MediaKind – Ensuring optimal content delivery: key approaches and strategies
Tony Jones, Principal Technologist, MediaKind
In today’s digital landscape, the demand for high-quality video content is ever-growing, driving the need for robust platforms that can support the development of modern video applications and streaming media services. One of the key challenges for enterprises, broadcasters, and content creators lies in effectively managing and delivering video content across various channels and devices. The first hurdle consumers encounter when wanting to view content is being able to access it. We’ve all heard or seen about big events where people haven’t been able to sign in at the time the event begins or where the video streaming quality has suffered.
To address these challenges, platforms that offer media transformation and delivery services have become increasingly essential. These platforms typically provide a comprehensive suite of tools capable of ingesting video, audio, and metadata, such as subtitles. They also facilitate the transcoding of these components into multiple outputs and ensure seamless delivery to different destinations, including consumer-facing applications, TV set-top boxes, and storage solutions for future access.
Building the foundation
Such platforms are often operated through both user interfaces and APIs, making them versatile for a range of users, from IT departments to content platforms. Their adaptability allows them to cater to various industries, including enterprise video providers, broadcasters, radio stations, and other content-centric organizations. The primary goal of using these platforms is to enhance the efficiency of the content creation and distribution processes while ensuring that the final product reaches its intended audience in the best possible quality. Additionally, they can support live streaming services on a large scale, maintaining high standards of reliability, which is crucial for engaging with audiences in real time.
Moreover, with the growing importance of content monetization and security, these platforms often include features like Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection and tools designed to unlock revenue potential. This helps content providers safeguard their assets while exploring new avenues for generating income.
Elevating content delivery and monetization with AI innovations
For content creators, video encoding can be the most critical part of a workflow. In essence, the video encoder has one mission; to optimize the video quality and bitrate. Good broadcast video encoders need to make good decisions in real-time.
In video encoding, AI and ML can be used to understand the characteristics of video content and then map how the encoders use their processing options to achieve the best results. AI helps analyze decisions made by encoders using different toolsets. This makes it possible to identify complex data patterns that predict the optimal tools or encoding options to use in any given scenario. It means we can better understand the dependency between those tools and the content.
Real-world commercial applications of AI are already showing tangible benefits. For instance, AI can quantify the on-screen time of sports sponsorships, which helps reduce costs and speeds up billing processes. Similarly, AI-driven transcription and translation services can provide useful translations, even if imperfect, rather than having no translation at all.
Looking ahead, a developer-focused approach is expected to become more prevalent. This transition will be supported by metrics from applications and infrastructure gradually replacing traditional, application-specific testing and monitoring tools. As the industry embraces this shift, the advantages of automation through an API-based approach will become increasingly clear, leading to faster and more efficient operations.
The journey to cloud migration continues
While AI may now be at the heart of many innovations, other technologies are also making an impact on the media industry. The transition towards cloud-based operations is not just providing a foundation for AI services, it’s also helping to reimagine the process of content creation, delivery and engagement. However, although the cloud offers numerous advantages, migrating to it is a complex process.
Simply lifting and shifting existing systems to the cloud is unlikely to yield the anticipated benefits, and a partial migration can lead to higher costs, as expenses from both environments will accumulate. To fully realize the benefits of the public cloud, a more comprehensive migration is often necessary, which may require significant changes to workflows and operational practices.
This level of change can be beneficial, as it prompts a thorough reassessment of traditional media architectures and operations, which have often developed incrementally over many years without a holistic review. The disruptive nature of moving to the public cloud can drive this re-evaluation, frequently leading to more streamlined operations and increased automation.
One of the key advantages of cloud technology is its ability to rapidly scale the necessary infrastructure to support large streaming events. This flexibility helps prevent the strain or excessive build-up of systems that can occur when using on-premises technology, which may lead to a subpar user experience. In contrast to on-premises technology, which a company must own, manage, and maintain within its own physical location or a nearby facility, cloud-based infrastructure is hosted externally and managed entirely by a third-party cloud service provider. This provider takes care of all technical operations, including system maintenance and upgrades, as needed.
For many companies, this hands-off approach to managing systems is a significant benefit, as it allows them to conserve time and resources while still delivering broadcast-quality experiences to their audiences.
Importantly, adopting cloud technology doesn’t mean that broadcasters and operators must abandon their existing on-premises infrastructure, such as servers, networks, data centers, and software. The cloud offers the same operational advantages – scalability, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness – while also enabling organizations to retain secure control over their data, networks, and applications. For this reason, large enterprises and telecom companies often choose a hybrid approach, combining both cloud and on-premises solutions.
Smashing complexity with API-based software
The cutting-edge methods of today are set to become the standard practices of tomorrow. API-based software, particularly when utilized in public cloud environments, is increasingly used to enhance traditional broadcast systems.
A notable example is the transition from Microsoft Azure Media Services, the once-popular service that closed down at the end of June. The use of a familiar API facilitated a smoother migration for existing users, while a basic system alone might have limited broader functionality. Therefore, a scalable API design that starts with essential features but scales up to include advanced options is often the most beneficial for companies aiming to stay ahead in a rapidly changing industry.
