Author Archives: Jens Loeffler

Jens Loeffler

About Jens Loeffler

Jens Loeffler is a senior technical evangelist on Adobe's Media Solutions product management team focusing on online video and services. Equipped with a media computer science degree, Jens started his career in the agency world and has been living and breathing online video and mobile for the last decade. Currently Jens provides thought leadership as a public speaker and panelist at numerous industry events, and maintains a well-recognized blog covering industry trends. When he isn't working on secret projects at Adobe, Jens compensates with long runs, hikes and walks with his furry companion, and is an excellent guide to judge the authenticity of German cuisine in NYC.

Adobe Primetime and the Single Publishing Workflow

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Today there are different video formats to target various platforms, which invariably lead to increased storage and delivery costs, redundant workflows, and reduced scale due to caching inefficiencies. Complex workflows boost operating costs, which can prevent reaching all potential users.

For example, if it’s required to deploy four DRMs, three streaming protocols, three ad insertion technologies to reach all devices and users, and the video playback itself on the devices is not consistent due to fragmentation, it can become too expensive to deploy and maintain. The compromise is to settle on a subset of devices, which will limit your reach.

Adobe Primetime, now generally available, is committed to helping programmers and distributors reach, monetize and activate audiences across screens. This is due to having a single publishing, protocol, DRM, CVAA-compliant closed captioning, and ad workflow to reach all users across all major devices.

To simplify delivery workflows, we are enhancing our protocol support with Adobe Primetime: 

  • Adobe Primetime Player will support HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), in addition to the existing HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) on the desktop
  • HLS will be available on all Adobe Primetime Player mobile platforms
  • Support of  MPEG-Dash in the future

All platforms and protocols support all Adobe Primetime Player features, including:

  • Seamless Ad Insertion
  • Digital rights management (DRM)
  • Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) compliant closed captioning
  • Enhanced video analytics

Desktops / Android

Desktops and Android devices will both include a full HLS (v4) video stack. It will specifically address the video playback fragmentation challenges on Android with its low-level integration, and provide high-quality video playback on all Android 2.3 and 4.x devices with the Adobe Primetime Player.

iOS

Adobe Primetime uses the native HLS video stack on iOS. Adobe Primetime DRM and Ad Insertion are fully compliant with Apple’s video guidelines.

Other

Future mobile and digital home support will offer all Adobe Primetime features, and can be targeted with a single publishing workflow.

We are very excited to help simplify the publishing workflow with Adobe Primetime, and provide the best possible reach and user experience for the next generation of online video content.

New Primetime Logo

Examining Robust HLS and HDS Video Playback with Adobe Media Server 5

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Adobe Media Server 5, a core component of Adobe’s Project Primetime, helps premium content publishers deliver HD quality video across platforms, including iOS and Android devices, to the largest possible audience with a streamlined workflow. We’re revolutionizing media delivery with support for consistent, protected streaming across any Internet-connect device — tablets, smartphones, connected TVs, and desktops.

With our video solutions like Adobe Media Server 5, we’re focused on enabling an optimal online video playback experience where the consumer gets what they want – when and how they want it. Related to this topic, we’ve published a technical article for video content publishers around HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) and HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). The article examines today’s video playback architecture and server-side challenges, including back-end redundancy issues such as live-ness, where a packager advertises a stale view of live, and dropout, where a packager has gaps in its fragment list. We also provide users with a step-by-step guide to writing a basic varnish configuration script to configure a Varnish proxy for the failover solution. (Varnish Cache is a web application accelerator, occasionally referred to as a HTTP accelerator or a reverse HTTP proxy, that will significantly enhance your web performance).

Check out the article and let us know what you think!

AMS

What is Adobe Project Primetime? with David DeVisser

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Please join AMSUG’s guest speaker, David DeVisser, as he teaches us about the components, products, and services behind Adobe’s Project Primetime. DeVisser will deconstruct customer integrations, such as, the BBC’s Olympic 2012 coverage. Come discover how Adobe Media Server 5 enables Project Primetime’s broadcast workflow and delivers to desktops, devices, and digital home.

Our speaker will also cover Media Server and Access product naming updates, and what they mean for Adobe’s strategy. DeVisser will compare Adobe Media Server’s built-in content protection versus Adobe Access. In closing, this session will explain Adobe’s latest runtime strategy related device support and the plans for the continued success of digital media delivery. David will answer member questions during the live Q&A session – this meeting is not to be missed!

Title: What is Adobe Project Primetime? with David DeVisser

Date and Time: October 16, 2012 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (GMT-7 Mountain Time US & Canada)

Call-in Details: Please join meeting via Adobe Connect link here

Speakers:

David DeVisser,Principal Architect, Adobe Digital Media Alliances

David DeVisser has been with Adobe since 1998. DeVisser remembers the event that marked the next phase of digital video delivery – the day John Gay came into the office and announced his latest invention, Flash Communications Server. Digital video delivery has come a long way since then, and our speaker has been there every step of the way! Currently, David’s focus is on systems architecture for Adobe’s major media partners. He is responsible for ensuring the success of applications and websites produced by the large companies that are driven with Adobe’s technology. DeVisser enjoys the challange of managing each of his project’s unique needs with his expertise in the areas of: encoding, packaging, distribution, protection, entitlement, content management, and experience design. Please join in on October 16th for some great insignt from industry specialist, David DeVisser!

If you want to do some preparation work before the session, read more about Primetime on Adobe.com.

Rover Curiosity Streams Live from Planet Mars with Adobe Media Server and AWS

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Even though based on Star Trek, warp drive to enable interplanetary exploration won’t be invented until 2063, mankind is slowly continuing to explore at least its nearby planetary system, thanks to the smart engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

The historic landing of Mars rover Curiosity attracted a significant audience, which JPL streamed to hundred thousands of concurrent viewers with Adobe Media Server and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

NASA/JPL’s live video streaming architecture was developed on a combination of Adobe Flash Media Server, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances running the popular nginx caching tier, Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon Route 53 for DNS management, and Amazon CloudFront for content delivery. [via Amazon Case Study]

Below is the impressive architecture from Amazon’s Case Study (which also unveils that Rover Curiosity is actually not running an Adobe Media Server origin, but Amazon ingests Nasa TV’s feed on earth).

It’s a great showcase how technology in space and on earth can work together to let humanity participate in a historic moment.

Learn more about Adobe Media Server, Adobe Media Server 5 on Amazon Web Services, and the Amazon Case Study. Watch the live stream on NASA TV.

And if you are actually interested in Mars, don’t miss this 360 panorama of Mars.

This is the latest panorama released by NASA July 2012. It was assembled from 817 images taken between Dec. 21, 2011, and May 8, 2012, while Opportunity was stationed on an outcrop informally named ‘Greeley Haven’. on a segment of the rim of ancient Endeavour Crater. [via Paroramas.sk]

Simply amazing.

(Featured image and panorama credit NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The Impact of the Flash Player Unpublish Announcement on Android Video Delivery

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As announced last fall, although Flash Player for the Android mobile browser will not receive any further version updates, it remained available in the Google Play Store. This week we announced Flash Player for the mobile browser will be unpublished from the Google Play Store.

Does this mean Adobe is not committed to video on mobile devices? Absolutely not. We continue to innovate and solve mobile video fragmentation challenges. Specifically, on Android, we solve this with Adobe AIR, with high-end video features such as Adobe Access DRM, and frequent new releases with new video features. In addition, we introduced “Project Primetime”, focusing on solving video fragmentation and monetization challenges across desktop, mobile and digital home.

We made the decision to discontinue support for Android mobile browser because of two reasons: 1) Premium experiences on mobile devices are typically being delivered through apps and 2) Mobile websites mostly rely on HTML5 based video delivery.

What does the mean for you if you use Flash Player on Android for mobile browser video delivery? First, existing users can continue use as is. Android market unpublish does not mean Flash Player will be uninstalled from devices. Devices with Flash Player already installed will continue to receive security updates. Second, you should develop a migration plan. New users will not be able to download Flash Player and install to their mobile browser.

Adobe’s solution for video delivery to mobile devices is centered on enabling apps. As an immediate future-proof migration path, Adobe AIR provides the same advanced Flash based video features, which means no changes to your content protection or video delivery infrastructure. AIR enables advanced video features for playback on Android 2.2+ devices, including Adobe Access DRM, live support, and adaptive streaming. Adobe is fully committed to further develop and support Adobe AIR on Android. Adobe AIR does not rely on the in-browser Flash Player and is not impacted by the unpublish change.  Popular AIR video application examples include WatchESPN, iTV, and Snagfilms.

To learn more about Adobe AIR based video delivery, read the Adobe AIR mobile video delivery guide.

(Portions of this page are reproduced from work created and shared by Google and used according to terms described in the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License.)

Adobe Media Server 5 Professional and Adobe Access 4 Now Available

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In May, Adobe introduced Adobe Media Server 5 and Adobe Access 4, along with Primetime Simulcast. Today, we’ve made Adobe Media Server 5 Professional available through Adobe, selected resellers, and Amazon Web Services. This initial release, when combined with Adobe Access 4, allows media companies to stream protected, studio-grade content using a single digital rights management (DRM) workflow across desktops, connected TVs, tablets and smartphones, including iOS and Android devices. Adobe Media Server 5 offers expanded streaming protocol support for publishers to reach the broadest possible audience via HLS, HDS and RTMP. In addition, Adobe committed to supporting MPEG DASH in the future.

Dynamic and offline preparation of premium video content to be streamed using HTTP and protected with Adobe Access helps simplify workflows and lower storage costs for secure delivery of video to multiple screens. Also available today, the Adobe Access library for Apple iOS allows premium video developers to build the same trusted Adobe DRM capability they use for their desktop apps directly into their apps for distribution on Apple’s App Store.

Adobe Media Server 5 Professional is initially available on Linux with the remainder of the Adobe Media Server product family and supported platforms expected to ship this fall. See more information about Adobe’s premium video offerings. Download Adobe Media Server and Adobe Access tools.

Flash Media Server 4.5.2 Released with Robust HTTP Streaming Failover

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Version 4.5.2 of Flash Media Server is now available. Besides numerous bug fixes, it includes a major improvement – robust HDS/HLS failover for origins.

It’s not simply a “good-to-have”, but a “must-have” feature for reliable HTTP streaming deployments. The key issues it addresses are liveness and dropout situations.

Liveness is a server-side situation in which a packager advertises a stale bootstrap (that is, a stale view of a live stream).

Dropout is a server-side situation in which a packager has gaps in its bootstrap (that is, gaps in its fragment list).

Flash Media Server 4.5.2 introduces the following new features to address this:

Best-effort fetch

Best-effort fetch enables the OSMF and iOS video players to continue playback as normally as possible in the presence of short-term liveness and dropout problems on the server-side.

The OSMF 2.0 player adds client-side robustness by supporting best-effort fetch. Specifically, when best-effort fetch is enabled on the server, OSMF 2.0 attempts fetches for fragments that have not been advertised in the bootstrap, but are expected to be present.

For iOS Video players, FMS 4.5.2 enables best-effort fetch for HLS as well.

Control plane application

To implement HTTP Streaming failover, it’s now possible to write a client application that manages the state of events and streams by using a set of REST-based control plane APIs. Control plane is a router term and in effect, that is what your client application does through these APIs.

You can find more detailed information in the FMS failover documentation.

HTTP failover is an absolutely critical improvement for more reliable workflows, therefore Flash Media Server 4.5.2 is an exciting new release for everyone with HTTP streaming deployments.

Download the Flash Media Server 4.5.2 upgrade.

Adobe Video Solutions Team at NAB

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The video solutions team is excited to be in Las Vegas for the NAB event from April 16th to the 19th.

We’ve made some significant efforts to reduce fragmentation and provide customers the best tools for publishing, protecting and monetizing online video to multi-screen devices. At this year’s NAB, we’ll be particularly emphasizing our recent Project Primetime announcement, which focuses on helping content creators get their premium video online, with seamless ad insertion and analytics.  Additionally we’ll be showing protected HLS and HDS HTTP streaming to the iPad and Galaxy Tab.

Come visit our booth to say hello, ask questions, and see our amazing streaming products and demos including speak peeks into our recent CS6 Production Premium announcement.

Adobe Access – A Single DRM Workflow

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We recently announced the upcoming availability of Adobe Access (formerly Flash Access) DRM protection for native iOS applications. So what does this mean for your workflow?

You can now finally reach a broad range of destination devices with a single, simple workflow, including Windows, OSX, iPad, iPhones, iPods, hundreds of Android smartphones and tablets (Android 2.2+), and televisions, including Samsung Smart TVs, TIVO and LG devices, and soon many more as part of project Primetime.

It not only saves you costs, but also provides a simple, robust DRM workflow, with a single content protection scheme.

Not convinced how this will work? Here are the steps.

1)   Real-Time packaging and protection of H.264 source files with Adobe Media Server

2)   HTTP delivery to target platforms (HLS to iOS, HDS to other devices)

3)   License acquisition from a single Adobe Access server, no matter what the playback platform is

As part of Project Primetime, Adobe is focused on solving the fragmentation challenges video distributors are confronted with in 2012. This is the first step to provide a secure end-to-end video delivery workflow

Project Primetime to Enable a Single Video Publishing Workflow, Starting with Adobe Access for iOS and MPEG-Dash Support

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As part of the quickly evolving device landscape, a unified video publishing workflow is more important than ever. Individual workflows for specific devices or platforms are not a long-term approach. It’s like having to build a different car, depending on the city you want to travel to. It’s expensive and distracts from the important part of your video application, the user experience.

As part of Project Primetime, we are continuing to invest in our own technology and industry standards that enable our video customers to have a single workflow that enables them to reach any web-enabled devices.

What does this mean for you? Instead of having to worry about using different content protection, video delivery or video publishing workflows, Project Primetime will provide a holistic solution, which will make your video strategy uniquely easy to deploy, protect and monetize.

We’re making two announcements today that will bring the industry towards a single video publishing workflow:

Adobe Access for native iOS applications

Adobe Access, our robust Digital Rights Management technology, will support native iOS applications.  With Adobe Access’ existing support for desktop (99% reach via Flash Player), Android (via AIR 3.0) and Smart TVs (via AIR for TV 2.5), video publishers can now reach a huge digital audience with a single content protection solution.

Here’s how it works: Adobe provides an Adobe Access DRM library that can be integrated into your native iOS application.  You build your experience using the Apple SDK, add the Adobe Access library as a component, and deliver through the Apple App Store. The Adobe Access DRM library provides all the necessary robustness. The video content is streamed using Apple’s HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) protocol, and Adobe Access provides the content protection required by studios.

MPEG-DASH support

We are announcing that our streaming technologies will support the emerging standard MPEG-DASH. It will provide the reach and flexibility required for a unified video workflow. It will not replace, but provide additional reach to existing Adobe streaming protocols. You can read more about our announcement here.

We are very excited about these announcements, which are first steps to provide a unified video publishing workflow that will offer the best reach, protection and monetization for video content.