Ideas on Video Communications [Video]

Welcome to today's At-Home Tech Focus. You know we're focusing on this episode on live events, and we have four grade experts from four grade companies to discuss what's going on. Obviously the last eight weeks to 10 weeks, I've seen a massive change in the definition of what exactly is At-Home because literally everybody is at home. Let me introduce our panelists real quickly. We have Matthew Goldman from MediaKind, Jim Jachetta from VidOvation, Josh Liemer from VISTA WorldLink and Dan Maloney from Matrox Video. Josh, you are in the production spotlight with your facilities down in Miami.

Correct lens distortion in live video in real-time.  Maximize the impact and value of your media assets.

Watch and learn from MC Patel about the top four use cases in which real-time correction of lens distortion can transform live video into a valuable addition to your live production.

Small broadcast-quality HD cameras with wide-angle or fisheye lenses are both a practical and cost-effective solution for live sports and reality TV broadcasts, as well as a host of other applications including medical, forensics/security, concerts and other live events, covert wildlife image capture, electronic newsgathering, and more. Due to their compact size and lower cost, such cameras can be deployed with much greater flexibility than larger broadcast cameras to bring viewers new or unusual perspectives. Unfortunately, the wide field-of-view lenses typically used with such “micro-cameras” give rise to lens distortion and curvilinear perspective image artifacts resulting from camera positioning. To incorporate live video from HD micro-cameras into high-quality applications, broadcasters and production companies must be able to correct for these distortions in real-time.

 

 

Highlights:

* Removal of Curvilinear Artifacts

* Adjustment of Rotation

* Virtual Camera Off-set

* Optimization of Zoom

 

Geometry plays a big role in the world in which we live. Straight lines and the shapes they create are included in much of what we see before us. Geometric optical lens distortion changes the way lines appear on the screen. This is a problem facing many modern videographers as the use of fisheye and wide-angle live HD cameras become more fluent in the mainstream recording.

While wide-angle cameras provide an added level of depth which standard lenses don’t capture, it does pose some problems in terms of rectilinear projection. The lines which were once straight beginning to curve and distort around the edges of the shot. This optical aberration makes it difficult for viewers to determine what they’re looking at in the moment.

For videographers with the time to correct these issues during the editing process, it’s not a problem. However, live broadcasters recording sports games, local news, research for the medical industry, or even corporate AV, are unable to rectify the distortion before the image reaches viewers. This is where VidOvation’s AlphaEye becomes an asset.

Transcript:

 

Jim Jachetta (00:00):

Good morning everyone. I’m Jim Jachetta, CTO and co founder of VidOvation. Today we have a very special guest, my good friend MC Patel. He is the CEO of Alpha Image, and today he’s going to talk about a very innovative product he has called the Alpha Eye. Now all of us people in the television industry and the video industry, we’ve all seen distortion or artifacts in video with fisheye lens, wide angle lenses.

Jim Jachetta (00:49):

So I’ll give you an example. It’s not uncommon to have a wide angle shot above a basketball basket on...

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UDP Transport is Real-Time, but Lossy

No Inherent Packet Recovery

No Guarantees on Packet Order

TCP Uses Positive Acknowledgement Packet Recovery

Not Real-time: Pauses for Unrecoverable Packets

Max Bitrate Limited by Distance & Node Hops

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V-Nova – At-home Production, Contribution, and Distribution over Managed Networks

 

Download Presentation & Watch Recording

 

 

 

MPEG-5 LCEVC - Low Complexity Enhance Video Coding

A new standard that alleviate the challenges of video streaming on a massive scale

Data stream structure defined by two-component streams

A base stream decodable by a hardware decoder

An enhancement stream suitable for software processing implementation with sustainable power consumption.

New features such as compression capability extension to existing codecs

Lower encoding and decoding complexity

On demand and live streaming applications.

Developments with SMPTE ST 2117 VC-6

Codec of choice for contribution, distribution and remote production workflows.

More efficient alternative to JPEG 2000, JPEG XS & Uncompressed

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High quality, low latency media transport without the need for costly dark fiber links

 

Jim Jachetta (00:02):

Good morning, everyone. I'm Jim Jachetta, CTO and Co-founder of VidOvation. Today we have my good friend, Matt Hughes from V-Nova. He's Senior VP of Global Sales. Give us a little overview Matt of what knowledge you're going to lay on us today.

Matt Hughes (00:23):

Yeah. Thanks, Jim. And thanks for VidOvation for setting this up, and it's important for us to have a chance to talk with you guys about V-Nova. We're a UK London-based company, in the process of expanding as well. What we do is we're a compression technology company. We own a bunch of patents around video compression and image compression. What we've done is, we've taken our library and perfected them to various aspects of the broadcast industry. We've got a few ways that we've worked, what I'm going to go through today, is show you some of those new technologies that are being advanced through MPEG and SMPTE, and also products that we have that offers encoding and decoding a server based system that we have in the market.

Jim Jachetta (01:17):

Well, some of your technology you're going to present Matt is kind of a new approach or a contrarian approach so I put together this little questionnaire to kind of see where customers are at. Everyone should be able to see. We asked the question, what video codec or codecs do you use today and this is a multiple choice. It's multiple choice but you can also pick multiple things. So if you use uncompressed and JPEG 2000, we'd love to hear from you, just kind of see where you folks are at today in your IP video codec uses right now.

Jim Jachetta (02:03):

So it looks like, Oh, wow. It's pretty evenly distributed here. Looks like even except for JPEG XS. So here, let me put this up. Oh, what did I do? Ah. I hit the wrong button. Hold on, hold on. Close it. Now I share, there we go. So there's the results. I guess that's not surprising. A lot of people are still using H.264. I don't want to spoil the surprise but I think Matt might have some enhancements to make 264, take something legacy like that and improve it. We got 265 and uncompressed and then the JPEG 2000 folks. Matt is going to present maybe some alternatives to that. So here if I hide that. Thank you folks for sharing. Let me see. You should have control again, Matt.

Matt Hughes (03:06):

Okay. Alright. Thanks Jim. Some of the technologies that we've been working on specifically have been for MPEG and SMPTE. We've got a new standard that's part of MPEG-5. MPEG-5 is actually a suite of products and part of that suite is called MPEG-5 Part 2 with LCEVC. And with SMPTE, new standard is VC-6 or SMPTE ST 2117. I'm going to go through both of these and kind of explain where we are today with these two technologies. One of the things that's majorly happening and you guys see this everyday is, in your typical home, you've got people watching, people on Zoom, people on GoToMeeting, Netflix is running, Prime is running, Twitch, YouTube, somebody is on a bicycle doing Peloton. You've got a lot of streaming, well, I'm not, but some people are.

Matt Hughes (04:04):

You've got a lot of streaming services happening inside the home. 65% of the worldwide mobile downstream traffic is video and 11% is Netflix. I mean, it just kind of gives you an idea, where does that lie? It's going through a massive strain right now, the internet. So, how do we make that better? In the US, it's Netflix, which is at the top in Europe. In the Middle East and Africa, you've got YouTube. In Asia, you've got media streamers. All these are taking up all the bandwidth along everywhere in the world. Viewers expect that high quality. So no matter what service you're on, you still want to be able to see your video. You don't want to see a spinning wheel. All the devices, everything that's being used, you want to have a good experience, a good quality of experience. So high demand, good experience, which means... typically in the past, it meant using a lot of bandwidth. How do we cut that? How do we make that bandwidth smaller? And what can we do to offer our customers or the general public consumers a better experience?

Matt Hughes (05:23):

Low-latency is also critical. You want to be able to have real-time video. You don't want to wait, the gap structure way of working can take a lot of time away, making more latency within the workflow. How do you remove that? How do you make it, so you don't have to have a massive gap structure with your streaming services. How does that work? Our solution is LCEVC and of course, right now I've got a helicopter going over my house, it's not my helicopter.

Jim Jachetta (05:57):

We can't hear it.

Matt Hughes (05:57):

You guys will hear it soon because it's [inaudible 00:06:01]. Anyway, it's London. Can you hear it in the background or still pretty good?

Jim Jachetta (06:07):

Still pretty good.

Matt Hughes (06:10):

That's impressive because it's really low.

Jim Jachetta (06:12):

Oh, there you go. Now I hear it.

Matt Hughes (06:14):

[inaudible 00:06:14]. This always happens. LCEVC is Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding, which means we're taking a base codec, so the existing code that you already have like H.264 or could be HEVC or could be AV1 and we're enhancing that. Making the enhancement on top of that existing codec, we start with a base codec which is really important for this technology. That's how we differentiate from other players out there. In MPEG-5, the suite of MPEG-5 products is, this was important for that suite, because we didn't want to make a new codec and MPEG didn't want to have a new product, another new codec out in the market. So what can we do with existing technology and new technology that comes or how can we make that better?

Jim Jachetta (07:10):

Basically we could take that legacy AVC/H.264 and give it new life, supercharge it as it were, without having to throw out that investment of H.264 infrastructure?

Matt Hughes (07:29):

Yeah. If you put in a massive headend with encoders and you don't want to have to switch those out, because you need a larger encoding firm at your headend, you don't want to have to do that. You can keep what you've got existing today and then upgrade that workflow with this enhanced codec, which is really important.

Jim Jachetta (07:50):

Well, another thing that I like too is that not every subscriber... If it's like an OTT application, maybe some customers haven't updated their set-top box yet to support the new standard, they'll still get the base H.264, the secondary stream or the supplemental stream will just be discarded or ignored. Right? So it-

Matt Hughes (08:12):

Exactly.

Jim Jachetta (08:14):

... it scales nicely.

Matt Hughes (08:16):

Yeah. If you've got the base codec and the base codec, let's say is doing your SD version of your channel, and then your HD and UHD are added with this MPEG, LCEVC, you would still have that base codec. So you still have a base H.264 that's been sent to your set-top box, the ones that haven't been upgraded or they weren't upgraded, or it could be somebody paying for prime content that's in HD or in UHD, however somebody wanted to work that. It's low complexity. This means it reduces those processing costs of encoding on the codec. It's a software plugin update, as you mentioned. So it's a software plugin, we're not changing the hardware. It is specifically software for players and existing devices.

Jim Jachetta (09:09):

The acronym again, it's Low Complexity... What does it stand for again?

Matt Hughes (09:15):

Enhance [inaudible 00:09:16] codec.

Jim Jachetta (09:19):

Yeah. Your audio is dropping out a little bit. Low Complexity Enhanced Video Codec?

Matt Hughes (09:24):

Enhancing Video Coding. Coding.

Jim Jachetta (09:27):

Coding.

Matt Hughes (09:27):

Not a codec.

Jim Jachetta (09:29):

Not codec.

Matt Hughes (09:29):

We want to be sure. This isn't a codec.

Jim Jachetta (09:31):

It is not a codec because it can't stand on its own. Okay. So it's enhancing coding.

Matt Hughes (09:38):

Coding.

Jim Jachetta (09:39):

If the primary stream went away, this of course couldn't stand on its own or the base stream. Got it.

Matt Hughes (09:46):

Yeah. Solving this high quality streaming at scale. When you're scaling up, reduce the network traffic without changing the quality, delivering the highest quality and providing low-latency, those are keys. And the benefits for the viewers, for the consumer: killing that buffering wheel, delivering the highest quality and having a fast start-up time, for those adverts, for creating ad revenue, which is really important. For service providers, you want to be able to beat the competition, you want to be the one that's not waiting for this massive gap structure to happen for your breaking news to happen, or you want to be able to make sure your customers aren't turning,...

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