Expertise
Breaking Barriers in Next-Gen Streaming: Fred Dawson on GPAC UltraMedia
Breaking Barriers in Next-Gen Streaming: Fred Dawson on GPAC UltraMedia In a recent interview, Fred Dawson, an industry journalist and principal at Dawson Communications, sat down with industry expert Jan Ozer, to discuss his latest white paper, "GPAC UltraMedia Technology Breaks Barriers to Next-Gen Video Streaming." Authored by Dawson, the...
The Business Case for GPAC UltraMedia: A New White Paper from Motion Spell
The Business Case for GPAC UltraMedia: A New White Paper from Motion Spell Motion Spell is proud to announce the release of its first-ever white paper, which, for the first time, focuses on the business case for GPAC. On the 21st anniversary of this groundbreaking open-source project, GPAC - renowned...
Introducing the GPAC WebAssembly (WASM) Platform - Elevating Multimedia Streaming
Introducing the GPAC WebAssembly (WASM) Platform: Elevating Multimedia Streaming Are you ready to transform your multimedia streaming experience and learn more about GPAC? Following our insightful comparisons of open source packaging tools, we are excited to introduce the GPAC WebAssembly (WASM) Platform. At Motion Spell, our dedication to advancing streaming...
Is GPAC a Better Open Source Choice Than Bento4 and Shaka Packager?
Is GPAC a Better Open Source Choice Than Bento4 and Shaka Packager? Curious about the different open source video packaging tools that are out there? At Motion Spell, we’re passionate about innovation and efficiency in the streaming media space. That's why we've worked with GPAC to put together an insightful...
Streaming at the Crossroads - Abundance, Innovation and the Quest for Engagement
Streaming at the Crossroads: Abundance, Innovation and the Quest for Engagement In an era where digital content is more abundant than ever, streaming platforms find themselves in a precarious balancing act. As they vie for the attention of an increasingly fragmented audience, the question of content lifetime has never been...
Empowering Streaming Innovation: The Role of Open Source in Shaping the Future of Media
Empowering Streaming Innovation: The Role of Open Source in Shaping the Future of Media Without a doubt, the streaming media industry is flourishing. The global video streaming market was valued at USD 455.45 billion in 2022 according to Fortune Business Insights, and is projected to grow from 554.33 billion in...
Streamlining Success in Video Streaming - Making Informed Open-Source, Build or Buy Decisions
Streamlining Success in Video Streaming: Making Informed Open-Source, Build or Buy Decisions In the streaming industry, businesses encounter a plethora of technological challenges and opportunities, as well as a large array of vendors who can help with various solutions. A key decision that companies frequently face is choosing between open-source...
Unlocking Cloud Streaming's Full Potential: GPAC's ROI and Customization Power
Unlocking Cloud Streaming's Full Potential: GPAC's ROI and Customization Power What are the challenges when building your own live-streaming cloud? Cloud services are convenient, but once you scale, you may realize that you're paying too much and you are not as flexible as you'd like to be. In this article,...
The Role of Open-Source in Sustainability
The Role of Open-Source in Sustainability Introduction I was invited to speak at the Media Meet & Greet Connect 365 event on June 13, 2023, along with Simon Cardon from GreenWeb. The session was about software’s role in sustainability. I was invited because of my contributions to open-source software (OSS)....
The NAB Show 2023 report
The NAB Show 2023 report Introduction It's been a busy NAB. Our CEO Romain Bouqueau was there. He could find time to visit the show. Here are his findings! Globally this NAB was a pleasant experience. The organization was flawless. Conferences added value even though -toward the end of the...
HLS posts updated to RFC8216-bis (revision 12)
HLS posts updated until revision 12 of RFC8216-bis Dear readers, We have updated our blog posts on HLS until draft revision 12 of the new RFC8216 "bis" draft: Apple HLS: introduction Apple HLS: comparing versions Apple HLS: technical in-depth The HLS specification itself is better structured. These documents are only...
The era of fakery
The era of fakery Our alternative thoughts on the Metaverse have triggered an interesting internal discussion: if text is mightier than the metaverse and if we are flooded with fake news, will the metaverse be a universe of fakery? In fact the emergence of AI has already dived us into...
Thriving open-source ecosystems: the DVB OSMART workshop
Thriving open-source ecosystems: the DVB OSMART workshop Last month our CEO (and open-source developer) Romain Bouqueau gave a presentation about open-source in the streaming media industry. This was part of the DVB-OSMART workshop. The workshop was focused on describing some important projects launched by some important organizations (5G-MAG, DVB, DASH-IF,...
GPAC is the fastest CBCS encryptor (Mile High Video 2022)
GPAC is the fastest CBCS encryptor Introduction Our industry faces several challenges: extending from video to attention time (video games, ...), following users' ever-changing habits that escapes the traditional business (TikTok, Social Media ...), being greener. This implies more flexible and efficient workflows. In an effort to use less resources...
An unexpected source of latency (part 2)
An unexpected source of latency (part 2) Part 1 is here. CPB Removal Delay What we see here is that the moment at which we *display* a picture doesn't necessarily correspond to the moment at which we *finish receiving* a picture. There's a variable delay between these two moments, depending...
An unexpected source of latency (part 1)
An unexpected source of latency (part 1) Introduction In digital video streaming, there's a source of latency which is rather subtle, although it's most often a major one. It's related to the way video compression works, and it cannot be mitigated by costly equipment. The setup Let's suppose a perfect...
After 10 years of existence, GPAC Licensing falls under Motion Spell’s umbrella
After 10 years of existence, GPAC Licensing falls under Motion Spell’s umbrella Hi, my name is Romain Bouqueau. I am the founder and CEO of Motion Spell, the company behind GPAC Licensing. As we have new exciting projects reaching the market soon, I thought now is the right time to...
The metaverse - alternative thoughts
The metaverse - alternative thoughts The metaverse is a 2x innovation with a 1000x cost. It will take time to take off - if it ever does. Introduction Everyone seems to have an opinion on the Metaverse since Mark Zuckerberg expressed himself during the summer 2021. I like reading opinions...
On decisions (update)
On decisions - update The blog article was updated following to your feedback on social networks. Enjoy!
On decisions
On decisions Updated on 2021/10/04: added references to better articles thanks to your feedbacks :) About efficiency There is one subject that seems to preoccupy tech workers around the world: how to be more efficient? Depending on your position (technician, engineer, sales, manager, CxO, ...) you may have a different...
The outstanding potential of multicast ABR
The outstanding potential of multicast ABR One of the most interesting subject over the last 10 years has been hybridation of services. This hybridation is supported by several factors. The most important for us is the transport. Hybrid transport is often a combination of unicast and multicast (not always but...
Happy New Year 2021
Happy New Year 2021 2020 was a busy year for our industry, for the GPAC open-source project, and for the Motion Spell team. 2021 seems to start at the same pace. To you, dear reader, and all your beloved ones, we wish you a happy new year 2021!
Motion Spell recognized as a Key Innovator by the EU
Motion Spell recognized as a Key Innovator by the EU Motion Spell, the company behind GPAC Licensing, was awarded EU Innovation Radar recognition for our work on the Immersive Accessibility. Other Key Innovators are i2CAT from Spain and IRT from Germany. https://www.innoradar.eu/innovation/32590 This follows the publication of our white paper...
Bringing external views to a team makes it richer
Bringing external views to a team makes it richer The Paradox Over the years we’ve had some paradoxical successes. Companies often look too much internally. Of course companies prefer to solve their issues internally. Bringing external people may bring confidentiality issues. Bringing external people may expose teams to things they...
Recommendations for Immersive Accessibility Services
Recommendations for Immersive Accessibility Services We are proud to publish a free white paper on accessibility services immersive media (360 video, VR/AR/XR). Most of this work was done within the ImAc consortium we joined more than two years ago. There is still so much to be done with regards to...
The secret about hidden software costs
The secret about hidden software costs An essay on how to keep your development projects under control Introduction I'd like to share a secret with you: there is nothing like a custom software suited to *your* need. At first it may seem a paradox considering our company licenses its software....
Here is what the 2020 horizon hides
Here is what the 2020 horizon hides There is a new decade behind us and another one in front of us. When I look back at the last ten years, I cannot spot any technological disruptive innovation in our industry. I've worked close to R&D during these ten years and...
Self-contained codecs considered harmful
Self-contained codecs considered harmful A stream of compressed video is composed of many successive top-level units of video. These units are, most of the time, considered atomic by encapsulators and muxers. In some codecs, like VP9, these top-level units represent a whole compressed picture. In some other codecs, like H.264...
IBC 2019 report: the calm before the storm
IBC 2019 report: the calm before the storm We'll spare you here the demos about 5G, 8K and blockchains. We're sure by the time you read this article you'll find other reports to cover them extensively! Convergence of networks (hybrid broadcast broadband) There is a reality of a comeback of...
IBC 2019 organization comments
IBC 2019 organization comments Click here for our report about the IBC content. This year IBC was in our opinion the best edition of the last five years. After a disappointing NAB 2019, and a very disappointing IBC 2018, IBC 2019 made conservative choices to concentrate on what is essential....
What prevents new Netflix-es to emerge
What prevents new Netflix-es to emerge Introduction Since Netflix emerged as a giant the SVoD market went through different phases: people didn't believe it would succeed (some still do!), then existing actors were unable to understand and move appropriately, then startups tried to plagiarize Netflix, then Netflix has started to...
Understanding upcoming changes in GPAC
Understanding upcoming changes in GPAC The release of GPAC 0.8 in June 2019 is an important milestone. The professional video industry likes releases. On the other hands development teams have enjoyed our stable nightly builds for years. Both will love our future plans. The changelog of this v0.8.0. is impressive....
Three sources of latency
Three sources of latency What is latency? Latency is the time elapsed between two events, which in a perfect world, would be simultaneous. In a live video streaming scenario, the latency is typically the time elapsed between the capture of a video frame, and this frame being displayed on the...
Wind in the sails of MPEG
Wind in the sails of MPEG Introduction Motion Spell, the company behind GPAC Licensing, has been quite involved in projects that required to follow the standardization activity. The environment has started to change these last years. Deep changes at MPEG The wind of change blows on MPEG. Despite fierce competition...
Our journey in low latency OTT (DASH, HLS)
Our journey in low latency OTT (DASH, HLS) Professional low latency MPEG-DASHdemo with @NicolasWeil from @akamami https://t.co/ObNCogLkYp https://t.co/lRfHLWyON8 #NABShow — GPAC Licensing (@GPAClicensing) April 18, 2017 Introduction Low latency discussions in the professional video industry are everywhere and nowhere. Everywhere because the public and the professionals have embraced this cause....
The perils of start codes
The perils of start codes In many video codecs, each top-level unit of video is prefixed with a predefined sequence of bytes, known as a "start code". This start code acts as a robust delimiter between top-level units. This sequence is generally 3 or 4 byte long. Its content is...
Transitioning from 2018 to 2019
Transitioning from 2018 to 2019 For GPAC Licensing 2018 has been an excellent business year. And 2019 looks even better! Our reading grid of the market got right ; therefore our R&D efforts paid: ATSC3 monitoring: our novel approach got awarded at NAB. We hope to push this technology further...
Our MPEG VR 2018 report for VRTogether
Our MPEG VR 2018 report for VRTogether Please click here or on the title. Enjoy!
Our NAB 2018 VR report for VRTogether
Our NAB 2018 VR report for VRTogether Please click here or on the title. Enjoy!
Delivering your new VR social experience: our commitment in VRTogether
Delivering your new VR social experience: our commitment in VRTogether Introduction Although VR has been a buzz word for the past few years, VR experience delivery is still at its infancy. There are some products starting to use tiles and other techniques to broadcast VR videos but real deployments still...
This All Javascript Mania has to stop
This All Javascript Mania has to stop During the few past years, the price of DRAM has droppped significantly... well, not in 2017. Here is the example of the price of a DDR4 2400MHz stick from February 2017 to January 2018. With a lot at $27 in May 2017, it...
What will 2018 be made of?
What will 2018 be made of? We wish you the best for 2018! 2017 was definitely a year of transition. Since we give trainings and license code (including R&D code) we see the trends. 2018 will be a year of consolidation. In early 2017, the VR market collapsed after a...
Semantic UI And The Promotion Of Duplication
Semantic UI And The Promotion Of Duplication The way to Semantic UI You may know that, here, at GPAC, we are mostly "low level" application developers. Developing low level native apps is what we mostly do. However, in 2017, a low level apps is often not enough and you have...
Considerations about Net Neutrality (and on-going discussions...)
Considerations about Net Neutrality (and on-going discussions...) A few days ago, while being at the social dinner for the kick-off of a new project, we had a discussion about Net Neutrality. I realized my views were not the most popular among this technical audience. However I felt I made my...
SUMMARY OF IBC 2017
SUMMARY OF IBC 2017 This year was the 50th anniversary of IBC. IBC is in our opinion the most important show of our industry (followed by NAB in Las Vegas which addresses the US market better). However we find it unfortunate that the organizers feel obliged to report an increasing...
HLS posts updated RFC8216 (draft revision 23)
HLS posts updated until revision 23/RFC8216 Dear readers, We have updated our blog posts on HLS until draft revision 23 (also known as RFC8216): Apple HLS: introduction Apple HLS: comparing versions Apple HLS: technical in-depth Please keep on providing your feedbacks :)
The "Who" book review
Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street</em>. Introduction Getting the best team is your number one problem. You want to recruit the best: the "A" players (i.e. the best ones, opposed to “B” players (good ones) and “C” players (average or below average workers)). The...
NAB 2017 report in tweets
NAB 2017 report in tweets Professional low latency MPEG-DASHdemo with @NicolasWeil from @akamami https://t.co/ObNCogLkYp https://t.co/lRfHLWyON8 #NABShow — GPAC Licensing (@GPAClicensing) April 18, 2017 All set for the #NAB2017 @DASH_IF Reception DASH demos: Live CMAF, Low Latency DASH, Ultra Low Latency CMAF + goodies... See you there ! https://t.co/YpIgwe5xkv — Nicolas...
Happy new year! Our insights for 2017
Insights for 2017 Dear readers, Happy new year! 2016 was a very good year businesswise for GPAC. In our sense we will just keep on improving things we started in 2016. But 2016 was a sad year for our industry: standards failed to gather because of patents issues for both...
Summary of IBC 2016 from the GPAC Licensing team
Summary of IBC 2016 from the GPAC Licensing team Dear followers, We are back from IBC and we wanted to share with you our thoughts and feelings about IBC 2016. Each and every year there are more demos powered by GPAC, and more of the technology we standardize that is...
A view on VP9 and AV1 part 2: important considerations
A view on VP9 and AV1 part 2: important considerations Introduction The success of a video coding standard depends on many factors. Many articles try to benchmark the performance of codec implementations or make comments about the ecosystem of codecs. But I have not seen any article about the standardization...
A view on VP9 and AV1 part 1
A view on VP9 and AV1 part 1: specifications Introduction The success of a video coding standard depends on many factors. Many articles try to benchmark the performance of codec implementations or make comments about the ecosystem of codecs. But I have not seen any article about the standardization process...
Eopin Oy Languistik: Personalized MP4 Files for Language Learning
Eopin Oy Languistik: Personalized MP4 Files for Language Learning Almost two years ago, Eopin Oy approached GPAC Licensing to discuss the concept of a new language learning application called Languistik. Languistik brings several innovations to language learning, accelerating the process of learning. This summer, Eopin Oy released the first version...
HLS posts updated
HLS posts updated until revision 19 Dear readers, Thanks to a customer's contribution, we could update our blog posts on HLS until version 19: Apple HLS: introduction Apple HLS: comparing versions Apple HLS: technical in-depth Please keep on providing your feedbacks :)
Guidelines on how to embed TTML in MP4 and DASH
Guidelines on how to embed TTML in MP4 and DASH Introduction After a discussion at IBC 2015 with our partners from BBC, IRT and EBU, we found that there was a lot of confusion when it came to distributing TTML content in ISOBMF/MP4, especially with MPEG-DASH. Practical use-cases include HbbTV...
Happy new year 2016: GPAC Licensing business trends
Happy new year 2016: GPAC Licensing business trends Dear readers, Happy new year! May 2016 bring you peace and prosperity. Last year we proposed you a list of projects, trends and subjects. It allowed us to be featured in Streaming Media in Jan Ozer's Encoding 2020: Experts Predict the Future...
HomerHEVC encoder and GPAC
HomerHEVC encoder and GPAC This is an invited article from Juan Casal of HomerHEVC. This article belongs the "GPAC industry use-cases" category which shows how industry actors use GPAC in their projects. Please click here to read the original version of this article. Creating HEVC videos in .mp4 and .ts...
Summary of IBC’15 from the GPAC Licensing team
Summary of IBC’15 from the GPAC Licensing team Dear followers, We are back from IBC and we wanted to share with you our thoughts and feelings about IBC 2015. First of all, there are always more demos powered by GPAC (open-source, standardization) or GPAC Licensing (industry partnerships, licenses and products)....
"How Google Works" book review
"How Google Works" book review Dear readers, Introduction Today we are going to review the book "How Google Works". This book talks about the future of organizations with Google structure as a background story. The authors are Eric Schmidt (Chairman, ex-CEO) and Jonathan Rosenberg (ex-VP Products). Analysis on the situation...
Protecting content for Web distribution
Protecting content for Web distribution Update from 2015/03/16: now publicly available for free. Enjoy! If you wish to get more videos, you can subscribe to our mailing-list on the right panel, right next to this video. Links from this video (order of appearance): www.gpac.io www.gpac-licensing.com www.gpac.io/mp4box/encryption/common-encryption/ download.microsoft.com/download/E/A/4/EA470677-6C3C-4AFE-8A86-A196ADFD0F78/Content%20Decryption%20Module%20Interface%20Specification.pdf microsoft.com/playready/features/ClientOptions.aspx techblog.netflix.com/2014/06/html5-video-in-safari-on-os-x-yosemite.html blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/05/14/drm-and-the-challenge-of-serving-users/...
Passage from 2014 to 2015
Passage from 2014 to 2015 Dear readers, Happy new year! May 2015 bring you happiness and success :) We just wanted to share with you our views on what happens in 2014 and what will happen in 2015. There are many retrospectives and futurology articles out-there. As Alan Kay said:...
Apple HLS: technical in-depth
Apple HLS: technical in-depth Content Master, Variants and Renditions Version 1 Version 2 Version 3 Version 4 Version 5 Version 6 Versions 7, 8, 9 (functionaly equivalent) Version 10 An introduction to Apple HLS is available as: Apple HLS: introduction. A summary table of the versions and revisions is available...
Apple HLS: comparing versions
Apple HLS: comparing versions An introduction to Apple HLS is available as: Apple HLS: introduction. A technical analysis of the versions is available as: Apple HLS: technical in-depth. Versions and revisions HLS comes in different versions. As of when this article is written, version numbers range from 1 to 10....
Apple HLS: introduction
Apple HLS: introduction A sequel to this article is available as: Apple HLS: comparing versions. What is HLS HLS is a protocol for transmitting multimedia data over HTTP. HLS describes a playlist format called M3U8 and a media segment format based on: MPEG-2 (TS, PS, ES), or ISOBMFF MPEG-4 Fragmented...
How Bitmovin leverage MP4Box to package their contents for their bitdash player
How Bitmovin leverage MP4Box to package their contents for their bitdash player This is an invited article from Bitmovin. This article belongs the "GPAC industry use-cases" category which shows how industry actors use GPAC in their projects. Please click here to read the original version of this article. MPEG-DASH Generation...
Summary of IBC’14 from the GPAC Licensing team
Summary of IBC’14 from the GPAC Licensing team Dear followers, We are back from IBC and we wanted to share with you our thoughts and feelings. GPAC demos First we were really proud to see our products used directly on so many booths. People now know the GPAC open-source project...
[IBC 2014] DASH AVC/264 support in GPAC
[IBC 2014] DASH AVC/264 support in GPAC Thanks to a joint effort of GPAC Licensing, EBU and DASH-IF, the open-source multimedia framework GPAC now has support for the DASH Industry Forum DASH AVC/264 profile... and beyond! In this article we are going show you how to setup GPAC for your...
Diving into ultra-low latency for live using MPEG-DASH
Diving into ultra-low latency for live using MPEG-DASH Low latency with HTTP-streaming (segment-based) technologies is a challenge. In particular MPEG-DASH is gaining adoption among international industry consortiums such as DVB with DVB DASH or ETSI with HbbTV 2.0 (not published yet), with a growing focus on live use-cases. For such...
Summary of NAB'14 from the GPAC Licensing team
Summary of NAB'14 from the GPAC Licensing team Dear followers, We are back from NAB and we wanted to share with you few projects we found particularly interesting. Some of them we are part of, and some of them which just amazed us. GPAC demos GPAC was present on several...
Slides: MPEG CENC and HTML5 EME (Leveraging content protection for Web distribution)
Slides: MPEG CENC and HTML5 EME A week ago, I gave a conference hosted by the OVFS about ways to protect your content when distributing it on the Web. It deals with: MPEG Common Encryption (CENC) which is supported by GPAC; HTML5 Encrypted Media Extensions (EME); and some explanations about...
What is a standard and what does it cover? (featuring a MPEG-DASH case study)
What is a standard and what does it cover? (featuring a MPEG-DASH case study) In this article, I am going to cover one of the most common questions in the multimedia field: what is a standard and what does it cover? Once you have read this article, you will notice...
GPAC Licensing
GPAC Licensing Welcome to the GPAC Licensing website! GPAC Licensing aims to bring GPAC to the next level of cooperation with our industry partners. GPAC has been used by many of the industry key players and licensed several times. GPAC has never shown so much interest: SVC, fragmented MP4, DASH,...