LightFlow broadens user-context scope to further improve efficiencies

Cost, quality of experience and smooth operation benefit by factoring extended codecs support, specific device optimization and network QoS.

These are the new features added:

  • Content preparation supporting VP9 codec, in addition to LightFlow current solution for H.264 and H.265. Thanks to this you can optimize each unique playback in any device with the most efficient version of your video assets using an intelligent multi-codec approach.

 

  • Smart bitrate management based on device, screen size, and watching distance. LightFlow is able to learn from your users’ habits and context, and apply optimizations accordingly.

 

  • Now LightFlow is able to apply optimizations considering the network conditions of your users base. Ensure your videos are always prepared to maximize quality of experience of your users while being cost effective.

 

Contact us for more information: sales@epiclabs.io

Epic Labs to exhibit at IBC 2018 introducing LightFlow by Epic Labs.

EPIC LABS TO EXHIBIT AT IBC 2018 INTRODUCING FIRST-IN-CLASS VIDEO STREAM OPTIMIZER FOR QUALITY OF EXPERIENCE (QoE): LIGHTFLOW by Epic Labs

Epic Labs will exhibit at IBC 2018 introducing LightFlow: a QoE enhancer leveraging advanced machine learning technologies, smart encoding algorithms and cognitive services for better user engagement. Visit us at Stand 14.A36 to learn about LightFlow Video Stream Optimizer for QoE

Madrid- 02/08/2018 – Epic Labs (www.epiclabs.io), proud member of the DASH Industry Forum and Digital Production Partnership (DPP), is pleased to announce its presence at IBC 2018 introducing a new QoE enhancer media platform known as LightFlow.

LightFlow is an easy-to-use platform that enables an enhanced user experience by leveraging advanced encoding techniques using machine learning techniques. LightFlow also introduces ultrafast (real-time) encoding and cognitive services to optimize video streams bringing the best quality of experience for customers. It works either for VoD (file-based) and live streams on DASH and HLS on any device player.

LightFlow improves media through proprietary Machine Learning algorithms that analyse content providing the best video quality at a lower bitrate generating an optimal ABR ladder and encoding profiles. Some of the benefits are: minimize rebuffering events, improve video start time (VST), exit before video starts (EBVS) and reduce video start failures (VSF) achieving a best-in-class stream that flows perfectly over any internet connection.

A more efficient use of video bandwidth means a lower cost for storage and improving CDN performance, while reducing transcoding costs.

LightFlow can be easily integrated on any OTT or live TV Channel workflow by consuming a light and intuitive API and an architecture that allows multiple deployment models (SaaS, on-prem, cloud, hybrid).

Customers will get an enhanced QoE, better user engagement and user retention by offering a TV-Like experience.

LightFlow main features:

– Per title smart encoding.
– Per scene smart encoding.
– Live smart encoding.
– Low-Latency smart encoding.
– Advanced media cognitive services: face recognition, auto-clipping, enriched archiving, contextual advertising and content moderation.

LightFlow can be deployed on any media workflow and any existing infrastructure either on-premises or on any cloud provider. Epic Labs can also provide the encoding, storage and delivery for any workflow. LightFlow enables a 100% out-of-the-box solution to fit on any workflow or requirement.

Alfonso Peletier, Epic Labs CEO and Founder: “We have identified a raising demand of OTT providers and broadcasters to improve viewers’ experience: a great image quality and a lighter stream that loads up fast, with no rebuffering events no matter the network condition or device brand. At Epic Labs, we have put an incredible Team of media software engineers, encoding and machine learning experts to create LightFlow with the mission to boost viewers QoE while keeping media workflows costs at bay. We are proud to be at IBC, the best place to be when launching a new product like LightFlow and stay in close touch with decision makers from all over the world.”.

In addition to offer attendees the chance for a hands-on demonstration and in-depth information about LightFlow, Alfonso Peletier, Epic Labs CEO & Founder, will be part of the panel “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Status update” that will be held on Saturday 15th at 15:30 in the Hall 14 Content Everywhere Hub.
Epic Labs will be at stand A36 in Hall 14 at Amsterdam RAI. To schedule a meeting with Epic Labs at IBC 2018, please send an email to: sales@epiclabs.io or visit www.epiclabs.io

Press and Media contact (Content and advertisement):
Jesús Carrillo
Marketing and Communications Manager
M.: +34 649 801 593
E.: jcarrillo@epiclabs.io
W.: www.epiclabs.io

Dash.js V 2.6.8 released with relevant features.

Dash.js V 2.6.8 released with relevant features.

Epic Labs, a proud member of the DASH Industry Forum and Digital Production Partnership (DPP), announces the release of version 2.6.8 of dash.js that incorporates major improvements such as low latency Chunked CMAF support.

Several enhancements have been incorporated in this new version such as fixes that improve captioning and DRM handling. But above all, two implementations are extremely important, one of them is the support of persistent licenses (DRM), while the other is the introduction of Low latency chunked CMAF over HTTP, which enables 2-4 second latency for live streams keeping a smooth playback experience. Supporting this feature in a scalable manner is enabled by major CDNs such as Akamai.

The development aims to provide an alternative to older protocols like RTMP whose main advantage over HTTP streaming ones was its lower latency.

In the client side, part of the solution is based on the use of the fetch API offered by browsers, which allows reading incoming chunks as they arrive, instead of waiting for them to be completed. Dash.js analyzes the byte stream representing each chunk and pushes it to the video decoder as soon as it has enough information to start playback stably. Every player based on dash.js is able to benefit of this new feature by doing nothing but updating to the latest version.

Jesús Oliva, Epic Labs Media Engineer Lead & Founder: “This is an exciting achievement because it provides a low latency chunked solution based on open standards, protocols and source code. A real alternative to proprietary or custom solutions that require to package content in a strange manner or exceed the norm. This is a great deal for the industry.”

 

 

Dash Industry Forum Dash.js
Dash Industry Forum Dash.js

The DASH Industry Forum (DASH-IF) establishes interoperability gui- delines on the usage of the MPEG-DASH streaming standard. MPEG- DASH simpli es and converges the delivery of IP video, to provide a rich and enjoyable user experience, to help drive down costs and ultimately to enable a better content catalogue to be offered to consumers.

Epic Labs Media Engineering Services
Epic Labs Media Engineering Services

Epic Labs, proud member of the DASH Industry Forum, is a software engineering center that helps companies to innovate in Media, offering advanced video solutions and several collaboration proposals in digital transformation.

La inteligencia artificial aplicada a los archivos de televisión

La inteligencia artificial aplicada a los archivos de televisión

Presentación Power Point de Epic Labs en las II Jornadas de Archivo y Televisión organizadas por RTVE el 16 de abril de 2018, dentro del panel “Metadatado automático y herramientas cognitive en archivos de televisión”.

 

 

Descargate la presentación.

 

New dash.js version available. version 2.6.7. Available Epic Labs

New dash.js version available

Epic Labs, proud member of the DASH Industry Forum and Digital Production Partnership, announces that version 2.6.7 of the dash.js player has been released.

Several new features have been added in this new version, three of which are particularly important like the new multi-key DRM support, this means that the various tracks that make up a stream, such as video and audio, can each have their own unique DRM systems and/or keys.

A new pre-load feature has also been added, providing a great benefit to end-users. This new functionality enables the stream to be loaded despite the fact that there is not yet a place where it can be shown or played on the screen. This is especially helpful because although the user doesn’t know where the stream is going to be played, it has already started to be loaded, so when it gives play to the video it will start instantaneously, improving the usability.

At last, dash.js has been equipped with methods to allow the player to run without any problem when playing incorrectly formatted material. In many cases, the players must deal with streams with badly created segments or incorrect internal timing, which causes undesired results or the impossibility to play video. Many automatic features have been introduced in version 2.6.7 to guarantee better tolerance to poorly formatted contents so that dash.js can guarantee optimal playback.

 

 

The DASH Industry Forum (DASH-IF) establishes interoperability gui- delines on the usage of the MPEG-DASH streaming standard. MPEG- DASH simpli es and converges the delivery of IP video, to provide a rich and enjoyable user experience, to help drive down costs and ultimately to enable a better content catalogue to be offered to consumers.

Epic Labs, proud member of the DASH Industry Forum, is a software engineering center that helps companies to innovate in Media, offering advanced video solutions and several collaboration proposals in digital transformation.

The Media Industry Opportunities, a vision from Mark Harrison (DPP)

An interview with Mark Harrison, Managing Director, Digital Production Partnership.

How can an association like DPP be helpful in this changing scenario?

One of the defining characteristics of the industry right now, is that it’s no longer possible for any organization, any content provider, or any supplier, to have all the expertise and all the capabilities that are required to be successful in a very complex and fast moving environment. So, it becomes essential to establish relationships and to understand who you will need to partner with and how that partner could help. it’s very important to have an organization like the DPP which is not attached to any part of the supply chain, to help this process. We are not advocating for anyone, we are entirely neutral.

All we do is to coordinate the conversations that need to happen in order for companies to understand the kind of relationships that they need to have in order to manage change. And also, to be a place where the supply chain can tell us if there are particular obstacles we can help to solve. An example of this is the way we by assist with interoperability, through the creation of new industry specifications, or how we establish best practices that would be helpful to everyone. We are here to help.

 

What are the main goals for DPP in 2018?

This year we have two principal goals – one related to technical work and the other related to our engagement work. We finished 2017 with many member companies appreciating the way we create high quality, targeted engagements – by bringing together decision makers from suppliers and customers to talk in environments that feel safe. So this year we will create many more of those moments involving very high quality senior engagement. That’s one goal. The other goal is that we have some important pieces of technical work, particularly our mastering format specification called IMF for broadcasting and online; our news exchange format which is a way to exchange metadata in a news environment; and also our security program. So we want to land and implement all of those technical pieces in the first half of this year. And when those are done we can focus on a new technical target – such as our plan to define best practices for the exchange of content in cloud environments.

We’re living with an unprecedented and expanding range of competitors in the broadcast industry due to OTTs and VOD consumption, will this trend be increasing in the upcoming years? How do you think this situation will evolve?

I think the picture in the next couple of years will continue to be extremely unstable. I’m a great believer that change never proceeds in a straight line. Now it’s very easy to say that the online players like Amazon, Netflix, Facebook or Google are so strong and so effective, so they will get bigger and bigger and everybody else will suffer and die. But it won’t be like that because it’s never is like that! And although the new giants in the OTT space are absolutely certain to continue to be very important in this changing industry, I also expect that we will see several new relationships and partnerships emerging. Something we must never forget is that now it’s the consumer that decides; and there are bound to be certain needs that consumers will have around media. There is so much content in the world and consumers need to find it and discover it more easily. The drive to aggregate searchable content will be very important for any content provider that seeks to retain consumers.

Will broadcasters disappear or be transformed into another kind of company because of the broadband and OTT ecosystem success?

It could be a re-shaping of the broadcast community like Fox and Disney. We hear of a lot of discussions going on between major broadcasters, and it makes a lot of sense for them to begin to work together. The broadcast community has a huge back catalogue of content, and that has enormous value. And also of course they really know how to commission and make content, because they have decades of experience doing it. So this means they are still in a very strong position. It would be interesting if broadcasters began to focus on the editorial side, with their content making strength, and began to outsource some of their technology infrastructure.

The new players are focusing on Live Sports production as a main topic for their strategy in the upcoming years. Are sports the only real Pay TV Driver?

Live sports seem to have a direct line into the heart of consumers, after all its what Sky built their business on, and many others have too. So it’s something very powerful. But we must also remember that scripted content like movies and dramas are also very powerful drivers. Those two content types, drama and sports, are going to remain very powerful. What we might see is new players acquiring sports rights in order to gain a lot of share of the market and then begin to aggregate other kinds of content around it.

Google, Facebook or Amazon are moving faster than broadcasters that seem not to innovate at the same pace, why is this happening?

I think there’s a cultural challenge there. The new players are founded on the principle of innovation and of course they don’t have legacy infrastructure. Broadcasting companies have technical challenges with a lot of legacy infrastructure and long contracts with particular suppliers, and also cultural challenges that make it difficult to make decisions quickly. I used to work for a broadcaster and it pains me that it could take a year or more to make a decision about a major technology change or innovation. The competition is different, and the industry is now in a place where we need to make decisions continually. That’s why I think that broadcasters may look to partner or outsource their innovation – it’s a way to keep pace with the competition.

Artificial Intelligence is one of the main topics nowadays, there’s a lot of hype around this and we wonder how it might impact the media industry. Is it a real game changer? What specific use cases do you see this technologies can disrupt or create?

We had a conversation last week with many experts from the DPP membership while drawing up our predictions for 2018. What they told me was that they are seeing the application of machine learning in order to drive automation, and they see this moving very quickly. Automation is coming fast because it can be applied to functions that are people-heavy at a time when almost all organizations are looking to reduce costs. So it might be very interesting to see the way machine learning could reduce costs and impact the media industry over the next couple of years.

How do you see a company like Epic Labs fitting in this Media/Broadcast ecosystem?

Broadcasters in particular are beginning to look for companies that can help them to innovate, and this is where I think that a company like Epic Labs can have a really important role to play. Epic can help such companies to innovate by being agile and bringing fast thinking.


DPP (Digital Production Partnership) s a Membership-based.
DPP (Digital Production Partnership) s a Membership-based.

The DPP is a Membership-based, not-for-profit company, founded by our shareholders: ITV, BBC and Channel 4. Uniquely, our Membership represents the whole media supply chain: production companies, manufacturers, suppliers, service providers, post production facilities, consultancies, broadcasters, distributors, and not-for-profit organisations.

Epic Labs to participate on a panel session at Akamai Edge

“Real-world Solutions to Deliver Interactive Live Workflows with OTT Platforms” is the name of the panel to be celebrated on Friday 13th October at 9:50 am.

Epic Labs, proud member of the DASH IF, will show how to deliver interactive workflows on OTT platforms in order to explore new revenue models and experiences. Attendees will learn how to implement different technologies like WebRTC, cloud architectures and other techniques, solving common challenges and enabling a true end-to-end solution with low-latency video and full interactivity capabilities at a massive scale.

The panel will be held by Alfonso Peletier, Epic Labs Founder & CEO; Jesús Oliva, Epic Labs Founder & Media Engineering Lead; and Ilker Ürgenc, Media Architect at Akamai.

Alfonso Peletier, Epic Labs Founder & CEO: “We are proud to participate in the Akamai Edge conference, we will be sharing some of the interesting opportunities we are seeing for Media Companies and Broadcasters to generate engaging fresh experiences for users and audiences that want to interact with celebrities, journalists and content producers. We are providing real-time video technologies seamlessly integrated with Akamai technologies for high quality massive broadcast. This will be the main topic of the panel where we will be showcasing a demo as well.”

Akamai Edge 2017 will take place at Aria Resort in Las Vegas from 11 to 13 October. This is the tenth edition which has as its theme “Connect to tomorrow”. For nearly a week, different partners, customers and Akamai members will discuss different market trends and the most challenging scenarios in the different markets in which the company has a presence.

Epic Labs will be present at IBC 2017 in Amsterdam

Epic Labs will be present at IBC 2017 responding to the software engineering, innovation and digital transformation challenges in Broadcast and Media.

The great talent of Epic Labs Engineering Team is being recognized by many Broadcast and Media companies from the USA, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland or Spain.

The Media industry is facing an unprecedent transition as dedicated hardware is gradually being abandoned in favor to cloud and software-based architectures. There is also an evolution on the business models and content delivery experiences. In this continuous changing scenario is mandatory to partner with knowledge-centric companies to drive innovation processes.

Epic Labs services are comprised by a premium Engineering Team coming from companies like Akamai, Dell EMC, NEC, or Pivotal. This knowledge and capacity, combined with innovative agile methodologies and culture are helping Media companies optimize the current operations, create new digital products, cloud, virtualization and IP-based broadcast solutions, innovative experiences and enhanced monetization models.

Diego García, Epic Sales: “Every day we see how the IT areas of traditional broadcast are ganining relevance and visibility. If we look further the presence of IT-folks inside the broadcast companies technical departments will be massive. We are finding great opportunities to partner with Media and Broadcasting companies to successfully merge these two worlds”.
Epic Labs has recently joined the DASH Industry Forum and will deploy a Team of people at IBC, where the company wants to leverage it´s own value proposition, and also increase customers and partners.

Alfonso Peletier, Epic Labs Founder & CEO: ”We are excited to attend this new IBC where we look to meet customers and partners to share market insights, trends and experiences. Also, an exceptional chance to seek for additional opportunities to further partner and share insight on Epic Labs areas of research for Media on real-time video, machine learning or blockchain”.

For schedule a meeting with Epic Labs at IBC 2017, please send an email to: diego@epiclabs.io / info@epiclabs.io