example is repackaging it's popular television program, Sports Center, as clips and they're monetizing it incredibly well on mobile devices and on the PC.

"Similar types of content," says Knapp, "just different distribution strategies now fit to the devices."

About Sean Knapp

Sean Knapp is a co-founder of Ooyala. As CTO and President of Technology, he oversees all engineering and helps define and execute Ooyala's product strategies. Before founding Ooyala, Sean worked at Google, where he developed and launched iGoogle, the company's popular, customizable home page. He also was a tech lead for Google's legendary Web Search team, helping that team increase Google revenues by $1B. Sean has both B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University. He is a member of Ooyala's board of directors. Follow @seanknapp on Twitter

About Ooyala

Ooyala delivers personalized video experiences across all screens. It is the leader in online video management, publishing, analytics and monetization. Ooyala’s integrated suite of technologies and services give content owners the power to expand audiences through deep insights that drive increased viewer engagement and revenue from video. Companies using Ooyala technology include ESPN, Pac-12 Enterprises, Miramax, Bloomberg, Victoria’s Secret, Telegraph Media Group, Tennis Australia, The North Face, Rolling Stone, Dell, Sephora and Yahoo! Japan. Headquartered in Mountain View, California, Ooyala has offices in Los Angeles, New York City, London, Sydney and Guadalajara, Mexico; and the company works with premier reseller and technology partners throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, Japan and the Asia-Pacific region. Follow @ooyala on Twitter

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

OTTCONversations: Sam Blackman, Elemental Technologies - The 2012 Summer Olympics Go OTT

As the world tunes in to the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London, more than 20,000 broadcasters aim to reach a potential global audience of 4 billion viewers with more than 4,000 hours of coverage. According to Sam Blackman, CEO and Co-founder of Portland Oregon-based Elemental Technologies, this year the Olympics are going over-the-top (OTT) and his company is serving up Olympic streams on a global scale with some of the biggest names in broadcast and media entertainment, including, the BBC in the UK, Terra in Latin America, Canada's Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium and Eurosport. The company is also supporting customers in the US and Japan. Elemental estimates that its multi-screen video processing deployments in 70 countries will help its broadcast customers reach upwards of a billion viewers worldwide.

Elemental Technologies provides hardware and software solutions for adaptive multi-screen video processing. Elemental Live is a linear encoder that takes live streams in and creates multi-screen outputs for live distribution, and Elemental Server is a file-based server that creates multi-screen outputs for live distribution. Blackman says that many of its customers use these solutions for large-scale sports video streaming. See my 2010 interview with Blackman from Streaming Media East, where he also demonstrated Elemental Live and Elemental Server (Larry Kless' Weblog: Elemental Delivers GPU-Accelerated Video Streaming Solutions)

I spoke with Blackman earlier this year at the Over-the-Top Conference, OOTTCON 2012, where he discussed, The Olympics Go OTT: Lessons Learned from the last 12 months in sports video streaming. Blackman says that total available TV audience for the Olympics has grown from 3.9B in 2004 to 4.7B in 2008, and that it's by far the biggest global sports even. Not only has the number of viewers grown, so has the number hours of professionally-produced live video content. Consumers want to watch the Olympics on all of their screens, and this year a record number of viewers all around the globe will watch live and video on-demand (VOD) content on TV, PCs, laptops, tablets, mobile phones and other connected devices.

“When we began the intense evaluation process for streaming of the Olympic Games more than a year ago, Elemental had little idea of just how broadly we’d be adopted on a global scale,” says Blackman.

In this video, Blackman summarizes five of the key lessons Elemental learned from working with the sports industry which it's put to use in delivering the 2012 Summer Olympics video stream.

Destination Divergence

You never know when the next iPad will hit, ...how quickly can you react?

The first key learning was around the divergence of output end-points. With its customer TF1, France's top TV channel and a leading media group in Europe, Elemental had to stream a very large event to multiple devices in Apple HLS and Flash, and set-top boxes in separate outputs for five ISPs across France, all with different packaging requirements.

"The key take-away from this sporting event," say Blackman, "was that to deliver effectively to this divergence of multi-screen devices, you absolutely have to have a software-based solution. Because only software is flexible enough to adapt to the rapidly changing multi-screen world."

Instant On-Demand

Content windows are collapsing to hour = 0, speed can be your differentiator.

The second key lesson was learned working with a company called deltatre, that powered all the highlight reels from recent the Rugby World Cup games. In this case, Elemental was taking highlights that DeltaTRE was creating and very quickly making as many as 20 multi-screen outputs for all its different highlights.

"The key here is that speed is critical," Blackman points out. "Fans want to see highlihgts of big plays as soon as possible, and having a highlight read for VOD, video on-demand consumption in two minutes, as opposed to 30 minutes is a huge difference in terms of how effectively DeltaTRE's customers were able to monetize that VOD asset. So speed of processing is very critical."

Going Global

The Olympics is a true global phenomena but every live event is now geo-agnostic.

The third lesson was learned working on a project with Brazilian-based Terra Networks which had the streaming rights for the 2011 Pan American games and was streaming to 17 different countries across Latin America. Terra was one of Elemental's early international deployments, and Elemental learned a lot about international deployments and requirements that are different internationally than domestically. In this case, multi-channel audio support was required and Elemental had to create many different audio channels and have them associated with a single video file, so that regardless of what of language is being put on top of that content, the end user could view the video and hear the audio in their own language.

The second key learning in working with Terra was around sub-titling and captioning of content, which are very different based on geography. Sub-titling and captioning requirements have changed dramatically over the past few years, and transitioning and translating between one captioning format and another is becoming more and more difficult.

"So being able to successfully translate captions across different end devices, screens and geographies is absolutely critical", stresses Blackman. "Having a solution that really has been through the wringer, in terms of international deployments is absolutely critical."

Personalized Playback

Content playback on the fans terms. just might put more fans in the seats.

The fourth key lesson was from Stanford University that deployed real-time wifi replay system where, if you are attending a Stanford football or basketball game, you can actually pull up a replay on either your iPad or mobile device, either a close call or great play. By leveraging Elemental Live which created an archive file in real-time, Stanford was able to make these on-demand highlights available instantaneously. So with in under a minute of the play occurring, fans could pull up that video clip on their mobile device.

"What this is a sign of," Blackman notes, "is a trend, that to make sure that venues and stadiums remain exciting events to attend when they're competing against really big screen televisions and fancy audio systems in living rooms. People are still going to want to go to the stadium because they get to watch the action live but they also get this personalized video replay system in their hands on their device. So as the fourth learning, and this is going to be important in more and more sporting venues moving forward."

Protocol Proliferation

Hope the DASH 'collapses the world', but be prepared in the event that it doesn't.

The final learning was from Eurosport, the Paris-based equivilent of ESPN for Europe, that is using Elemental for both live and VOD to 11 different countries.

"Here the key is that Eurosport is creating streams for devices as disparate as iOS devices (iPads, iPhones), Roku boxes, Apple TV, Flash Player on the PC and Android devices and then, Silverlight for Xbox 360 and other Microsoft applications," states Blackman. "They are creating 29 different outputs simultaneously, and having to manage the network requirements of all those outputs."

Blackman says that there's hope with MPEG-DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP), an emerging video standard that they've been developing with several other companies in the space, that it will help reduce the number of outputs from 28 down to just a few different adaptive bit rate (ABR) outputs with standardized packaging. If that happens, it holds the promise that ‘collapses the world’ into a single video standard and the proliferation of formats will start to get reduced.

Elemental recently raised $13 million is a series C funding round, with an eye on global expansion, and the 2012 Olympic Games will be Elemental’s largest live deployment to date. See this this recent press release for on Elemental's multiscreen delivery of the Summer Games: Elemental Unveils Plans to Stream the 2012 Olympic Games with Leading Broadcasters Worldwide | Elemental Technologies.

About Elemental
Elemental Technologies is the leading supplier of video solutions for multiscreen content delivery. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Portland, Oregon, the company pioneered the use of graphics processors to power adaptive video streaming over IP networks. Providing unmatched solutions for top media and entertainment companies worldwide, including Comcast, Disney and HBO, Elemental helps content programmers and service providers bring video to any screen, anytime – all at once. The company has offices in the United States, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. To learn more, please visit www.elementaltechnologies.com and follow @elementaltech on Twitter.

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