PDX VIDEO TECH 2025 #1

PDX Video Tech Members!
We have a great line-up of video tech talks. If you can make it in-person, reward yourself with pizza and a beverage. This event is both in-person and will (hopefully) be streaming live. Doors open at 6 PM!

Thanks a lot to our sponsors AWS Elemental and Paramount Global for supporting this event!

Talk #1 - 6:30pm
Speakers: Brian Rundle, Senior Software Engineer @ AWS Elemental and Sydney Lovely, Senior Software Development Manager @ AWS Elemental

AWS Elemental: Modernizing Cloud Connectivity for Ground Devices

AWS Elemental Media Services transport, process and deliver live and on-demand content in the cloud. Customer tell us that the hardest part of cloud workflows is often getting their live signals connected in the first place. While there are many decent transport protocols available (SRT, RIST, TR-07, etc), customers need to manually manage IP address and overcome networking obstacles like firewalls, network address translation and security groups. We have started an activity group with the Video Services Forum (VSF) to develop a technical recommendation and an open-source SDK providing device discovery, authentication and connection management that works with any transport protocol. We will demonstrate a prototype of this SDK and cloud service using a modern MQTT based approach with simple pair codes for connection management.

Talk #2 - 7:15pm
Speaker: Thierry Fautier, Managing Director, Your Media Transformation

Live sports streaming at scale

We observe a race to achieve the highest viewership numbers in the US sports market, with Netflix now competing for the top spot by reporting a peak viewership of 27 million (streaming+broadcast) during the NFL Christmas games Beyoncé Bowl half-time show. As we have no official number just for the concurrent streaming sessions on Netflix, we estimate the US streaming peak was at 25M sessions..

While the figures are impressive, in a unicast environment, they represent a substantial technological investment. This approach must also be scalable and capable of mitigating risks effectively.
We will begin by examining all the levers available to handle traffic peaks, including codec selection, congestion control mechanisms, and user access limitations.

Next, we will analyze the various strategies employed to scale sports events, such as:
• Traditional multi-public CDNs (used in the majority of deployments),
• Single private CDNs (e.g., Netflix Open Connect),
• Hybrid public/private CDN models (e.g., DAZN, Disney).

We will compare these approaches and attempt to envision a future where traffic demands increase tenfold.

Finally, we will explore alternative solutions, such as multicast ABR and P2P, and assess their current adoption levels.

About Thierry Fautier
Thierry Fautier is Managing Director of a new consulting firm, “You Media Transformation” that helps executives in the Media & Entertainment tech industry to address new markets or execute in a more efficient way in existing markets. Fautier comes with a unique blend of market & technology knowledge, as he drove more than $400M at Harmonic while writing more than 30 papers at international conferences. Your Media Transformation is addressing current industry challenges and opportunities such as but not limited to: streaming optimization, next generation codecs, FAST, CDN diversity, AI for media...
Fautier has been the founder-president of the Ultra HD Forum, a leading force in our industry that drove the growth of UHD for broadcasters, service providers and live OTT streamers.
In his previous role at Harmonic, Thierry Fautier drove major initiatives from a solution perspective: IPTV, OTT and UHD, he was also in charge of innovation and representing Harmonic in various standards and industry groups. Fautier was part of the team honored with the 2020 Technology and Engineering Emmy®️ Award for its pioneering work in AI optimization for real-time video compression. Recognized by TVB Europe as one of the top media professionals to watch in 2021, Fautier is also an influential LinkedIn blogger, amassing 1 million views over the past year.
Fautier has been in various DVB initiatives (UHD DASH, mABR, Targeted Advertisement) as chair of the CM and has presented at several DVB world conferences.

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Due to the network conditions still being unpredictable @ Lucky Lab, the event may or may not be streamed live on our YouTube channel. We will post there the recording for on-demand replay soon after, in any case.