What are some of the more significant issues currently holding back the streaming industry for both video and audio? Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, Chair, Streaming Media Conferences, and CMO, id3as, asks deadmau5, DJ & musician, equity partner, Stream Voodoo, for his takes on the lingering technical limitations in the streaming world.
“It sounds like you’ve paid a lot of attention to codec development,” Schumacher-Rasmussen says. “So within the streaming industry, H.264 is still sort of the industry standard, right?”
“Well, because it’s the common denominator,” deadmau5 says. He emphasizes that the overall issue and the roots of limitations in video streaming is a one size fits all general mentality in tech. “It’s like Chromium and all that,” he says. “It’s super easy to build in. It’s just all pre-packaged stuff like that, and then external app designs are designed by programmers that can make tax file return programs, you know what I mean? They’re like, just give me the API for, you know, whatever, and they’ll jam it in there, and then we’ll make it a thing. To my knowledge, there has been really no video-centric streaming platform plugin, whether it’s privatized from point-to-point or through a network and server delegation that’s done by someone who fully understands and appreciates streaming technology. I’ll tell you, Zoom was not built with video in mind! Until about five years in, and I see that a lot with a lot of programs. So it’s not like a big thing. It’s so departmentalized with these big AAA products, like a video game. You want really good sound from a video game. Chances are you’re not going to have an audio lead on that team that knows DSP. You’re just going to get a guy that says, ‘I kind of know FMOD, let’s throw that in,’ right? Sell our game for $500 million. And that’s fine. That’s acceptable for most people because it just works.”
“Exactly,” Schumacher-Rasmussen says. “And we found at Streaming Media, when we started doing our virtual conferences in 2020, like everybody else, we looked at all sorts of video conferencing platforms at webcasting platforms, and even those, we found the thing that broke was the video or the thing that that failed was the video. And I’m not going to name names…”
Deadmaus5 says it comes down to what he calls the “two massive problems” with streaming video and live audio, essentially categorizing the problems into output issues and input issues. “One, it’s the encapsulation and buffering of that to go out,” he says. He mentions issues on the output side such as a camera battery dying, codec problems, or a lack of GPU RAM. Then, on the user side, he says, there can be issues with the bandwidth. “They’re like, oh, no, no, it works really good,” he says. “This is just a bad internet connection.” He laughs and says, “I’m like, ‘Well, case in point,’ you know?’”
“Right, exactly,” Schumacher-Rasmussen says. “We settled on using Zoom because even though it wasn’t necessarily built with that in mind, it worked pretty reliably, you know?”
“Because that’s just a simple numbers game,” deadmaus5 says. “It’s because they had the money and the infrastructure to set up about, you know, half a billion Azure points to make sure that they had server redundancy across the world on a massive scale. We have entire data centers, whereas point-to-point does not.” Commenting on the very video call that they are talking on, he says, “We do not on this. This is straight through.” With a slight shrug he says, “You’re a little 18 FPS, but, it’s clear…”
Learn more about codecs and streaming technology issues at Streaming Media East 2023.
Related Articles
How Streaming Is Changing Live Music
Does innovative use of live streaming represent a viable alternative to touring for artists anxious to get off the road? Virtual event experts Chris Pfaff, 090 Media’s Alex Lindsay, and BC Live’s Dan Houze discuss emerging trends and possibilities in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2023.
01 Mar 2023
Which Streaming Codecs Do Netflix and Facebook Use?
Which streaming codecs do Netflix and Facebook most commonly use? Jan Ozer of Streaming Learning Center asks Andrey Norkin of Netflix and David Ronca of Facebook to discuss in-depth the specific codecs they employ for their organizations.
22 Nov 2022
Proprietary vs. Open-Source Streaming Codecs
What are the key advantages of proprietary versus open-source codecs? Many factors come into play based on finding the right balance of customer needs in various use cases
14 Sep 2022
The Politicization of Codec Adoption
Streaming Learning Center Owner & Chief Blogger Jan Ozer discusses the role the Alliance of Open Media’s influence plays in the current codec landscape, and how it impacts the adoption of AV1 and VVC in particular as the streaming world increasingly moves beyond H.264.
09 May 2022
TikTok, Fragmentation, and the Future of the Music Industry
Sessions/Next Live Co-Founder Tim Westergren and Streaming Media’s Eric Shumacher-Rasmussen discuss the transition from big tent-pole events to a generation of artists focused on TikTok, BandCamp, SoundCloud and other streaming social media-centric platforms, and how the industry will need to change to accommodate that new model in this clip from Streaming Media West Connect 2021.
03 Dec 2021
Will Livestreaming Be to Music What TV Was to Sports?
BandsInTown CEO Fabrice Sergent discusses how the proliferation of livestreamed music experiences, particularly over the last 18 months, is bringing more live music to distant fans than ever before in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2021.
06 Oct 2021
Zoom as a Pro Production Tool
Pandemic-era social distancing and the pivot to remote production have brought Zoom into the mix for many live producers who might have never used it before. Live X’s Corey Behnke, SLV Live’s Shawn Lam, and LiveSports LLC’s Jef Kethley discuss how Zoom has entered their workflows in this clip from Streaming Media West Connect 2020.
07 Oct 2020
