7 min read
Watermarking, in a nutshell (or: how Unified Streaming helps you fight pirates)

Video piracy’s a big, tricky thing for content creators, streaming platforms, and studios. Annually, the cost of imposters passing programming off as theirs can soar into the billions of dollars.

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
streaming tech: a bird's-eye view — 6 min read
IMAX Enhanced: a bird’s‑eye view on the standard

Immersive home entertainment tech: what’s not to love? You flop down on your sofa, fire up your device, and as the content plays, all sorts of good feelings …

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
4 min read
MPEG‑H: a bird’s‑eye view on the codec

At some point, everyone goes on a quest. And just like there’s all sorts of people, there’s all sorts of quests. Some people go on a quest to find love. Ot…

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
5 min read
What’s CMAF ingest? Why’s it streaming’s secret sauce?

What’s CMAF ingest? CMAF ingest is a collaboration between members of the DASH Industry Forum (DASH-IF) and companies operating within the OTT industry. Es…

Jamie Fletcher
Jamie Fletcher Senior Streaming Solutions Engineer
Ksenia Rabinovich
Ksenia Rabinovich Product Marketing Manager
Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
6 min read
Mulling over MPEG 147 with Mohamad Raad

To misquote Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, It was the 147th of times, it was the 45th of times.”In mid-July 2024, in Sapporo, Japan, MPEG — an allian…

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
streaming tech: a bird's-eye view — 6 min read
DTS: a bird’s‑eye view on the codec

There are gobs of content out there. Even on a good day it’s hard to tell the difference between one gob of content and another gob. So how do you set y…

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
streaming tech: a bird's-eye view — 4 min read
Dolby Vision: a bird’s‑eye view on the format

In streaming, there’s a simple relationship between quality and satisfaction. If the streaming quality is good, users are happy and don’t complain. But if …

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
streaming tech: a bird's-eye view — 5 min read
AV1: a bird’s-eye view on the codec

Guess what is no surprise? That the demand for high-quality video experiences keeps spiking. Streaming platforms that want to meet this demand firs…

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
3 min read
Benefits of Unified Virtual Channel: customers’ and partners’ insights

Unified Virtual Channel debuted in Unified Streaming’s product portfolio in early 2023. Since then the company has enriched the product, adding more features…

Ksenia Rabinovich
Ksenia Rabinovich Product Marketing Manager
Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
5 min read
Virtual channels: common use cases, uncommon value

As NAB Show 2024 nears (we’ll be there, booth W3220), we notice that FAST channels are living it up. They’re getting front rows at trade shows. They’re…

Ksenia Rabinovich
Ksenia Rabinovich Product Marketing Manager
Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
6 min read
The tale of the telco and the skips; or, how playing a niche role helps our customers

Recently a major telco, a client we’ve worked with for years, brought a problem to our attention. During most of their programs they noticed frames were bein…

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
5 min read
Into the sync tank; or, Do all your media swim in the same direction?

The other day, a peer in the streaming community reached out via our Unified Certified Slack channel (our forum for exchanging advice with our software cours…

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
7 min read
End of life (self-deprecating)

If you’ve ever played the video game Grand Theft Auto, you’ve felt it. The thrill! Crashing your car, robbing people, and doing much worse. De…

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
customer support question of the month — 5 min read
Wanted: troubleshooters on the streaming frontier

Issues pop up outta nowhere. They try to corner you. They try to kill your streaming workflow. Never fear, streaming engineer.

Mark Perry
Mark Perry Streaming Support Engineer
bit of a bev w/ a video dev — 7 min read
Mark Ogle, lead developer of Unified Virtual Channel

Recently I sat at a café with my colleague Mark Ogle, senior streaming solutions engineer at Unified Streaming (and someone far smarter than I). Unified Vir…

Mark Ogle
Mark Ogle Senior Streaming Solutions Engineer
Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
5 min read
5 ways to launch channels fast

Do you know the phrase cut to the chase”? It comes from early Hollywood. Movie execs said it, meaning, Let’s skip extra dialogue and go straight to the action.

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
Ksenia Rabinovich
Ksenia Rabinovich Product Marketing Manager
customer support question of the month — 4 min read
When 3‑letter language codes become 2; or, ISO frustrated

Size. In tech, we deal with it daily. We’re growing our profits. The meeting’s going longer than expected. The client wants a short turnaround. Video streaming devs can relate. In particular, the size of language codes has been flummoxing some of you recently.

Mark Perry
Mark Perry Streaming Support Engineer
8 min read
Go FAST, get personal, aim high, be unique, look back: 5 new ways to monetize content

Let’s say you’re a content creator, a content owner, a broadcaster, or an OTT streaming service. You’ve got some programming that’s not pulling its weight. …

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
Ksenia Rabinovich
Ksenia Rabinovich Product Marketing Manager
5 min read
If you’ve got it, flaunt it: 5 ways repurposing content is king

Now that you’ve got content, you want to stream it.But what else? Put in ads? Charge more for better quality? Create deeply personalized experiences? How abo…

Ksenia Rabinovich
Ksenia Rabinovich Product Marketing Manager
Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
customer support question of the month — 4 min read
Webserver? I hardly even know her!

We live in an extraordinary age. Even our grandparents are on TikTok! Social media platforms make it all so easy. But if you want to set up your own stream…

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
customer support question of the month — 6 min read
I’m not offset, *you’re* offset

Where I come from, we have a phrase that I didn’t think was odd or absolutely horrific until I began writing this blog. There are many ways to skin a cat.”…

Mark Perry
Mark Perry Streaming Support Engineer
8 min read
What does Streaming meets linear TV” actually mean?

A comparison between traditional broadcast TV and streaming linear TV workflows

Linzi McRae
Linzi McRae Product Manager
Mark Ogle
Mark Ogle Senior Streaming Solutions Engineer
customer support question of the month — 4 min read
So long, audio

We are aligned.” So many people, so many things in this world need to align with others to work well. These things include audio tracks. With your video tracks. Oh, and your text tracks, too.

Mark Perry
Mark Perry Streaming Support Engineer
3 min read
Frighteningly FAST — any place, any time — with Quickplay and Unified Streaming

Everyone’s talking about FAST channels.”That’s not quite true. Everyone who knows what FAST channels are, and either profits from them already, or plans to…

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
customer support question of the month — 3 min read
Herd that

What’s that sound? Have you just started streaming that highly anticipated live sports match for the big streaming service you work for? Has that m…

Roberto Ramos Chávez
Roberto Ramos Chávez Research Engineer
Mark Perry
Mark Perry Streaming Support Engineer
customer support question of the month — 3 min read
Better come ARMed

This month’s question, which we’ve been getting a lot, is: How do I run a containerized setup of your software on my new Apple Silicon-based Mac? Well, firs…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
Mark Perry
Mark Perry Streaming Support Engineer
5 min read
Misunderstanding tech, ep. 2: Regression test

Our company uses Slack. I’m an active member of about 5 channels, where I post comments, replies, and emojis. My comments and replies are either jokes or att…

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
6 min read
Misunderstanding tech, ep. 1: Hyrum’s Law

The term Hyrum’s Law” was brought up in a tech standup meeting the other day. I think a developer said some customer had jerry-rigged our source code for so…

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
7 min read
Cutting costs while streaming FAST: ad-supported live channels without a live encoder

I’d like to discuss free ad-supported TV, or FAST: how it can keep your streaming service more relevant, and how to run FAST without breaking the bank. Which I…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
10 min read
Beyond best-of-breed v. beast-of-breed: why an abstraction layer frees you up

Children are often praised for playing well with others.” That same quality prized in kids can pay off for OTT (over-the-top) video streaming companies. No…

Hans Holsen
Hans Holsen Content and Marketing
8 min read
Manifest Edit: How it started, and where it’s going

This blog’s about the history and mystery of Manifest Edit: how it started; how user feedback helped to improve it; and how it’s evolving. What is Manifest …

Linzi McRae
Linzi McRae Product Manager
11 min read
How to do certification programs; or How Unified Certified works

Certification programs not only help trainees develop workforce-ready skills. They can also help companies that lead the programs foster relationships with c…

Hüseyin Eriş
Hüseyin Eriş Streaming Solutions Engineer
6 min read
How to create a virtual channel with our Remix VOD2Live demo

Today I’m going to demonstrate how easy it is to create new virtual live linear channels using Remix VOD2Live by repurposing existing content prepared for Vide…

Mark Ogle
Mark Ogle Senior Streaming Solutions Engineer
4 min read
Introducing a new style of downloadable demos

Over the past year we have been working on making it easier for us to demonstrate our product features and for users to get started using them. This began with…

Mark Ogle
Mark Ogle Senior Streaming Solutions Engineer
20 min read
Load testing streaming video at scale — Part 3: Optimizing streaming linear Live channels

In this third blog of our multi-part series on load testing video streaming at scale, we evaluate different Media Processing Functions (MPFs) in different part…

Unified Streaming Team
12 min read
Load testing streaming video at scale — Part 2: Optimizing remote object storage-based VOD

In this second blog of our multi-part series on load testing video streaming at scale, we evaluate different Video On Demand (VOD) setups that rely on rem…

Unified Streaming Team
12 min read
Load testing streaming video at scale — Part 1: Introducing the testbed and cloud instance evaluation

The cloud has become a pillar for the deployment of many streaming video services, which often run different functions in different parts of the network. Consi…

Unified Streaming Team
14 min read
Talkin’ bout my demonstration: Continuous deployment of demos using Jenkins, Docker and Kubernetes

As part of the launch of our Remix VOD2Live solution we created a demo to show how it can schedule a playlist of VOD assets and deliver it as a linear live str…

Unified Streaming Team
11 min read
Look mom, no Live encoder: the advantages of VOD2Live

The Unified Streaming Platform now supports Remix VOD2Live, a new way of creating a linear live channel from VOD assets without the need for a live encoder. To…

Unified Streaming Team
5 min read
Improving Unified Origin’s performance with cloud storage using Apache subrequests

As streaming service providers move to replace local storage solutions with cloud storage services, Unified Streaming is increasingly asked for …

Unified Streaming Team
8 min read
Learn2Adapt: low-latency adaptive streaming

This blog post presents an online (machine) learning bitrate adaptation solution, that focuses on low-latency applications. What makes streaming adaptive? …

Unified Streaming Team
6 min read
Live Media Ingest (CMAF)

How the DASH-IF Live Media Ingest Protocol — Interface 1 using the CMAF file format can be utilised when ingesting media to a smart origin (just in t…

Jamie Fletcher
Jamie Fletcher Senior Streaming Solutions Engineer
13 min read
How to achieve low latency with what you’ve got

Channel zapping, sub-second, glass to glass, parity. What are we talking about? The confusing world of low latency. With multiple definitions, standards and so…

Mark Perry
Mark Perry Streaming Support Engineer
9 min read
Efficient, scalable and reliable Personalized Video Recording with Unified Remix nPVR

The average person now has access to more streamable material than they could wish to watch in a lifetime. This means viewer capriciousness is increasing along…

Mark Perry
Mark Perry Streaming Support Engineer
6 min read
CMAF conformance: Is this really CMAF?

This past summer marked the third anniversary of the announcement of CMAF, the Common Media Application Format developed to increase the interoperability of st…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
8 min read
Monetize any VOD library with third-party ad insertion using Remix AVOD

Server-side Dynamic Ad Insertion for VOD is hard and expensive, right? You’ll have to re-encode your entire content library, find a way to add the SCTE 35 mark…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
21 min read
In the cloud #1: How to deploy a redundant VOD setup on AWS with Unified Origin

Deploying a setup in the cloud can vastly enhance your flexibility. Without the need to actually own any servers you can quickly spin up instances, so that you…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
10 min read
How to do SCTE 35-based Dynamic Ad Insertion for Live streaming with Unified Origin

With the latest release of the Unified Streaming Platform, it becomes possible to do Dynamic Ad Insertion for Live. This new solution is based on industry prac…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
8 min read
Content protection in the age of 4K and HDR: using hardware DRM with multiple keys

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a crucial component of many video streaming setups. If you run a commercial video streaming service, the technology to restr…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
7 min read
Why we chose CPIX to take advanced content protection to the next level

Content protection is one of the most important topics in video streaming and as it becomes more advanced and harder to circumvent, it also becomes more compli…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
4 min read
Advanced Live streaming and the need to further standardize Live ingest’

Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR) Live streaming is a demanding way of delivering video. In addition to the need for real-time encoding of the source video into tracks t…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
9 min read
Broaden your audience: accessibility features in video streaming

As the video streaming market has matured over the past years, quality of experience has improved a lot: consumers can choose from a wider variety of content o…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
10 min read
How to make your media streams smarter using timed metadata

Signaling information about media content, what’s so fancy about that? Metadata may seem like the most boring part of a video streaming setup, but it is vital …

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
7 min read
Looking back: hot topics at IBC 2017

As the 2017 edition of one of the biggest trade shows in the broadcasting business has just finished, this blog post provides an overview of interesting topics…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
15 min read
Welcome to the jungle: caption and subtitle formats in video streaming

As the latest release of the Unified Streaming Platform adds full WebVTT support for offline and dynamic packaging, all major delivery formats for text tracks …

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
9 min read
The many advantages of dynamic packaging over static content

No large scale video streaming setup can be successful without supporting multiple playout formats. Such is the law dictated by the wide variety of end user de…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
3 min read
Encrypted streams? Serve them via HTTPS or Chrome 58 won’t play them

From April 25th onwards, when Chrome 58 is scheduled for release, DRM encrypted video streams served from a non-secure origin will no longer work in Google’s b…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
11 min read
Stop numbering: The underappreciated power of DASH’s SegmentTimeline

Old habits die hard. This is true even for a fast-moving, technology-driven industry like video streaming. Ever since the introduction of Apple’s HLS specifica…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
10 min read
How containers make Unified Remix easy to customize and quick to deploy

While streaming media is rapidly becoming the dominant way in which video is consumed, current technology only offers limited flexibility when it comes to maki…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
13 min read
Scaling video streaming: Live versus VOD

More and more video is streamed over the internet every day. To be able to target a big audience, while still keeping control over the way in which you deliver…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
8 min read
The promises of CMAF and its compatibility with the Unified Streaming Platform

In June of 2016, the committee draft of the Common Media Application Format (CMAF) specification was released, bringing the promise of a single format for use …

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
9 min read
5G Superfluidity and the future of streaming video

The next generation mobile network, sometimes referred to as 5G, targets extremely ambitious key performance indicators (KPIs) such as sub-millisecond latency,…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
11 min read
A superfluid 5G mobile network architecture

Video streaming on the Internet is an increasingly popular application that poses challenging bandwidth requirements, especially in mobile networks and when th…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer
6 min read
New in HTTP Live Streaming (HLS): Common Media Application Format

Video streaming over the Internet is becoming an increasingly popular and important service to provide. It is a convenient way for content owners and distribut…

Boy van Dijk
Boy van Dijk Streaming Solutions Engineer