As a viewer, have you ever watched a show and become frustrated after noticing that the words and the speaker’s lips didn’t match up? Or needed captions, but quickly realized that many were missing? As an operator, one of your primary goals is to make sure your viewers have the highest quality of experience possible. But how do you offer your viewers the pristine quality and seamless viewing experience they deserve? Ateme has the answer. CMAF ingest in the public cloud enables an optimal viewing experience.
Challenges of Media Transport for OTT
Traditionally, headend exchanges between encoders and packagers use transport streams, a format inherited from the broadcast world. Certain techniques exist to make media transport more reliable, notably in the cloud (i.e., SRT and RIST). However, these techniques are closely linked to broadcasting and are not the most efficient options for OTT.
When setting up multicast in the public cloud, you may run into multiple issues:
- Traditional MPEG-TS streams are not reliable enough;
- You experience packet loss, packet reordering, or out-of-sync transmission issues. All of these are inherent to the nature of the network in the public cloud;
- Because porting broadcast workflows to the public cloud is not straightforward, you might also struggle when it comes to setting up multicast capability in your cloud clusters.
These challenges result in a poor quality of service and experience for the viewer as they stream media from the public cloud.
You might also run into complications when troubleshooting your cloud environment that, in turn, affect the viewing experience. These can include continuity issues such as missing captions or video descriptions, incorrect or absent program guides, or incongruous lip syncing.
Transform OTT in the Public Cloud with CMAF Ingest
One way to mitigate the challenges when migrating to the public cloud is to transfer OTT streams in the public cloud with CMAF ingest. There are several advantages to this model:
- Because it is HTTP-based, it is cloud friendly. This simplifies the setup for cloud operators since you no longer need to manage multicast transmissions as you would with broadcast.
- Because it is TCP-based, it is more reliable, unlike broadcast UDP-based protocols.
- CMAF-ingest is a native OTT format, so end-to-end latency and workflow complexity are reduced.
- The CMAF-ingest format defines XML-based data, which is simpler to manage by the origin and packaging chain. This avoids potential issues when converting subtitles and captions, a common pitfall.
- CMAF ingest is designed to optimize redundancy and avoid service interruptions in all failover use cases.
Indeed, CMAF ingest was created to address OTT and cloud environments. It also solves many of the limitations that its MPEG-2 TS predecessor presents merely by design.
Ateme Offers a Solid CMAF-Ingest Solution
Thanks to Ateme’s complete end-to-end portfolio, including TITAN Live and NEA Live, we are able to support CMAF ingest, which is recommended by DASH-IF. Available on both the encoder output side and the packager input side, this ensures interoperability as well as an optimal user experience with your headend in the public cloud.
CMAF live ingest addresses several interoperability levels:
- Transport protocol (and how low-latency streaming can be preserved)
- Media and metadata format, such as subtitles and ad markers
- Synchronization
- Redundancy.
It details how a single packager can receive live streams from multiple encoders. And it offers a seamless user experience whenever one encoder fails.
As TITAN Live and NEA Live both implement CMAF ingest, they can be used with third-party equipment conforming to CMAF ingest. Of course, they are best used together in an end-to-end Ateme deployment including Ateme’s PILOT for supervision and analytics.
To mitigate challenges and make sure your viewers have an optimal user experience, head to the public cloud with CMAF ingest.
To learn more, get in touch with Ateme. We’d love to hear from you. And if you’re heading to Amsterdam for IBC 2023, set up a meeting. You can also pass by Hall 1, Booth D33, where we’ll be showcasing our innovative CMAF ingest solutions.