Video: Peer-Accelerated Delivery for Large-Scale OTT Optimization

蒂姆:欢迎回到流媒体东2017. 我是蒂姆·西格林, contributing editor on 流媒体 magazine and media strategy principal at Reel Solver, 公司. 今天，我们请到了埃里卡和流根. 艾丽卡，向观众介绍一下你自己.

艾丽卡:嗨. 我叫艾丽卡·比弗斯. I am heading marketing and partnership initiatives at Streamroot from our French office in Paris.

蒂姆:告诉我Streamroot到底是什么, because several people who I've known and trust have come up to me and said, “Streamroot做了一些有趣的事情.“你是做什么的??

Erica: Streamroot is a provider of OTT optimization services for large-scale OTT broadcasters both live and VOD. What we've developed over the past several years is a peer-accelerated delivery technology for large-scale OTT broadcasting. 由peer-accelerated, I mean that we have our core solution which is called Streamroot DNA for Distributed Network Architecture, creates a sort of mesh network so that we're not only sourcing video segments from the CDN but also from a network of viewers that are actually devices that are watching that content at the same time.

蒂姆:视频点播和直播?

埃里卡:没错，没错. Live streaming is a particularly interesting use case for us as everyone is tuning in at the same time and we see there're bigger and bigger traffic spikes that CDNs tend to have a harder and harder time to actually have that load, 而且很贵.

Tim: Given that fact and that's where say peer-to-peer would shine, 你要求cdn做什么不同的事情?

艾丽卡:基本上就是我们会问广播公司的问题 ... we have a couple of small configurations but we integrate seamlessly into the broadcaster workflow. We're integrated into the video player at the video player level, which is making the decision as to where to get the actual segments. But in terms of their CDN, we're totally CDN-agnostic, codec-agnostic, we work with their workflow. 我不想改变这一点.

蒂姆:你说你融入了玩家的层面. Does that mean that it requires an app or can the player be a browser-based player, as well?

Erica: We're integrated into many of the open source and proprietary HTML5 players so we're HLS.JS,短跑.JS, 我们整合了Brightcove, JW球员, Bitmovin, 外面有很多大人物, 我们已经有了一种即插即用的集成.

Tim: In the last five or six years, you had a number of companies trying to do peer-to-peer. 你有阿卡迈收购的Octoshape. You even had RTMFP which was what Adobe was trying to do as part of the flow protocol. 他们面临的问题是, 用企业说, you had to pierce the firewall with a unicast and then 本质上 once you're inside, “感染” ... 找不到更好的词了 ... 在点对点场景中. 你们是怎么处理这种事的?

埃里卡:回答你问题的第一部分, how we're different from some of these legacy peer-to-peer systems such as Octoshape: Streamroot is doing this entirely plugin-free. Today with HTML5 we don't necessarily want to have a plugin anymore, 跨平台的无缝用户体验, so we're doing this via the WebRTC protocol which is entirely plugin-free. 对于实际上在公司防火墙后面的用户, what Streamroot has done thus far is we're very much optimized for the big public-use cases. That's where we see a lot of the demand and a lot of those really big cost and quality challenges.

蒂姆:比如大型体育赛事之类的.

艾丽卡:没错. 然而, 我们也致力于企业流媒体市场, and in that case what we would have to generally do is just bring our matching intelligence within the actual company and the local area networks, 所以这也不是问题. The way of handling the two systems is quite different given the different network conditions.

蒂姆:因为你独特的销售地位, what are the things that you take back to a broadcaster in terms of cost of deployment, 投资回报, 最终节省带宽, 在较低的延迟中? 你如何处理这些不同的领域?

艾丽卡:, 在节省带宽方面, we're looking for a multi-bitrate use case with viewers all over the world. We're achieving anything from about 55 to 75% offload from the CDN. That, in terms of savings, translates to a large amount of savings of course. 我们也曾尝试过, 这对我们和广播公司来说都具有战略意义, 我们提出了一个固定定价模式. We think that obviously the CDN market has become very commoditized, and that per-gigabyte product pricing model is not necessarily conducive to price stability and predictability for broadcasters, so what we generally do is offer a flat fee that can be based on a maximum number of concurrent viewers or an average number of concurrent viewers. 它们可以播放4K视频, 他们可以在手机上流媒体, whatever amount of bandwidth they need to actually stream that content, 这很好.

Tim: The price is strictly by users as opposed to by bandwidth say, or resolution?

埃里卡:我们在这方面很灵活, so if a broadcaster absolutely wants something that is bandwidth-based, 我们可以这么做. But we generally find that the cost predictability offered by a flat fee is a lot better.

Tim: In a typical scenario with a 55 to 75% offload off of CDN versus your flat fee, 投资的回报是多少?

Erica: The 投资回报 is really immediate and it actually outpaces the savings on the bandwidth.

提姆:所以, 本质上, 你可以去电视台说, “以CDN成本卸载, 甚至算上我们的成本, 你还是可以在这上面省钱的.”

埃里卡:没错，没错.

蒂姆:这家公司成立多久了?

艾瑞卡:我们于2013年底在法国成立, 2015年，总部设在纽约.

Tim: Do you have VC from the US, or is it a privately funded company?

Erica: Yes, we have venture capital and a group of business angels as well from the US.

蒂姆:很好. Was that one of the reasons you moved to New York, or was it because everybody likes New York?

Erica: The biggest media market in the world is 在美国.

蒂姆:确定. 当然,是的.

Erica: We got a great initial traction in France and really said that we need to be at the heart of the industry in New York, 在美国.