December 2022 Summaries

Video plays a crucial role in driving engagement and growth across various industries, including e-commerce. Companies like LyveCom have successfully integrated live video into their platforms to boost customer interaction and conversion rates. However, maintaining high-quality video streams is essential for a seamless user experience. LyveCom partnered with Mux to improve the quality of their broadcasts and ensure smooth interactions during live shopping sessions. This collaboration has enabled LyveCom to build a robust long-term video strategy that can scale as they grow.

Mux has partnered with Prepr, a data-driven headless CMS that enables personalized customer experiences and drives engagement and conversion. With the recent release of Prepr Live Stream, users can now easily set up, program, and stream high-quality live video to multichannel apps and websites in just three steps: create an asset, connect your broadcast, and start streaming. Prepr Live Stream eliminates the need for additional streaming platforms by allowing digital marketing teams to publish live streams directly from Prepr CMS to any platform. Every live event is automatically recorded and can be streamed afterward as on-demand video. The content can be personalized at scale to deliver unique experiences across all platforms.

Mux, a company aiming to democratize video technology, has made significant progress in 2022 by welcoming several hundred new customers and launching two new products - Mux Player and Real-Time Video. The company's overall volume of video has grown significantly, with video delivery increasing by 50%, video ingest by 80%, and Mux Data by 40%. In 2023, Mux plans to improve video quality, enhance pricing options, invest in mobile video, and add new ways to use data for managing video at scale. The company will continue to listen to customer feedback to determine future product development.

The author discusses the inadequacy of current interaction between custom controls and HTML video elements, particularly concerning captions. As an editor of WebVTT specification and Chair of Timed Text Working Group, they share their experiences with captioning and subtitling from childhood to present day. They highlight issues arising when native controls are used alongside custom ones, such as overlaying captions. The author then outlines possible solutions using CSS or JavaScript, including modifying the cue's line property in real-time. However, they also report encountering bugs with Chrome and Safari while implementing these techniques. They propose that a way to inform browsers about custom controls is needed for better interaction with native captions. The author invites feedback from users on how to improve web video captioning when using custom controls with native captions.

Testing real-time video systems can be challenging due to limitations such as difficulty in differentiating between multiple instances of oneself and internet saturation. One solution is using Mux Meet, an open-source tool that simulates real-world scenarios but has scheduling limitations. Another approach involves HTMLMediaElement.captureStream, which allows piping any <video> element as the camera/microphone input. This opens up possibilities for testing with multiple different participants without needing actual people to join meetings. By using this technique along with Mux Spaces Web SDK and Mux Video Player, a synthetic participant can be created that joins a space as a "participant" and shares their video/audio. This approach has been used for various purposes such as testing AV sync, load testing, monitoring ABR support, verifying active speaker notifications, providing interpreted streams, and testing mobile devices' behavior when decoding multiple videos simultaneously.