A new chapter in online video operations has opened with the emergence of a WebRTC streaming ecosystem teaming with solutions that have been integrated with Red5’s real-time streaming platform. At an accelerating pace, vendors from across the video technology and applications supply chains have been partnering with Red5 to capitalize on market demand for WebRTC… Continue reading The WebRTC Revolution: How Red5 and Its Partners Are Powering Interactive Video
A new chapter in online video operations has opened with the emergence of a WebRTC streaming ecosystem teaming with solutions that have been integrated with Red5’s real-time streaming platform.
At an accelerating pace, vendors from across the video technology and applications supply chains have been partnering with Red5 to capitalize on market demand for WebRTC streaming support as implemented by Red5’s Experience Delivery Network (XDN) architecture. The upshot is a marketplace that can be tapped for operational support by any business that stands to benefit from real-time streaming, whether the focus is on backend connections, distribution to end users or both.
Critically, Red5 is the only WebRTC platform provider that gives customers a choice between running their operations on infrastructure offered as a fully managed cloud service or taking a DevOps approach to implementing real-time streaming. Either way, customers can utilize Red5 partner resources as they see fit, which marks a stark contrast with WebRTC platform providers who claim some of the same vendors as partners without supporting meaningful versatility in how their solutions are used.
In all cases, Red5’s partners are profiting from providing their customers ready access to a multidirectional video streaming platform that sets no limits on scalability and registers end-to-end latencies over any distance at no more than 250ms. And, as described at the conclusion of this discussion, there are many other aspects to utilizing XDN architecture that set us apart in terms of multi-cloud orchestration, app building tools, and much else.
Our lineup of best-of-breed partner solutions encompasses support for cloud computing, live and episodic content production, asset management, storage, encoding, packaging, content protection, advertising, interactive e-commerce, personalization of user experiences, and analytics touching on every aspect of performance. Often abetted by the infusion of AI, these suppliers have set a much friendlier stage than we’ve ever seen for a new generation of interactive video applications.
The possibilities portend far-reaching changes in streamed entertainment, socialization, e-commerce, work life, education and other spheres of personal online activity. Equally important, the real-time streaming impact extends to surveillance, healthcare, manufacturing, military operations and everything else related to video communications in enterprise, institutional and government operations.
Red5 customers can make use of these partner solutions individually or in any combination that suits their purposes. Whatever their goals, they can achieve them in reduced time to market knowing these suppliers’ tie-ins to Red5’s XDN infrastructure will facilitate ongoing innovation with timely execution of technology upgrades.
Some of the solutions we’ll be looking at have a direct bearing on processes tied to real-time streaming; others relate to creating the services and applications that can be deployed on XDN infrastructure.
Partners we’ll be featuring here include:
Advanced Micro Devices castLabs Oracle Cloud (OCI)
Amazon Web Services Dejero Labs Osprey Video
Amino Communications Evertz/Ease Live Singular.live
Blackbird Video Fastly VideoVerse Magnifi
Of course, we are just offering a snapshot in time of an open-ended environment that will continue expanding into the foreseeable future. But with what we’re describing here it’s already clear that this new WebRTC ecosystem has profound implications for the pace of market migration to real-time interactive streaming.
GAME-CHANGING AFFILICATIONS WITH SUPER-SCALERS
Red5’s engagement with the world’s leading providers of cloud computing platforms is unique in many respects compared to how other providers of WebRTC streaming technology are positioned in the super-scaler cloud domain.
The XDN Multi-Cloud Operational Environment
The differentiation starts with the dimensions of cross-cloud operations that are available with XDN deployments. Red5 XDN architecture has been pre-integrated for quick instantiation with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), and Digital Ocean. In addition, there are more than a dozen other cloud providers whose facilities can be quickly tied into the XDN via the widely used Terraform multi-cloud toolset.
No matter how many cloud platforms are brought into play for a given use case, all the cloud-hosted XDN nodes are configured and orchestrated to work in tandem by the XDN Stream Manager. As a result, the Red5 system always assigns the lowest-latency route to video streams no matter where the end points are.
Moreover, the Stream Manager works in real time applying automated scaling and load-balancing mechanisms in response to fluctuations in traffic demand and the numbers of engaged broadcasters and end users. Similarly, orchestration of cloud resources for fail-safe redundancy against cloud resource failures ensures adjustments are made as readily in a cross-platform environment as they are within a single cloud implementation.
New Dimensions in the Use of Cloud Computing Platforms
Beyond its integrations with the leading cloud providers, Red5 has entered into expanded relationships with AWS and Oracle that bring additional value to XDN implementations.
AWS
In the case of AWS, three developments stand out, including Red5’s involvement with the Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Accelerate Program, AWS Interactive Video Services (IVS) and the AWS Wavelength initiative.
ISV Accelerate Program
Red5’s participation in the ISV Accelerate Program marks a major advance in the AWS relationship that puts the co-selling power of the AWS sales force behind the Red5 Pro Server platform. This is now the toolset touted by AWS as the rigorously tested resource ISVs can rely on to build enterprise-grade real-time interactive streaming infrastructures.
This not only provides ISVs assurance they can achieve nearly unlimited multidirectional scalability at end-to-end streaming latencies at or below 250ms. It also certifies that their Red5 XDN-based platforms can be built with robust recording capabilities, frame-accurate multi-stream and metadata synchronization, and the API integrations essential to bringing myriad other vendor solutions into play.
There are also benefits impacting ISVs purchasing power with AWS. The Accelerate Program designation means that what ISVs spend in their engagements with Red5 may be counted toward any mass purchasing commitments they make under terms of a new class of dealmaking instigated by AWS.
The AWS-Designated DevOps Alternative to IVS
A related development in Red5’s relationship with AWS has to do with the complementary role Red5 Pro plays as an ISV-focused platform in contrast to the super-scaler’s IVS cloud streaming service. This stems from the approach to supporting real-time streaming that AWS took after assimilating IVS following its acquisition of Twitch in 2014.
AWS expanded the streaming service beyond its HTTP roots to include a WebRTC-based version for video streaming at sub-500ms latencies with support for up to 12 interactive video participants and a much heavier volume of text chat activity. But IVS doesn’t fit the bill for ISVs who want to build their own real-time streaming platforms.
Consequently, AWS eventually chose to designate Red5 Pro as the best DevOps environment for building AWS-hosted streaming infrastructures with greater scalability, richer feature versatility and lower latencies than can be attained with the turnkey AWS service. Now, under the more recent elevation of Red5 into the ISV Accelerate Program, the global AWS sales force is ensuring ISVs in search of a real-time networking solution know their best option is Red5 Pro.
AWS Wavelength
Red5 also plays a key role with AWS as the only real-time streaming supplier that’s been authorized for pre-integration with AWS Wavelength Zones. As described in this blog, these zones are equipped to serve as direct links between 5G mobile cell sites and AWS infrastructure running in 77 Availability Zones across 24 AWS Regions worldwide.
The co-location of these dedicated AWS resources with local 5G cell onramps allows 5G traffic carried by mobile operators to avoid latencies incurred by streams that must traverse the internet and 5G aggregation centers to get to and from the cloud. With integration of XDN Origin and Edge Nodes in Wavelength Zones, participating carriers are able to support in-house or third-party streaming applications with latencies between end points as low as 50ms.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
The Super-Scaler Host for Red5 Cloud
Red5’s rapidly expanding relationship with Oracle now includes the selection of OCI as its host for the recently launched Red5 Cloud platform-as-a-service (PaaS) platform. Benefitting from Oracle’s vast reach and low-cost fee structure, Red5 Cloud achieves sub-250ms end-to-end streaming latency with global autoscaling across ten regions.
OCI provides the resource usage flexibility essential to enabling the touch-screen activation and control of massively scalable streaming infrastructure that customers enjoy with Red5 Cloud. OCI’s support for the dynamic resource orchestration capabilities of the XDN Stream Manager allows customers to spin up deployments precisely tuned to their service strategies with feature enhancement flexibility far beyond the capabilities of competing WebRTC cloud platforms.
With ongoing control over operations and modifications through the duration of their contracted engagements, Red5 Cloud users are freed from any concerns that their freedom to innovate will be compromised. This represents a stark contrast with shared resource environments where a process implemented for one customer becomes available to all.
OCI Roving Edge Deployments
Another OCI attribute leveraged to great advantage by Red5 and its customers is the set of portable Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure (REI) devices that can extend OCI instantiations of XDN architecture far beyond Oracle datacenters. This opens a broad range of use cases for XDN-based real-time interactive streaming where speed-of-light latencies imposed with use of conventional OCI resources are too high.
For example, these capabilities have important implications for remotely positioned emergency and military command centers. Much faster, more knowledgeable responses to emergency and battlefield scenarios can be executed when it’s possible to aggregate and analyze surveillance camera feeds from aerial and maritime drones, body cams, mobile phones and remote fixed locations in relatively close proximity to the action.
The key component in the REI appliance portfolio is the Roving Edge Device (RED), a two rack-unit (2RU) compute- and storage-optimized server that can be ruggedized to operate in remote environments. Its CPU capacity and processing speeds, solid-state and storage memory capacity and 10 gigabit Ethernet network interface make it a viable substitute for OCI datacenter servers in the execution of XDN operations.
The compatibility of RED units with OCI datacenter resources allows for seamless deployments of data and applications that have been developed and tested in the datacenter environment. REI, which is slated for availability through tie-ins with OCI resources worldwide, initially launched for use region-wide in the U.S., U.K. and most of continental Europe.
PARTNERS ACCELERATING ENCODING PERFORMANCE
While many encoding platforms, including popular software-based cloud systems, have been improved to where they work fast enough to meet conventional live-streaming requirements, suppliers face big hurdles when it comes to achieving processing speeds suited to real-time streaming. The challenge is especially daunting in the case of codecs that support higher compression ratios than can be attained with the universally deployed H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) codec, otherwise known as MPEG-4. Invariably, every codec that moves the compression ratio another step forward, including most prominently MPEG’s H.265 High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and the even more efficient open source AV1, adds a five- to ten-fold increase in time-consuming processing complexity.
Red5 has taken major strides toward overcoming delays at both the encoding and decoding ends through partnerships with chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and two providers of cutting-edge encoding platforms, Videon Labs and Osprey Video. As a result, the way has been cleared not only for AVC delivery of TV-quality HD 1080p content at massive scales but also for the leap to next-gen 4K and, eventually, 8K quality via higher performance codecs.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)
The most fundamental aspect to this transformation in encoding performance over WebRTC streaming stems from the integration of AMD’s Alveo U30 hardware acceleration technology for use with the CPU-based Cauldron transcoding support that’s native to XDN architecture. Here the implications extend beyond encoding to applying cloud hardware processing efficiencies in the creation of feature enhancements to XDN-streamed content.
Alveo hardware acceleration, acquired with AMD’s purchase of Xilinx, enables real-time compatible encoding in the CPU domain at 25ms-50ms compared to non-accelerated CPU-based encoding speeds in the 100ms-1second range. This eliminates the need to rely on costlier GPU-based cloud instances to attain TV-caliber quality with WebRTC streams.
Notably, AWS has taken advantage of Alveo U30 acceleration with the offering of EC2 VT1 instances for cloud computing with up to eight Alveo U30 media accelerator cards per instance powering up to 64 1080p60 streams, each of which can be subdivided into lower resolutions. The VT1 instance not only cuts costs by up to 30% per stream compared to Amazon EC2 GPU-based instances; by virtue of the multi-stream capacity attained through Alveo U30 acceleration, use of VT1 also reduces per-stream costs by up to 60% compared to Amazon’s EC2 CPU-based instances.
These advances have enabled Red5 customers to take WebRTC streaming to new levels of quality and service versatility. Along with delivering 1080p HD, they are putting XDN-compatible CPU acceleration to use delivering multiple video, graphics and text feeds in support of interactive experiences that can be personalized on a per-user basis. We’re seeing new approaches to watch parties, sports betting and other broadcast-quality interactive entertainment feature enhancements as well as use case transformations extending into a wide range of non-entertainment segments, including smart cities, enterprise collaboration, telemedicine and residential security.
Soon Red5 will be bringing the use of AMD acceleration as well as GPU-based cloud processing alternatives to bear in enabling HEVC encoding and decoding at speeds commensurate with real-time streaming. And the stage is also set for activating AV1 in XDN architecture with further advancements in core processors suited to enabling live AV1 encoding. Here, along with hardware acceleration, the achievement will be abetted by two major real-time streaming related actions taken by the bodies governing AV1 and WebRTC standards, the Alliance for Open Media (AOM) and the Worldwide Web Consortium (WC3).
WC3 has brought Scalable Video Coding (SVC), which enables generation of multiple content resolutions from a single encoder, into the WebRTC domain with the SVC Extension for WebRTC specification. And AOM, capitalizing on the fact that AV1 is the first codec to incorporate SVC by default, has developed the Real-Time Protocol (RTP) Payload Format for AV1 to facilitate AV1 encoding and decoding for WebRTC streaming, which depends on RTP as the underlying transport mechanism.
Videon Labs
Meanwhile, Red5’s alliances with Videon and Osprey provide additional, immediately available options for versatile high-speed encoding of 4K UHD as well as HD content targeted for distribution over the XDN platform. In Videon’s case, Red5 has moved beyond initial integration with Videon encoders in 2020 to the transformative edge dynamics enabled by the recently introduced Videon LiveEdge platform with multipurpose LiveCaster devices combining encoding, packaging and localized CPU-based computing.
These are container-optimized small form factor devices used in sports and other live productions that can be deployed in multiple locations under remotely accessible dashboard control. They can be used to enable EC2 cloud-like processing capabilities supporting H.264 and H.265 encoding, graphics processing and other high-value data applications for direct high-speed feeds into XDN Origin nodes.
By performing encoding at points of production, EdgeCaster devices eliminate time-intensive encode/decode/re-encode processes common to pure cloud-based production workflows enabling sub-300ms end-to-end latency even with the delivery of 4K video in multiple bitrate profiles. When these devices are also used as compute resources tied to Red5 Edge Nodes, they allow Red5 customers to bring CPU processing closer to end users, opening next-gen capabilities that depend on instantaneous results that can’t be engineered through core cloud compute resources.
For example, in one use case, a customer is streaming live 3600 video feeds from ambulances to give ER doctors a head start treating arriving patients. The XDN-LiveEdge integration is also spawning new applications in sports betting, in-stadium streaming, watch parties, immersive spatial computing, e-commerce and surveillance that can involve anywhere from a handful to millions of concurrent users. Many applications relating to 5G services are in development in conjunction with projects Red5 and Videon are pursuing in the AWS Wavelength space.
Osprey Video
Red5’s partnership with Osprey Video, consummated in early 2023, brings the versatile low-cost Osprey Talon appliance into play to deliver high-quality H.264 or H.265 feeds to XDN Origin Nodes, where they are transcoded for multi-profile delivery at ultra-low latencies. Operating at sub-100ms latency, the Talon can ingest, encode and output live A/V content supporting 10-bit HDR at up to 4K resolution and 60 frames per second.
The unit can be installed in control rooms, connected to cameras or set up as part of master control in front of performance stages. Employing advanced heat dissipation technology with the AMD Xilinx Ultrascale+ Architecture at its core, the small device operates unobtrusively in silence without a fan to support SRT feeds packaged with metadata and captions into XDN infrastructure.
ABETTING THE REAL-TIME REVOLUTION IN LIVE CONTENT PRODUCTION
Affiliations in Remote Production Connectivity
Red5’s XDN has long been equipped to ingest content delivered from production and playout sources via multiple protocols, including the very low latency streams supported by the Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) standard and proprietary platforms like the Zixi Software-Defined Video Protocol (SDVP). Now the XDN connection with backend transport is going further as producers’ needs for real-time multidirectional streaming capabilities go beyond what these systems can deliver.
Notably, with the M&E industry-wide shift to use of IP technology and the resulting surge in cloud production, producers are freeing themselves from the encumbrances of location-based operations by supporting collaboration across distributed workflows. This has sparked growing demand for real-time connectivity that will enable collaboration in time-sensitive scenarios that require instantaneously shared access to video output.
The Zixi-Red5 Alliance
In response, Zixi, which has taken a leading role providing playout connectivity to TV and OTT producers worldwide, has partnered with Red5 to offer transport over XDN infrastructure directly integrated with the Zixi platform. This provides Zixi’s customers a readily available real-time interactive streaming option for use in production and other backend transport scenarios.
Brought to light with demonstrations at the 2024 NAB and IBC trade shows, the partnership comes at a moment when cloud production has begun to have a major impact on strategic thinking among sports, news and other live event producers. They understand that with production processing centered in the cloud, it’s possible to avoid the high costs of on-site event productions if real-time video connections can be used to overcome latencies between producers and the live action
At IBC in Amsterdam Zixi hosted a demonstration conducted by Red5 in collaboration with Osprey Video and Blackbird, which showed how Red5’s TrueTime Studio for Production toolset can be used to augment the benefits of real-time XDN connectivity in widely distributed workflows. By enabling shared multi-screen editing on standard computer screens involving any number of A/V feeds from cameras and other sources, the solution makes it easier and cheaper to engage remote collaborators without the need for high-priced switching equipment and purpose-built workstations.
Red5 TrueTime Studio for Production Demo at IBC 2024
Earlier in the year at NAB in Las Vegas, Red5 and Zixi with Red5 partners Nomad Media and Videon Labs highlighted the implications of extending multiscreen capabilities over XDN connections to end users. The unparalleled multi-screen viewing scalability enabled by Red5’s TrueTime Multiview app was demonstrated with real-time delivery of a 16-camera viewing matrix that enabled instant selection of any feed for full-screen display. The viewing options consisted of channels aggregated in a Nomad Media workflow with a live feed from the show floor, which were encoded by Videon for ingress onto the XDN platform in the cloud and delivered through the show Wi-Fi system to TV screens at the Zixi and Nomad booths.
Red5’s Emerging Partnership with Evertz Technologies
Evertz Technologies, a leader in broadcast playout processing and transport, has built a portfolio of sophisticated feature enhancements for the live sports production market. The solutions enable producers to deliver programming to affiliates from the Evertz playout platform with support for replays, selection of what they send to end users from multiple viewing options, dynamic ad insertion, and other features.
Now Evertz is leveraging its products to meet growing demand among sports producers for ways to create new in-venue viewing experiences on fans’ devices. In some scenarios, the goal is to start out by offering such services to a select few in premium suites, in which case the need to ensure that viewing experiences are in sync with on-field action can be satisfied with the use of Evertz equipment on premises.
But sooner or later most, if not all sports producers offering such services will want to make them available as a venue-wide attendance incentive, which makes the cost of on-premises processing support prohibitive. Consequently, Evertz needs to be able to capitalize on the economies of using the cloud versions of its product portfolio.
With Red5 providing connectivity on the processed streams sent from the cloud to end users, Evertz achieves the real-time synchronization its customers need to make these experiences available to everyone at the venue. And, if Evertz chooses, this can open the door to enabling producers to launch real-time mass audience extensions of these viewing experiences along with Evertz-supported dynamic ad insertion, feature enhancements supported by Evertz subsidiary Ease Live, as discussed below, and additional applications like the presentation of multiple viewing options to end users that can be built with the aid of Red5’s TrueTime toolsets.
Production Workflow Management Platforms
Red5 has partnered with a wide range of firms specializing in next-generation approaches to live content production. They vary in areas of specialization, but all have built workflow management platforms designed to seize largely untapped opportunities intrinsic to IP technology, the use of cloud resources and, with tie-ins to Red5’s XDN architecture, real-time video communications.
The diagram below illustrates how these platforms are typically integrated into the XDN domain.
BitFire
BitFire is focused on meeting the full scope of broadcast and studio production requirements with a set of cloud-based processing solutions that are designed to work in real-time tandem with premises-based equipment. Along with enabling production based entirely in the cloud, this hybrid approach enables continuation of traditional studio operations with the ability to extend them to remote participants in the production workflows.
To make this simultaneous real-time collaboration possible BitFire operates over a WebRTC-based streaming infrastructure that also serves as a means for its customers to deliver their output to end users in real time. But this is a networking environment that doesn’t provide interfaces to DevOps tools that are essential to creating applications that aren’t already built into the platform.
By partnering with Red5, BitFire is making it possible for customers to put its production resources to work in conjunction with a virtually unlimited range of applications enabled by Red5 Pro SDKs, APIs and TrueTime tools. Notably, with APIs that enable integration of capabilities from third parties partnered with Red5, BitFire customers have opportunities to put those solutions to use in ways that would otherwise be impossible on the BitFire Transport Network.
This is a prime example of a situation where the presence of real-time communications capabilities doesn’t necessarily mean users will be able to achieve the service differentiations they need to drive monetization. This can even be the case in a closed turnkey networking scenario where the infrastructure provider is touting partnerships with some of the same entities that are partnered with Red5.
Blackbird Video
Blackbird is focused on providing high-speed production support for live content through a cloud-native video editing and publishing platform. The firm’s flagship elevate.io toolset has been applied in productions involving sports events like the FIFA World Cup, Summer and Winter Olympics, Super Bowl and other major competitions as well as news productions involving broadcasters worldwide.
Blackbird’s remote-production optimized workflow enables browser-based access to up to 18 video and 36 audio tracks for editing from any location, resulting in production turnaround speeds that are 4X faster than average, according to the company. As a pre-integrated partner with both Red5 and Zixi, Blackbird can offer customers who rely on Zixi ready access to real-time connectivity when they need it.
Moreover, Blackbird workflows provide an ideal working environment for applying the multiscreen viewing capabilities supported by Red5’s TrueTime Studio for Production insofar as all the tracks accommodated in an elevate.io workflow can be viewed in a TrueTime-formatted array. The ability of editors utilizing the Blackbird platform to work in real-time collaboration across all screens simultaneously was verified in the previously described demo at Zixi’s IBC stand.
Nomad Media
Red5’s alliance with Nomad Media represents a major advance in asset management systems, which support workflows that tie directly into the many functionalities content suppliers rely on to serve today’s fragmented M&E service distribution environment. The partnership has made real-time interactive streaming via XDN architecture a readily available option with one of the world’s most advanced and widely used asset management platforms.
Or, as Nomad president Adam Miller puts it, the integration of Nomad with XDN architecture will “provide our customers with a paradigm shift in real-time low latency live streaming technology, making it incredibly easy to use and adopt.”
Nomad’s comprehensive AI-assisted media asset management platform is designed to interface with all the types of solutions that go into managing, storing, searching, streaming and analyzing on-demand and live video feeds securely and cost effectively. Running on AWS cloud facilities, the easy-to-use Nomad platform brings into play the vast array of tools that support these processes for use in any type of scenario that calls for real-time interactive video distribution over XDN infrastructure.
VideoVerse Magnifi
VideoVerse is making waves as another next-gen provider of production toolsets dedicated to facilitating opportunities stemming from producers’ transitions to IP and the cloud. Magnifi, the company’s lead solution, is an editing platform that provides an AI-facilitated approach to creating highlights and other enhancements relevant to core production output.
Through its use of AI Magnifi is meant to make it far easier and faster for producers to extract material wherever it can be found to create enhancements that will deepen fan engagement and drive revenue growth. The intelligent Magnifi editing workflow automatically ensures that the enhancements are frame- and pixel-accurately tuned to each receiving device.
While it can be used with any type of content, the speed and scope of Magnifi-based editing is especially beneficial to sports, esports and other live content productions. The company says it has trained its AI models to process more than 70 types of sports with the ability to automatically personalize and socially optimize elements delivered to end users.
Another attribute driving Magnifi’s market penetration is its use of AI in what it calls “video content moderation” to identify any rights or regulatory compliance issues associated with elements targeted for use in a given content stream. Concerns over adhering to rights enforcement policies have been a significant drag on sports and other producers’ ability to capitalize on use of assets to enhance UX.
Through its affiliation with Red5, Magnifi is able to provide customers integrated access to real-time backend and distribution transport support. On the distribution side, this opens opportunities for creation of real-time interactive applications of the Magnifi-generated enhancements. And Red5’s TrueTime Multiview app allows Magnifi to provide customers the option to deliver its AI-extracted elements in multiscreen viewing formats to end users.
UX Enhancement Overlay Platforms
In addition to the enhancements to UX that can be devised through use of XDN-based distribution in conjunction with the production workflow partners discussed above, a vast realm of end-user feature enhancements is enabled by Red5 partners Ease Live and Singular.live. Through direct integrations with XDN architecture, these suppliers’ video, audio and graphics overlays can be delivered simultaneously on a personalized basis in real-time synchronization to millions of end users. Their successes and the gains achieved with XDN architecture underscore the scope and pace of a global reshaping of the norms in UX, especially when it comes to sports, news, concerts and other live event productions.
Ease Live
Ease Live, acquired by Evertz in 2020, has thrived as the supplier of a cloud-based platform that mixes delivery of data matched to end user profiles with support for interactive polling and other engagement-inducing apps that can be monetized with contextually accurate ad placements. The platform’s ability to aggregate data from far-flung resources in real time into custom-formatted graphic overlays frame accurately integrated for reception on all end-user devices has been key to enabling customers to come up with interactive applications that achieve the kinds of results long anticipated but seldom reached in the interactive premium video space.
For example, long-time Ease Live user YES Network, the regional pay TV sports provider in New York, offers an interactive app that allows users to score points in competition with other users for points redeemable for YES gift cards. Reporting on results following the 2022 Yankee baseball season covered on YES, the network said the app had generated a 39% increase in average unique viewers.
Other entities providing user experiences supported by Ease Live have been reporting similar results. Spain’s global soccer broadcast and streaming service LaLigua has said its reliance on Ease Live to support interactivity allowing fans to engage in real time with instant highlights, live player and game stats, polls, quizzes, leaderboards and other features led to a 25% increase in viewing time along with significant increases in advertising and sponsorships. Austrian broadcaster Servus TV reported its use of Ease Live-supported overlays with its streamed coverage of the UEFA Euro 2024 soccer tournament drew 62% of its viewers into interactive participation, topped by a 56% response rate to polls.
Adding to the impact of what it is bringing to the marketplace beyond the sports realm, Ease Live is working with NBC Universal to support personalized broadcast experiences through NBCU’s NextGen TV (ATSC 3.0) over-the-air channels on NBC- and Telemundo-owned stations. Along with enabling instant access to clips and alternative programming from the broadcasters’ news, sports and entertainment, the features include support for restarting programs when joined in progress; hyper-localized elements integrated into the TODAY show; and access to personalized weather information and severe weather alerts.
Now Ease Live is taking its UX support to the next level by partnering with Red5 to exploit the power of real-time interactive streaming. This opens a broad range of possibilities starting with the ability to add interactive video communications to Ease Live apps delivered simultaneously to users in real time. Ease Live will also have the opportunity to include video-rich interactive e-commerce, multiscreen viewing options and other enhancements enabled by Red5 Pro development tools with the portfolio of solutions it offers to its customers.
Singular.live
Singular.live, a global leader in digital content enhancement, has long relied on its partnership with Red5 to enable synchronized delivery of custom-formatted feature overlays with live-streamed sports and other content. Pairing the two companies’ platforms has enabled Singular customers to create and deliver virtually any combination of dynamically responsive graphics, video clips, sound bites and text as overlays to live-streamed sports or other linear video in real time.
Singular.live’s cloud-native solution operates as an HTML5 platform that can render these elements through any HTML5-enabled browser. Consequently, when intelligence in XDN Edge Nodes is used to deliver personalized overlays in low bandwidth streams to each user connected to one of those nodes, that content can be rendered in sync with the core payload on each user’s device.
Along with enabling synchronized real-time interactivity across mass worldwide audiences, this has allowed producers to introduce much richer unidirectional viewing experiences as well without having to use just-in-time packaging to accommodate network-based injections into each unicast stream as required with conventional one-way streaming. For example, producers can engage third parties to input Singular-formatted unidirectional and interactive features from anywhere in the world for direct delivery to end users, including overlays in languages targeted to specific regions or ethnic groups dispersed across multiple regions.
The possibilities have been exploited in applications such as information channels for bettors on horse races, polling of viewers for reactions during live events, multiscreen viewing, and much else. Notably, many uses for the Singular/Red5 combination have been found in esports, such as delivering action-specific graphics and text in tandem with each viewer’s choice of which esports competition to watch during a multi-location event and enabling esports “streamers” to augment their performances with graphics and data.
OTHER MAJOR AREAS OF ADVANCEMENT WITH RED5 PARTNERS
Expanding the Use of Surveillance Technology
As reflected in our ever-expanding catalog of documents devoted to surveillance in all its permutations, Red5’s work with private contractors and government agencies in law enforcement, fire mitigation, transportation, and defense is spreading across the globe. There’s no end in sight as users of surveillance technology discover what can be accomplished when real-time video communications are brought to bear in the simultaneous aggregation and analysis of feeds from terrestrially and drone-mounted cameras operating across large fields of observation.
The Dejero Connection
We’ll continue to update our direct work with these partners elsewhere. Here we want to bring to light our partnership with Dejero, which isn’t specific to a particular region or category of surveillance operations. Dejero is a Canadian firm founded in 2008 to provide government and enterprise customers a means of network connectivity that would otherwise be unavailable or subpar in hard-to-reach areas.
Dejero does this by leveraging relationships with mobile, fiber, broadband and satellite network providers to create software-defined cloud-managed network-of-networks solutions that can instantaneously provide customers access over whatever link can be used to deliver the best throughput with no interruptions switching from one network to another. The company’s market base encompasses all sectors where remote video operations are in play, including M&E providers as well as the users of surveillance technologies.
Currently Red5’s work with Dejero is focused on surveillance applications, although the benefits achieved through the partnership could be applied in other sectors as well. In the case of surveillance, the pairing of the network aggregation and encoding support provided by Dejero with XDN infrastructure is having a transformative impact by bringing real-time video transport between cameras and crews and command and control centers into remote locations.
Dejero’s Smart Blending Technology achieves connection diversity tapping into 4G/5G wireless, multiple types of wireline and low-, medium- and geostationary-earth orbit satellite networks while intelligently managing individual connection fluctuations, packet loss, and latency differences to maximize network reliability, coverage and bandwidth. The cloud platform applies AI-enabled analytics to track results and allows users to put containerized microservice solutions into play to facilitate specific use cases.
The company provides three types of hardware appliances for use in the field. Its 5G mobile transmitters work with unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), i.e. drones, or other wirelessly connected video sources with reliance on the cloud platform to connect with the best available mobile links. If the best way to transport signals beyond the local camera feeds to more distant locations requires access to landline or satellite options, users can deploy a gateway device that connects the mobile feeds into the network-of-networks environment.
Where mobile is not an option, the gateway can be used as the direct point of connection to terrestrially mounted cameras. The third device is an appliance suitable for deployment in vehicles or in stationary locations with support for edge compute processing that allows in-the-field users tapping into network video transmission to respond to unfolding developments.
Adding to the versatility, Dejero has integrated an in-house developed hybrid hardware encoder with these field devices. The high-speed encoder is equipped with a field-upgradeable software pipeline which maximizes video quality by dynamically adapting to vicissitudes in networks and end devices in real time.
One of the important aspects to the real-time connectivity over distances provided by Red5 in surveillance operations employing Dejero technology involves Red5’s integration with Oracle’s Roving Edge Deployment (RED) platform, as described in Section I. In scenarios where Dejero’s network of networks and encoding technologies come into play with XDN architecture, the use of RED devices to support remote positioning of XDN ingress nodes can be a vital aspect to bringing real-time transport to Dejero-enabled connections.
The XDN-Infused Set-Top Box
Amino Communications
Amino, a global leader in the supply of next-gen set-top-boxes (STBs), has opened a new path to enhancing UX for traditional pay TV providers through its budding partnership with Red5. With support from XDN architecture, the U.K.-based subsidiary of Aferian plc sees an opportunity to supply operators STBs that can deliver multi-viewing options and other features that go far beyond what typically can be done with reliance on STB system-on-chip (SoC) processors.
Amino has been in the vanguard of a global shift to internet-connected STBs with support for delivery of traditional TV channels and streamed OTT services on Android and Reference Design Kit (RDK) devices. But STBs without the computing power of PCs, tablets and smartphones can’t take full advantage of the personalized feature versatility enabled by IP technology.
Nor, in fact, is that potential reached when conventional one-way, high-latency streaming is used to deliver content to users’ devices, even when those devices are equipped with powerful CPUs. This, of course, is the state of affairs that has prompted growing market reliance on WebRTC platforms.
Now, through Amino’s partnership with Red5 and potentially other OEM initiatives that could be aimed at exploiting STB internet connectivity or any other means of connecting TVs to the internet, including Smart TVs, there’s a new way to think about how service providers can leverage IP technology to enrich subscriber UX. Amino’s plan is to make it possible for operators to do this on its STBs by bringing WebRTC into play on IP connections in conjunction with utilizing the TrueTime tools, Mixer technology and edge intelligence available through Red5 Pro to create next-gen UX.
As mentioned in Section III, Red5’s XDN architecture enables synchronization of feature-rich overlays with core content streamed to Edge Nodes serving clusters of end users. In cases where HTML5 is used to render the overlaid content, the WebRTC-streamed overlay and core content can be combined with browser support on the user’s device without requiring the support of plug-ins. Or Red5 Mixer technology running on the Edge Nodes can be used to combine personalized enhancements with core content at the nodes in streams dedicated to each end user.
The Amino strategy entails development of lightweight XDN players integrated as firmware in STB SoCs to enable access to server-side XDN intelligence, including the Mixer technology, that offloads processing burdens too heavy for the SoCs. Critically, service providers who have modernized headends and central offices with datacenter cloud technology can take advantage of these capabilities even if the IP core content and overlay streams coming into their edge facilities are conventional one-way, high latency HTTP streams delivered over CDNs. These streams can be ingested by XDN Origin Nodes instantiated in those private cloud facilities and frame-accurately integrated by the Mixer technology into dedicated WebRTC streams distributed to end users’ STBs from XDN Edge Node servers co-located with the Origin Nodes.
One of the much sought-after use cases this architecture can make available to STB users involves muti-camera view selection in sports and other live event productions. In multi-viewing created with use of Red5’s TrueTime Multiview toolset, any number of camera feeds from a mobile in-venue or centralized sports production can be streamed over conventional HTTP or XDN infrastructure to the service provider’s facilities. The mix also includes a stream that transmits all those viewing options as an assemblage of very low bandwidth thumbnail screens to be rendered alongside the primary viewing space on each user’s STB-connected TV screen.
Node intelligence responding to thumbnail selection commands activated by users’ remote controls interact with Red5’s server-side Mixer technology to assign choices of camera views for streaming to each end user in the Edge Node cluster. All of this occurs instantly, allowing users to jump from one screen view to another with no disruption in the viewing experience.
Bringing such capabilities to the STB could be a game changer for pay TV providers. They’ll not only be able to deliver streamed content with their traditional TV channels. They’ll also benefit from embellishing that content with UX their subscribers can’t get elsewhere.
DRM Supplier Integrations Facilitate Adherence to Licensing Policies
One of the great benefits that come with WebRTC streaming over XDN architecture has to do with the measures Red5 has employed to enable DRM-caliber content protection without requiring use of DRM solutions from third-party vendors. Content protection based on 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption and private key management as defined by the Secure Realtime Protocol (SRTP) is an intrinsic component of WebRTC specifications, enabling premium content protection to be implemented in browsers without the need for DRM plug-ins.
Red5 has made this a viable alternative to DRM through implementation of its RoundTrip Authentication validator, which is a remote server authorization mediator implementing the appropriate business logic needed to execute server-to-server validation of publishers and end users. But there are many instances where licensing requirements written without recognition of developments in the WebRTC domain can only be satisfied through use of industry-certified DRM platforms.
Red5 is making it easy for customers to bring DRM into activation with WebRTC through integrations of XDN architecture with two third-party cloud-based multi-DRM solutions that have been configured for use in the WebRTC domain. The first such integration stems from the partnership with castLabs we announced at the outset of 2023, while the second is in the offing in a new partnership with EZDRM.
castLabs
castLabs’ DRMtoday platform is a global multi-DRM license service built on AWS that has been optimized to work on WebRTC streams by sustaining end-to-end encryption across multiple media servers between the stream source and end users. With the castLabs solution in play, content automatically encrypted by SRTP for WebRTC delivery on the XDN platform is immediately decrypted and replaced by encryption implemented by DRMtoday through the Cauldron media engine.
Whether encoding is provided by a third-party encoder or web browser as the source encoder, the Widevine, PlayReady or Fairplay DRM appropriate to the targeted device is applied with ingestion into the XDN cluster and the re-encrypted stream is passed through the XDN Nodes to the end user. This enables full, universal DRM protection with no modification to the streaming infrastructure and full retention of real-time latency parameters.
EZDRM
EZDRM, too, has developed a solution that combines WebRTC streaming with commercial grade DRM security. With integration into the WebRTC workflow, the EZDRM approach implements workflow controls which, along with managing DRM robustness, can be used to leverage server-side ad insertion (SSAI) and session-based watermarking solutions. We’ll soon have more to say about our alliance with EZDRM.
Conventional CDN Tie-Ins
We complete this overview of the Red5 WebRTC streaming ecosystem with mention of our partnerships with two CDN operators, Fastly and Bunny.net. Of course, XDN architecture supports the alternative to CDN infrastructure that’s fundamental to real-time streaming, but there are instances where there’s a need to bring conventional CDNs into play with the primary XDN.
One scenario involves XDN support for automatic fallback to HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) for streams going out to users whose devices can’t capitalize on major browser support for WebRTC. Another important CDN application involves ensuring that WebRTC-streamed content can be captured and stored for VOD availability, which, because direct storage of live-streamed WebRTC content is impossible, also brings into play XDN conversion of streams to HLS as the HTTP streaming fallback.
Fastly
Fastly has established itself as a leader in next-generation cloud CDN technology with global reach. It provides algorithmic monitoring and facilities usage controls operating across large POPs positioned at cloud edges and in proximity to internet exchanges, which reduces the costs of CDN usage without compromising on performance.
With recourse to Fastly for the above-mentioned HLS-related applications, Red5 customers benefit from Fastly’s latency-reducing implementation of Low-Latency HLS and instant streaming configurations enabled by Fastly’s software-defined routing and load balancing mechanisms. In addition, Fastly’s support for on-the-fly packaging is important when there’s a need for repackaging based on regional destination requirements.
Bunny.net
Our other CDN partner, Bunny.net, touting capabilities similar to Fastly’s, is making great headway with next-gen CDN, edge storage and optimization services supporting high-speed performance at any scale. One element contributing to the Bunny.net CDN speed and performance success is a consolidated approach to performing transcoding and all the packaging processes that go into streaming over its CDN.
Another innovation has to do with Bunny.net’s support for distributed hot object storage across its global POP footprint. Customers can activate automatic replication of files going into storage so that they are immediately available for on-demand access in any service area.
The Growing Role of AI in Red5 Streaming Workflows
Red5 is diligent in ensuring that relevant partner AI innovations will be beneficial to XDN operations. For example, expanding utilization of AI in cloud computing automatically extends enhancements to our customers’ use of their facilities to support XDNs.
In addition, we’re exploring partnerships with AI specialists that can bring added value to customer use cases. One of these is Magnifi, which, as discussed in Section III, is bringing AI to bear in pulling together assets to enhance sports and other productions. Another involves the startup DirectAI, which is offering a solution built on vision language models (VLMs), a variation on large language models (LLMs) used in generative AI.
By employing VLMs trained on billions of image-caption pairs, DirectAI allows content producers with no AI skills to use plain language in the creation of object recognition models that can facilitate applications that enhance their use cases. Such models can be used to find defects in content streams, perform counts of product appearances that are useful in monetization strategies, identify and upload video frames to AWS S3 or other storage facilities for future use, and perform myriad other tasks relevant to M&E applications.
DirectAI-assisted object models can be used to track multiple objects and types of objects simultaneously. In surveillance the platform facilitates identification of faces, license numbers or other elements relevant to a given situation.
The time-saving possibilities are endless and now can be applied in real-time streaming on the XDN platform. Customers can use DirectAI in conjunction with the Red5’s Cauldron media engine to perform these tasks with no interruption in the real-time stream flow whether the end result is to simply identify objects, pull frames out for storage or manipulate the stream flow by, for example, removing audio or images that violate provider, licensor or regulatory policies.
THE NEW RED5 PERSPECTIVE ON REAL-TIME STREAMING
As noted in the introduction, Red5 not only has assembled an industry-leading array of suppliers comprising the rapidly expanding WebRTC ecosystem described here. We’re also providing the only platform that allows customers to make use of ecosystem partners’ solutions as they see fit in both a turnkey ready-to-deploy cloud service environment and a DevOps environment where customers have free rein to custom build their own WebRTC infrastructures
This is possible because of the unique versatility of Red5’s XDN architecture, its reliance on open-source technology, and the APIs and application-specific toolsets customers can use to precisely tailor streaming infrastructure to their needs. Whether they’re relying on XDN infrastructure deployed through the fully managed Red5 Cloud platform-as-a-service (PaaS) or through the DevOps build-it-yourself approach enabled by Red5 Pro SDKs and our extensive portfolio of APIs, the XDN cloud server software orchestration enabled by the platform’s Stream Manager OS accords customers unparalleled freedom to respond with speed and precision to whatever opportunities fit their agendas in the real-time interactive streaming domain.
In all cases, XDN infrastructure runs on commodity servers in locations that can be hierarchically configured to seamlessly operate in cloud clusters as Origin, Relay and Edge Nodes. One or more Origin Nodes in a cluster serve to ingest and stream encoded content out to Relay Nodes, each of which serves an array of Edge Nodes that deliver live unicast streams to end points in their assigned service areas.
Origin node placements can be optimized to accommodate ingestion of massive volumes of streams at minimum latency in interactive scenarios, all the way to extreme edge points. By leveraging both containerized and virtual machine-based iterations of datacenter virtualization, the XDN platform enables the flexibility and speed of resource utilization that is essential to unlimited scalability and fail-safe redundancy.
The basic difference between working in the Red5 Cloud and Red5 Pro environments has to do with how the XDN infrastructure is implemented and managed over time. In the case of Red5 Cloud customers, the service configures and maintains real-time interactive infrastructures dedicated exclusively to their use in perfect alignment with their use case requirements. This is a major departure from the shared usage platforms operated by other suppliers of WebRTC cloud services, where pre-formatted use-case applications are offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.
Red5 Cloud
Red5 Cloud customers don’t need to calculate any of the details respecting how resources are allocated to create the XDN infrastructure they need to accomplish their goals. All they need to do on the Red5 Cloud dashboard is respond to directions asking them to input information designating numbers of streams to be ingested and their bitrates, the destinations to be served, the scale of the receiving population, the scale of participants that will be generating video, and some other basic parameters.
With that they will be able to begin operating over their own purpose-built XDN infrastructure in a matter of minutes, free to immediately focus on developing the applications they deem essential to business advancement without devoting time and staff resources to the complexities of the infrastructure configuration process. If at any time over the course of their usage they need to make changes in the terms of engagement and how resources are allocated, this, too, can be done on the Red5 Cloud dashboard with immediate results.
Red5 Pro
In contrast to utilizing the Red5 Cloud service, which Red5 operates in partnership with Oracle on the globe-spanning OCI, customers who choose to go the DevOps route with Red5 Pro can capitalize on the unique cross-cloud orchestration capabilities of XDN architecture by building their real-time streaming infrastructures on any combination of multiple public cloud platforms and private cloud resources.
Configuration of node instantiations for cross-cloud operations is supported by pre-integrations with numerous cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers, including AWS, Digital Ocean, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud, and through engagement with any of more than a dozen other IaaS providers whose facilities can be quickly tied into the XDN via the widely used Terraform multi-cloud toolset. In addition, the Red5 Stream Manager can be manually integrated to work with the APIs of any cloud provider that isn’t integrated with Terraform.
Attributes Benefitting All Red5 Customers
Red5 Cloud and Red5 Pro customers benefit in common from many other attributes of XDN architecture and the application development resources provided by Red 5. In all cases, within any given cloud domain, cluster-wide redundancy essential to fail-safe operations is enabled by the Stream Manager’s autoscaling mechanism through platform controllers designed to work with each cloud provider’s APIs.
With persistent performance monitoring of all engaged cloud IaaS providers, the Stream Manager can instantaneously shift processing from a malfunctioning node component to another appliance. The Stream Manager also executes the load balancing essential to persistent high performance across the entire infrastructure without manual intervention.
No matter what the use case might be, the XDN architecture maximizes versatility across multiple transport modes in both the ingest and distribution phases of platform operations.
At its core, XDN architecture relies on the real-time communications capabilities of the Real Time Transport Protocol (RTP), which underlies IP-based voice communications and is the foundation for both WebRTC (Real-Time Communications), originally developed for peer-to-peer video communications, and RTSP (Real-Time Streaming Protocol), a one-to-many video streaming alternative to HTTP widely used in IP camera outputs and for video transmissions to as well as from mobile devices.
Along with ingesting any content delivered via WebRTC or RTSP, the Red5 Pro XDN can ingest video formatted to all the other leading protocols used with video playout, including Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP), Secure Reliable Transport (SRT), Zixi Software-Defined Video Protocol (SVDP), MPEG Transport Protocol, and HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). On the transmission side, the XDN selects the transport options best suited to reaching devices on a per-session basis.
Red5 customers can also stipulate avoidance of reduced bandwidth impediments to persistent throughput through activation of multiple adaptive bitrate (ABR) profiles in real-time XDN transport. This can be done through ingestion of the streamed content in multiple profiles produced by an external transcoder or with reliance on Red5’s built-in transcoding capabilities at the Origin Node to generate the multiple versions dictated by the ABR profiles. Either way, the content is streamed in multiple bitrates to Edge Nodes, from which the content is streamed in profiles matched by node intelligence to each session in accord with client device characteristics and access bandwidth availability.
When it comes to implementing the applications they need, Red5 Cloud and Red5 Pro customers alike benefit from all the ready-to-deploy capabilities supported by Red5 partners as well as an expanding array of pre-formatted Red5 TrueTime toolsets, some of which were described in previous sections. Those tools are bundled with native iOS, macOS, Windows, Android, Linux, HTML5, Unity, and Unreal SDKs into solution subsets specific to applications targeted to various market segments, as described at length on the Red5 website.
CONCLUSION
Clearly, we’ve reached a moment of inflection in reliance on WebRTC wherever live video streaming is in play. Until recently, once a company found a supplier who could deliver real-time interactive video streaming support adequate to the needs at hand, the company’s development team had to find and integrate solutions supporting asset management, storage, encoding, packaging, content protection, and CDN backup that could be made to work with the chosen streaming platform.
That’s no longer the case. Surging multi-sector demand for real-time interactive video support can be satisfied end to end through the orchestration of solutions comprising the WebRTC streaming ecosystem created by Red5 and its many partners.
From now on, service and applications providers can take advantage of the unique cross-cloud multidirectional real-time streaming capabilities of the XDN platform without worrying about how to cobble together all the ancillary functions that go into creating viable use cases. Instead, they can capitalize on the developer-friendly Red5 environment to focus on implementing use-case innovations that will take them where they want to go.
To learn more about the Red5 WebRTC streaming ecosystem and what’s in store with the launch of Red5 Cloud, contact info@red5.net or schedule a call.