Voices of Video

When a major live event is only hours away, “we couldn’t get the GPU instance” is not an acceptable outcome.

Cloud capacity constraints are forcing video teams to reconsider how they approach live transcoding, infrastructure availability, operational complexity, and the true cost of delivering IP video at scale.

In this episode, we sit down with Tim Baldwin, VP of Product Management at Zixi, to explore how a company widely known for reliable video transport evolved into a complete live IP video platform.

We start with Zixi’s roots in transporting broadcast-quality video over unmanaged networks. From there, we examine how Zen Master orchestration, observability, automation, and workflow management help teams operate large fleets of live streams without turning every deployment into a custom engineering project.

Tim explains why protocol-agnostic architecture matters in real customer environments. Depending on who controls each endpoint, a workflow may involve the Zixi Protocol, SRT, RIST, RTP, RTMP, or several of them at once. Supporting that reality allows broadcasters, OTT providers, and technology partners to build around their existing infrastructure and business relationships.

We also get practical about the operational demands of modern streaming workflows, including:

• Normalizing hundreds of incoming streams 
• SCTE-35 conditioning and management 
• Market switching, regionalization, and blackout requirements 
• Dynamic pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll insertion 
• HTML overlays and graphics 
• Seamless switching controlled through APIs 
• Rapid deployment for temporary channels and live events 

Tim breaks down the competitive landscape, from internal DIY platforms to traditional broadcast vendors moving legacy products into software and cloud environments.

Then we dig into one of the most urgent infrastructure challenges facing live video teams: transcoding capacity.

What happens when the NVIDIA GPU instance your workflow depends on is unavailable in the required cloud region?

Tim discusses Zixi’s journey from CPU and GPU transcoding to NETINT video processing units (VPUs), including how greater transcoding density can reduce instance counts, infrastructure overhead, and total cost of ownership. We also explore deployments on Akamai Connected Cloud and within Zixi as a Service, where fast onboarding and predictable capacity are critical.

In this episode:

• How Zixi evolved from a media server and transport protocol into a broader live video platform 
• How Zen Master simplifies orchestration, monitoring, and fleet management
• Why protocol-agnostic workflows matter when partners require SRT, RIST, RTP, or RTMP 
• How broadcasters, OTT providers, and virtual MVPDs use the platform 
• Automation for dynamic advertising, graphics, switching, and lightweight production 
• The differences between purpose-built platforms, DIY systems, and legacy broadcast software 
• Why cloud GPU availability is influencing transcoding architecture 
• How NETINT VPUs increase density and reduce the number of required instances 
• Deployment options including licensed software, a SaaS control plane, and Zixi as a Service 
• Pricing models aligned with channels and events rather than protocol usage 
For teams evaluating live streaming architecture, the conversation offers a practical look at reliability, interoperability, cloud availability, automation, and the operational economics behind modern IP video.

Explore Zixi’s live video platform and discover NETINT’s purpose-built video encoding solutions.

Stay tuned for more in-depth insights on video technology, trends, and practical applications. Subscribe to Voices of Video: Inside the Tech for exclusive, hands-on knowledge from the experts. For more resources, visit Voices of Video.

Your cameras might be "AI ready," but your security stack can still grind to a halt for a simple reason: video has to be decoded, resized, and converted before any AI model can use it. That invisible work is where many surveillance systems hit their limits, even when GPUs are already reserved for inference.

In this episode, we sit down with Isaac Connor, longtime open source developer and one of the driving forces behind ZoneMinder, to explore how CCTV and video management systems have evolved over the past 15+ years.

We discuss the architectures powering everything from small business NVRs to enterprise and government deployments, why so many systems still depend on scaling commodity CPUs, and what changes once AI enters the picture.

We also dive into the codec reality of modern surveillance. H.264 remains manageable, HEVC raises the compute requirements, and AV1 can dramatically increase decoding costs, especially when analytics are added on top.

Because much of the surveillance industry is built around FFmpeg, Isaac explains why adding VPU acceleration can feel like an engine transplant rather than a complete rebuild. We cover high-density video decoding, power and PCIe slot constraints, ONVIF interoperability, and how dedicated video processing can dramatically improve scalability while reducing infrastructure costs.

If you're building or modernizing a VMS, NVR, or AI video analytics platform, this conversation offers practical insight into where today's bottlenecks really are and how to design systems that scale.

Topics covered

- ZoneMinder's origin story and the evolution of open source VMS
- The three tiers of surveillance deployments, from home users to government-scale systems
- Why cloud VMS costs often reflect inefficient video architectures
- The hidden workload between video decode and AI inference
- High-density decoding and why CPUs quickly become the bottleneck
- H.264, HEVC, and AV1 in real-world surveillance deployments
- Power, PCIe slots, and why compact VPUs change server design
- How ONVIF simplifies camera discovery, capability negotiation, and PTZ control
- Modernizing FFmpeg-based video pipelines without rewriting applications
- Where dedicated video processing fits into the future of security analytics

Learn more about NETINT: https://netint.com
Learn more about ZoneMinder: https://zoneminder.com

Interested in joining Voices of Video?

If you're building innovative technology in video, streaming, AI, broadcasting, surveillance, or media infrastructure, we'd love to hear your story. Reach out and let's explore whether your work would make a great episode.

Stay tuned for more in-depth insights on video technology, trends, and practical applications. Subscribe to Voices of Video: Inside the Tech for exclusive, hands-on knowledge from the experts. For more resources, visit Voices of Video.

Spinning up high-performance video encoding should not require a weeks-long infrastructure project or a hyperscaler feature request.

Mark Mahle, co-founder and CEO of NetActuate, joins Voices of Video to discuss a network-first approach to global infrastructure as a service, and why the “plumbing” of the internet still determines whether video workflows feel fast, flexible, and resilient.

In this episode, we look at where NetActuate fits between public cloud, co-location, and private data centers, and why infrastructure choice is becoming a key driver for video teams. Cost matters, but so does the ability to run the right workload in the right location with the right hardware. That includes predictable capacity, low-latency connectivity, and specialized compute like NETINT VPUs.

Mark explains how NetActuate’s global footprint and highly peered network support real-world services at scale, then we move into what this means for streaming, transcoding, and live event workflows.

The episode also includes a hands-on demo: deploying a virtual machine with a NETINT VPU attached, selecting firmware, viewing accelerator details, and using observability signals across the deployment. We also look at managed Kubernetes nodes with VPUs for cloud-native video workflows.

Then comes the “wait, what?” moment: controlling NETINT’s BitStreams media processing framework through an AI assistant using plain language. The demo shows Claude creating an adaptive bitrate ladder, applying overlays, and starting a DASH output that can be played immediately.

If you are building video streaming infrastructure, evaluating VPUs for hardware-accelerated encoding, or trying to lower cloud spend without giving up speed, this episode is worth watching.

In this episode:

• Why network-first infrastructure matters for latency-sensitive video
• How NetActuate fits between hyperscalers, co-location, and private data centers
• Why teams want more flexibility, custom hardware access, and cost control
• How NETINT VPUs can be deployed through NetActuate’s global platform
• VM provisioning with an attached VPU
• Firmware selection and accelerator visibility
• Observability for VPU-powered deployments
• Managed Kubernetes nodes with VPU access
• Using an AI assistant to control BitStreams workflows in plain language
• Creating ladders, overlays, and DASH output through natural language commands

For cutting-edge video encoding solutions, visit NETINT at https://netint.com.

Subscribe to Voices of Video for more hands-on conversations with the people building the next generation of video infrastructure.

Stay tuned for more in-depth insights on video technology, trends, and practical applications. Subscribe to Voices of Video: Inside the Tech for exclusive, hands-on knowledge from the experts. For more resources, visit Voices of Video.

Cloud video infrastructure is getting squeezed from both sides: audiences expect better quality and more formats like AV1, while finance teams are staring down cloud bills that don’t scale with reality.

We sit down with Sarah Walter from Akamai for a one-year check-in on VPU-accelerated instances powered by NETINT, and what stands out is how quickly the conversation has moved from pilots to production. Sarah shares what she’s seeing across customers, from hyperscalers expanding internationally to broadcasters and streaming platforms looking for a practical step between fully managed services and running everything on-prem.

We dig into what’s driving adoption of VPUs for video transcoding and encoding on Akamai Cloud, including new locations in Europe like Frankfurt and London for higher availability designs. We also talk through the “bring your own software” challenge and how making Bitstreams available helps teams operate VPUs with a GUI instead of living in command lines all day.

For larger deployments, we break down new eight-card plan options and why density matters when you’re measuring cost per stream across live streaming, VOD, premium content, and user-generated workloads.

Operationally, we get specific about the parts nobody advertises: firmware updates, SDK dependencies, and how to balance rapid quality improvements with customer stability in an infrastructure-as-a-service environment.

Finally, we connect the dots to NAB season themes like global hardware supply chain pressure and why “getting off the cloud” often really means finding a more sustainable cloud pricing model.

Key topics

• One-year progress on Akamai Cloud VPU adoption and new VPU-backed VM SKUs
• Customer profiles including hyperscalers expanding beyond on-prem points of presence
• Live streaming and VOD workloads across premium and user-generated content
• Why Bitstreams matters as a GUI bridge for teams coming from managed services
• Partner ecosystem support for advanced requirements such as DRM
• The reality of firmware upgrade cycles in IaaS and how SDK dependencies affect rollouts
• New European footprint with London and Frankfurt for higher availability designs
• How to estimate VPU density using a 32× 1080p30 benchmark
• What NAB conversations reveal about supply chain pressure and cloud pricing sustainability

Stay tuned for more in-depth insights on video technology, trends, and practical applications. Subscribe to Voices of Video: Inside the Tech for exclusive, hands-on knowledge from the experts. For more resources, visit Voices of Video.

Swapping the engine while it runs sounds risky - and in production video systems, it is.

Hardware acceleration often gets positioned as “faster encoding,” but that’s not what makes engineering teams hesitate. The real challenge is introducing a new compute model without breaking workflows that already carry years of integrations, monitoring, and operational assumptions. As NAB approaches and the industry talks density and efficiency, the more important question is this: how do you evolve a platform without increasing fragility?

Leo Nieto from NETINT sits down with Dominique Vosters from Scalstrm to unpack what actually triggers the shift away from CPU-only scaling. The answer is less about technology hype and more about cost per stream across the full workflow, from transcoding through packaging and delivery. We explore why teams hesitate, what they are most concerned about breaking, and why live streaming raises the stakes compared to VOD.

We also get practical about architecture. Dominique explains how hardware acceleration fits into a broader system, where VPUs handle encoding while software layers manage resilience, synchronization, and recovery. From the outside, workflows often remain consistent. The real changes happen inside the system, where compute is relocated rather than the architecture being rebuilt.

Finally, we walk through a low-risk rollout approach: parallel environments, staging validation, and gradual channel-by-channel migration instead of big bang transitions.

If you are planning hardware-accelerated transcoding, VPU-based encoding, or broader video workflow optimization, this conversation will help you improve efficiency while protecting production stability.

Key topics covered

• why CPU-based video workflows become unsustainable primarily due to cost pressure across transcoding, packaging, and delivery
• why hesitation around hardware acceleration comes from fear of disrupting production systems, not skepticism about the technology
• differences between VOD and live streaming workflows, and why live environments require more cautious rollout strategies
• how hardware acceleration fits into existing architectures, with software layers handling resilience, synchronization, and recovery
• what actually changes when acceleration is introduced versus what remains stable for operators and workflows
• the concept of “swapping the engine while it runs” by keeping input and output behavior consistent while moving compute inside the system
• when orchestration layers add value and how that depends on platform maturity and scale
• practical deployment strategies including parallel environments, staging validation, and gradual channel-by-channel migration

Stay tuned for more in-depth insights on video technology, trends, and practical applications. Subscribe to Voices of Video: Inside the Tech for exclusive, hands-on knowledge from the experts. For more resources, visit Voices of Video.

The hardest part of streaming isn’t picking a codec or buying faster hardware. It’s making the whole system work together.

In this episode of Voices of Video, Mark Donnigan from NETINT sits down with Joe Waltzer, CEO of Arcadian, to break down the real anatomy of a modern video streaming platform and why teams so often stall at the last mile between a working demo and a production-ready service.

They walk through the core building blocks behind real-world workflows: CMS for metadata and app experience, DAM or MAM for managing assets, transcoding pipelines for device-ready outputs, and distribution systems spanning apps, APIs, and CDNs. Joe also highlights the often-overlooked avails and compliance layer, from licensing windows to geo blocking, and why mistakes here can turn into real business risk.

The conversation then zooms out to what matters today: cost pressure, practical uses of AI, and the push to bring services built for North America and Europe to underserved global markets.

They also dig into quality of experience. How studios define quality, why “good 720p” is real, and why viewers instantly feel issues like bad lip sync or subtitle timing even if they cannot explain them.

If you are building video pipelines, streaming apps, or end-to-end media systems, this episode gives you a clear view of what actually has to connect for quality, scale, and profitability.

Key topics:

• The five core systems: CMS, DAM or MAM, transcoding, distribution, and avails
 • Why “drop-in solutions” rarely exist in streaming
 • How Arcadian helps teams finish the last 5% to production
 • Integration vs building new platforms
 • Real-world operations: QC, audio sync, subtitles, edge cases
 • Cost reduction and where AI actually fits today
 • Scaling to underserved markets through efficiency
 • Why distribution matters more than “content is king”
 • Cloud gaming and the shift of bottlenecks to encoding
 • Studio quality standards and what viewers actually notice

Interested in joining Voices of Video or sharing what you're building?
Reach out here: https://netint.com/voices-of-video/

Stay tuned for more in-depth insights on video technology, trends, and practical applications. Subscribe to Voices of Video: Inside the Tech for exclusive, hands-on knowledge from the experts. For more resources, visit Voices of Video.

The fastest benchmark number is comforting right up until your video system meets the real world.

Staging looks stable. Charts look clean. Then production introduces variability at scale: messy networks, mixed content, thermal constraints, I/O bottlenecks, memory pressure, and timing issues that never show up in controlled tests. That’s where “efficient” can suddenly mean fragile. 

In this episode of Voices of Video, we sit down with Juan Casal, Partner and Chief R&D Officer at Cires21, alongside Leonardo Nieto from NETINT, to unpack what actually changes when systems move from lab results to real production environments.

We explore why evaluating isolated components such as encoder throughput, codec efficiency, or cost per stream can be misleading, and why the full video pipeline must be measured as a balanced system. Local optimization often shifts pressure downstream, turning encoding gains into decoder frame drops or network bursts that degrade quality of experience.

The core theme is operational confidence.

Predictability beats peak performance. Stable latency, stable resource usage, and clear worst-case behavior are what make capacity planning possible at scale. We also dive into observability and metrics that matter in production: variance vs averages, jitter, timestamp alignment, and how to design systems so failures can be predicted instead of simply reacted to.

Efficiency, in practice, is headroom. It is the margin that allows your infrastructure to absorb variability, whether you are running on CPUs, GPUs, or purpose-built accelerators.

If you are building or upgrading video encoding, transcoding, or streaming infrastructure ahead of NAB, this conversation will challenge how you evaluate performance.

Join the conversation:
https://voicesofvideo.netint.com/join-the-conversation

Learn more about:
Cires21 → https://cires21.com
NETINT → https://netint.com

Key topics covered:

• Why production introduces variability through scale, system interaction, and constraints like thermal limits and I/O bottlenecks
 • Why end-to-end pipeline balance matters more than single-component optimization
 • How local optimizations shift load downstream to decoders and networks
 • Predictability as the real operational goal: stable latency and resource usage
 • Why worst-case behavior and variance matter more than peak throughput
 • Observability gaps: jitter, timestamp alignment, and network bottlenecks
 • Real-world failure modes such as clock accuracy and jitter causing frame drops
 • Efficiency as headroom: stability, burst tolerance, and higher saturation thresholds
 • Designing for failure prediction and testing under sustained load

Stay tuned for more in-depth insights on video technology, trends, and practical applications. Subscribe to Voices of Video: Inside the Tech for exclusive, hands-on knowledge from the experts. For more resources, visit Voices of Video.

“Ramageddon” is what happens when memory pricing goes vertical and suddenly your infrastructure plans no longer pencil out.

In this episode of Voices of Video, we talk with Dell Technologies about why video infrastructure is being rebuilt around power limits, cooling realities, and purpose-built silicon like NETINT VPUs.

As video becomes the dominant data type and the foundation for AI workloads, the constraints are no longer theoretical. Power, density, and supply chain volatility are now first-order design inputs.

We dig into what it actually takes to deploy and manage video systems at a global scale without losing control of cost, security, or uptime.

• Dell’s current focus across AI and video workloads
• Why density and energy efficiency now drive infrastructure decisions
• GPUs versus VPUs and the case for purpose-built video acceleration
• Data center power and cooling options, including air and liquid cooling
• “Ramageddon” and broader component shortages affecting buyers
• How Dell uses supply chain scale and configurability to deliver systems
• Managing large fleets with deployment services, support, and automation
• Firmware updates as a pathway to real encoder improvements over time
• Supply chain security and root of trust at massive scale
• Edge computing growth across far edge, near edge, and metro

If you are building, scaling, or rethinking video infrastructure, this is a grounded, operator-level discussion of where things are actually headed.

Learn more about NETINT Technologies and purpose-built video processing, or explore enterprise infrastructure from Dell Technologies.

Stay tuned for more in-depth insights on video technology, trends, and practical applications. Subscribe to Voices of Video: Inside the Tech for exclusive, hands-on knowledge from the experts. For more resources, visit Voices of Video.

Your neighbor cheered before your stream - now what?

In this episode of Voices of Video, we move past the generic advice to “make it faster” and dig into why latency has become a structural constraint in modern video systems. It’s no longer just a performance metric. It dictates where compute lives, how encoding is deployed, how traffic is routed, and what it really takes to deliver reliable, real-time video at scale.

With i3D.net co-founder Stefan Edeler, we unpack the architectural decisions that separate stable platforms from fragile ones.

We start with the workload lens. Live sports, betting, auctions, and interactive formats cannot hide behind buffers. When user actions, commentary, or creator feedback loops back into the stream, encoding can’t sit in a distant region. It must move closer to viewers, often across multiple sites. That shift forces teams to balance geographic distribution against blast radius, cost, and the very real operational load of running many locations.

One key insight: pretty ping times don’t equal quality. What matters is sustained throughput into last-mile ISPs during peak hours, packet loss behavior, jitter, and whether your providers truly have capacity headroom when it counts.

From there, we zoom out to platform strategy. Cloud accelerates early builds, but egress-heavy video workloads can quietly crush budgets. Hybrid models and bare metal often win on cost and control, yet introduce vendor sprawl and operational complexity.

Stefan outlines a pragmatic path forward:
Prototype quickly in the cloud across a few regions. Validate failover and backhaul. Then expand step by step into the right geographies with strong peering and measurable demand.

Instrument everything - edge QoE, per-ISP performance, jitter, exit rates - and let real telemetry guide routing decisions and site expansion. The objective is not just scale, but resilience: a self-healing system that detects carrier trouble and automatically shifts users onto healthier paths.

We close with practical guardrails to avoid over-engineering:
Optimize until users can no longer perceive improvement. Choose five excellent sites over thirty fragile ones. Challenge every “we must” with observability data. And recognize that legal, licensing, and sovereignty requirements now shape placement decisions as much as physics does.

The takeaway is clear: architectural intent beats component speed.

If you’re wrestling with latency budgets, interactive encoding, or the cost of scaling globally, this conversation offers a blueprint for making durable, data-driven choices.

In this episode, we cover:

• Defining latency budgets and aligning them with architectural intent
• Mapping workloads to geography and last-mile ISP realities
• Measuring sustained throughput, packet loss, and capacity, not just RTT
• Deciding when to distribute compute and how far to push it
• Placing encoding for interactive and feedback-driven streaming
• Balancing resilience against operational overhead
• Expanding stepwise with strong observability and real telemetry
• Navigating cost trade-offs: cloud egress vs. hybrid and bare metal
• Designing for automated failover and self-healing routing
• Accounting for legal, licensing, and data sovereignty constraints

If you’re coming to NAB Show, come talk with our team at NETINT and explore how these architectural choices map directly to your workflows.

If this episode clarified your next move, follow the show, share it with your team, and leave a quick review so others can find it.

Stay tuned for more in-depth insights on video technology, trends, and practical applications. Subscribe to Voices of Video: Inside the Tech for exclusive, hands-on knowledge from the experts. For more resources, visit Voices of Video.

Real conversation dies the moment latency enters the room.

In this episode of Voices of Video, we break down what truly separates traditional streaming from interactive streaming and why the old playbook of centralized encoding, deep buffers, and best-effort delivery simply cannot support audiences that talk back, transact, and co-create in real time.

We start by defining the hard technical requirements of interactivity: ultra-low latency, low jitter, and deterministic paths from first-mile compute to last-mile delivery. From there, we explore why pushing compute closer to users is necessary, but not sufficient. Owning the backbone matters just as much as owning the servers.

You’ll hear how private long-haul circuits, strategic peering, and unique subsea routes, like a direct Fortaleza-to-Portugal path that avoids U.S. detours, can shave 50–60 milliseconds off round-trip latency, transforming global collaboration into something that actually feels local. That performance shift unlocks new many-to-many use cases across gaming, telehealth, webinars, watch parties, and live commerce, where interactivity directly drives revenue and retention.

We also get practical about architecture. Flexible bare metal with bandwidth-rich instance types, API-driven provisioning, and Terraform automation allow teams to scale capacity in minutes when demand spikes. On the network side, we explain why peering, cross-connects, and router upgrades require lead time, and how a pre-built baseline protects quality under load.

Finally, we zoom out to strategy: hybrid models that combine a dedicated edge layer with elastic public cloud, integrated through open protocols that avoid vendor lock-in. The goal is simple: give builders control, keep users close, and make real-time video feel effortless.

If you care about real-time video that actually feels real, this conversation is for you.

Topics Covered

• Linear streaming vs interactive streaming
• Why edge compute beats centralized encoding for real time
• Many-to-many use cases across gaming, meetings, and telehealth
• Backbone ownership vs CDN dependency and third-party transit
• Subsea routing strategies that cut 50–60 ms of latency
• Bandwidth-rich instance types and API-based provisioning
• Scaling network capacity ahead of demand
• Hybrid architectures combining metal and public cloud
• Open protocols that avoid vendor lock-in and build trust

Links & Resources

• Voices of Video podcast
https://netint.com/podcast

• i3D.net – Global edge and backbone infrastructure
https://www.i3d.net

• NETINT Technologies – Video encoding ASICs and platforms
https://netint.com

• Learn more about edge video architectures
https://netint.com/resources

This episode of Voices of Video is brought to you by NETINT Technologies.
If you’re building high-performance, power-efficient video infrastructure, learn more about NETINT’s ASIC-based encoding solutions at https://netint.com

Stay tuned for more in-depth insights on video technology, trends, and practical applications. Subscribe to Voices of Video: Inside the Tech for exclusive, hands-on knowledge from the experts. For more resources, visit Voices of Video.