July 2019 Summaries

The Canvas API is a powerful tool for developers to draw graphics in the DOM via the <canvas> element. It can be used effectively with video content, allowing for image manipulation and processing of sequential images. This article presents several examples that demonstrate how to interact with video and canvas elements using the Canvas API. These include copying video frames into a canvas, converting color videos to grayscale, analyzing video frames to match background colors across different browsers, and applying machine learning object detection models to classify objects in each frame. The possibilities are endless when combining HTML5 video with canvas elements, enabling developers to create innovative visual experiences.

On June 24th, Verizon made an erroneous update to their Border-Gateway-Protocol (BGP) routing announcements, causing significant network congestion and errors for major CDNs and ISPs. Mux Video's automatic response to network failures using dynamic CDN selection helped reduce the impact of this incident. The Citrix ITM system identified optimal CDNs based on round-trip-time (RTT) performance data gathered by Radar, automatically switching traffic from Fastly to Stackpath/Highwinds during the outage. This quick and automatic response allowed Mux Video to maintain a good viewing experience for its users despite challenging network conditions.

Mux has announced the public beta release of Low-Latency Live Streaming, offering a latency capability as low as 4 seconds. The new feature is available for all Mux Video customers at no additional cost and can be accessed by including "reduced_latency": true in the request to create a Live Stream. While there are some tradeoffs such as unavailability of Reconnect Windows and increased risk of rebuffering/stalling, this reduced latency option offers significant improvements over previous latencies of 20-30 seconds. Mux continues to work with the video community to determine the future of low latency standards while providing its users with the best possible solutions in the meantime.