April 2020 Summaries

The text discusses an apology for a previous blog post that recommended joining Mux in April of 2019. It highlights the company's continued growth, emphasizing its role in powering various platforms during the COVID-19 crisis and its work on challenging technical problems related to online video. The author also mentions Mux being named one of the Best Places to Work for 2020 by the San Francisco Business Times and the importance of video as an industry. Finally, it lists specific job openings at Mux, including positions in distributed systems engineering, full-stack engineering, product design, developer advocacy, solution engineering, enterprise account executive roles, and customer success positions.

The live streaming landscape is complex with various platforms offering different capabilities. Social media platforms like YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are easy to use but may not allow for building custom video products or applications. Online Video Platforms (OVPs) such as Vimeo, Brightcove, Kaltura, and Wowza provide more flexibility in terms of features and capabilities, while Video APIs like Mux, Cloudflare Stream, and Amazon IVS offer the most customization options for building your own video platform. Key factors to consider when choosing a live streaming platform include latency, player choice, content management system (CMS), customization, revenue generation, development resources, pricing, and advanced features support. A decision tree is provided to help narrow down the best option based on specific criteria.

Streaming a live broadcast directly from a browser is not as straightforward as it may seem due to the absence of native support for RTMP protocol in browsers. While there are several approaches to achieve this, such as WebRTC rebroadcasting, broadcasting headless Chrome, and video over WebSockets, none of them provide an optimal solution. The quality will be worse, the stream less reliable, and the tooling more limited compared to using native applications for live streaming. It is recommended to use established native applications or consider other options like Mux's services for a better user experience.

Jason Mattiace, Co-founder and CTO of Cadenza.tv, discusses the live streaming platform for hosting concerts in an interview. The company collaborates with artists to create high-quality, raw, and genre-specific content. Founded by three friends from college, Cadenza has faced challenges such as skepticism from the music industry and preparing for large audiences. However, their first concert was a success, receiving positive feedback from fans and stakeholders. The company plans to refine its craft and scale capacity for hosting more shows in the future. They use Mux's live streaming API and data monitoring tools to power live streams and create recordings of concerts.

The JAMstack is a term popularized by React community, referring to "Javascript", "APIs" and "Markup". It covers static content frameworks like Next.js, Gatsby, and 11ty; deploy platforms for hosting applications; cloud functions or serverless services that handle API requests; headless CMSes for managing content; and advanced features such as authentication and databases. The JAMstack gained popularity due to its ability to provide both server-side rendered HTML and interactive React components, offering the best of both worlds. Mux is a video API for the JAMstack that focuses on handling backend or "serverless" part of the video stack while allowing developers to control every aspect of user experience.