October 2019 Summaries

Contentful, a popular headless content management system (CMS), has integrated with Mux, allowing users to easily add video content. With the new extension, users can install the Mux API keys and add the Mux component to their content model. Once a video is added, it will be uploaded to the user's Mux account for transcoding and playbackId retrieval. The integration streamlines the process of incorporating video content into headless CMS platforms.

The text introduces HowVideo.works, a consolidated resource aimed at explaining key concepts, processes, and infrastructure of modern online video technology. It aims to provide a balance of educational and technical information to help developers understand the full impact of decisions related to video integration in their applications. The site covers topics such as playback, delivery, processing, and capture, with plans for collaboration with industry experts on certain sections. Feedback and suggestions are welcome for future content updates.

The text discusses cloud functions, specifically focusing on Netlify Functions. It explains that cloud functions are an essential component of the JAMstack (Javascript, APIs and Markup) and provides examples of technologies like Gatsby, Next.js, and tools that leverage CDNs to serve pre-compiled HTML pages. The main benefits of using cloud functions include running code close to clients for minimizing latency and protecting origin servers from being flooded with traffic. The text also delves into the use of Mux's Signed URLs feature, which requires a token generated on the server when the playback URL is requested from a player. It provides step-by-step instructions on how to create signed urls for playback using Netlify Functions and Mux Node SDK. The process involves creating a module to generate a signing token, setting up a Netlify project, connecting it to GitHub, setting environment variables, testing in development, deploying the function, and restricting access to authorized users. Lastly, the text mentions that the author will be attending JAMstack Conf 2019 in San Francisco and invites readers to get in touch or meet them at the conference if they are using Netlify Cloud Functions or other JAMStack technologies.

Mux has introduced an audio normalization feature that adjusts audio levels in videos or audio-only files to a consistent listening volume. This is particularly useful when dealing with media assets from third parties or user generated content, ensuring the sound is neither too loud nor too quiet. The feature can be enabled by adding the flag "normalize_audio": true during asset creation for each video or audio file. Mux Video customers can access this feature at no additional cost.

Mux Data has transitioned from using Amazon Web Services' (AWS) Kinesis service to the open-source Apache Kafka distributed log for processing video analytics beacons. The move was made in order to unlock significant cost savings, cloud portability, and greater control over performance. This post discusses some of the engineering work performed during this transition, including a primer on Apache Kafka and its use cases, as well as details about how Mux Data uses Kafka for stateful processing of video views beacons. The sticky partitioning scheme was introduced to minimize the impact of rebalances during consumer group rebalances. Additionally, the importance of monitoring consumer group session timeouts is highlighted, as it can affect the shutdown sequence and trigger a rebalance prematurely. Overall, Kafka has proven to be a reliable and flexible solution for Mux Data's needs.

Mux now supports audio-only content in addition to videos. Customers can use the same API call for both audio and video assets, making it a unified workflow. The feature is currently available for video on demand (VOD) only and costs 1/10th of video streaming. It supports various audio codecs and formats such as WAV, Flac, AAC, MP3, Opus, OGG Vorbis, etc.