All posts by Anthony Romero

Looking to deliver live streaming content with closed captions? Curious on CEA-608 captions and how they differ from CEA-708?

This article describes some of the benefits of closed captioning live content while discuss the CEA-608 and CEA-708 methods. It also briefly touches on execution, with emphasis on IBM’s video streaming offerings which have recently enhanced their delivery to support reaching mobile devices with these captions.

• What are the benefits of closed captions?
• What are CEA-608 captions?
• What are CEA-708 captions and how do they differ from CEA-608?
• Are CEA-708 captions better?
• Encoders: adding CEA-608 captions to a live stream
• Adding CEA-608 captions from other encoders

Looking to broadcast 4k streaming video? 4K presents an opportunity for better, more vivid detail. This can enhance viewing content on larger screen sizes, such as on a big screen in a meeting room. Even downscaling the assets, though, can present an image that is high quality with a higher level details. It also offers an opportunity to focus in on smaller details. Ever do a presentation with a graph that was indecipherable due to size and compression? 4K streaming at an appropriate bitrate can be a solution.

IBM Watson Media has added capabilities to create 4k live streaming video and upload 4k VOD (video on-demand) files over the IBM video streaming services. This article outlines these capabilities and also discusses what is 4K and how to go about broadcasting at that resolution. It also outlines some of the challenges inherent with live streaming 4K content, due to the large demand from both the broadcaster and viewer in terms of a required connection speed. Consequently, before they can begin streaming at this resolution, broadcasters need to reach out to IBM Watson Media’s customer success to discuss their setup.

• What is 4K video?
• Recommend settings for 4K streaming
• Required connection speed to broadcast 4K
• Download speed to watch 4K and adaptive bitrate streaming
• Encoders for 4K live streaming video
• History of 4K video and industry specifications

When asked in relation to video deployment, 58% of IT executives want to be able to monitor network performance. Video delivery is becoming a big part of how companies conduct business, both from a customer facing and employee facing perspective. From an internal point of view, employees and stakeholders are now actively being trained and addressed through video content, ranging from internal technology training to executive town halls. Under certain setups that feature a large, centrally located audience, this presents a challenge to scale without harming the network. An issue that raises that need to monitor network performance by those in IT.

This need is addressed by technology called ECDN, or Enterprise CDN. This article discusses what is an ECDN and how it works. It also covers ways that administrators can monitor them and the benefit of strain reduction to the network. IBM Watson Media has also recently enhanced its monitoring capabilities for its ECDN offering, which are highlighted as well. It also includes data from a joint IBM and Wainhouse Research report, which interviewed 1,512 executives to see what elements they place importance on for their video solutions. The full report can be read here.

• What does ECDN stand for and what is it?
• Benefit of using ECDN
• ECDN performance example
• Monitoring ECDN instance

Looking for a way to segment long form video content? Adding video chapter markers presents a great way to create longer video assets while offering a navigation method to support jumping to topics of relevance for viewers.

IBM Watson Media has recently improved video chapters, including enhanced shareability for end viewers through URL chapter points and integration with cloud trimming.

• What Are Video Chapter Markers
• Setting Up Video Chapters
• URL Chapter Shortcuts
• Support for Cloud Trimming
• Video Chapter Use Cases

Need to add geographic restrictions to your video content? Geo-blocking offers a way to control who is able to access your assets on a per country basis. This can be done through specific channels, allowing content owners to mix different geographic restrictions among their assets.

Recently added as an option inside IBM’s video streaming offerings, geo-blocking works across desktops and mobile devices. This includes if a viewer is trying to watch from an app. It joins a suite of security features, some of them around keeping content internal as highlighted in our Enterprise Video Security Components & Services white paper, to help enterprises keep their video content restricted to intended audiences.

• Geographic Filtering: Enabling Geo-blocking on Channels
• Viewer Experience from Geo-blocking
• Use Cases

Looking to add picture-in-picture video playback to your live broadcasting? Picture-in-picture can be a simple way to liven up presentations, adding live camera footage to decks or demos.

IBM Cloud Video Broadcaster (Ustream Broadcaster) has added support for picture-in-picture playback through its desktop encoder. The encoder is currently available for Mac, with a Windows version coming soon. This article mentions this new feature and touts use cases for the technology as well.

• What is Picture-in-picture?
• Live Streaming with Picture-in-picture
• Source Switching
• Branding the Experience
• Picture-in-picture Video Use Cases
  
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Want to know how to make a new video from content already uploaded to an account? IBM Watson Media is debuting a new feature that makes it easy to create new, edited videos from existing assets. This can be used to create highlight clips or segment content into smaller, logical snippets.

This feature works with both IBM’s video streaming and IBM’s enterprise video streaming offerings.