November 2018 Summaries

Mux, a video analytics company, has recently examined the most important metrics such as rebuffering percentage, time to first frame, and video upscaling. The company found that measuring the impact of Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics is complex due to various factors like user device, viewer cohorts, or the length and popularity of the video. Mux plans to publish a series of blog posts analyzing QoE metrics in detail, starting with rebuffering. The company found that users are more tolerant of rebuffering when it comes to shorter videos compared to longer ones. Furthermore, popular content seems to have a stickiness factor where viewers continue watching despite poor experience. Mux has built two products focusing on delivering beautiful video optimized through data.

Amazon and Twitch have both implemented different technology stacks for streaming Thursday Night Football. Amazon uses MPEG DASH with H.264 encoding in 2-second fMP4 fragments, while Twitch employs Apple HLS format with the same codecs. Both services use Widevine and Playready for content protection and manifest manipulation-based server-side ad insertion (SSAI). Amazon uses AWS Elemental MediaPackage for packaging and Elemental MediaTailor for SSAI, while Twitch has its own in-house encoder and CDN. The key difference between the two services is that Twitch's architecture enables a significantly lower latency stream compared to Amazon's approach.

The HLS video format is widely recommended due to its broad support across browsers and devices, as well as its adaptive bitrate streaming capabilities. However, there are certain use cases where MP4s may be preferred or necessary, such as offline viewing, embedding in Open Graph cards for social media sharing, and supporting older devices. Mux now offers MP4 support to cater to these specific needs, allowing users to download videos at different qualities and utilize open graph tags for video sharing on platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Mux has developed a live streaming video API that addresses common use cases such as building "Twitch for X". The API includes essentials like RTMP for accepting live broadcasts and HLS output streams, which are industry standards for delivering great live experiences. Mux does not charge users for unused live streams and allows seamless transitions from live content to static content. Additionally, the platform offers innovative features such as live thumbnails and watermarks. The company is currently working on driving latency even lower and exploring next-generation formats like SRT and WebRTC.