From September 13 to 17, 2019, FAME exhibited at IBC in Amsterdam. The following solutions were demonstrated:

• Cloud-based 360° Video Playout for HbbTV and SmartTV
  
• Deep Encode: Context aware Video Encoding for Live and VoD
  
• Dynamic Ads for OTT & Broadcast - DAI & DAS
• Playout Side AD Insertion – enabling programmatic advertising in linear Broadcast TV
  
• Server and Network Assisted DASH - SANDLibrary & SANDServer

Our solution enables dynamic ad insertion and flexible over-the-top streaming workflows including VoD-to-Live services across a multitude of devices and platforms via MPEG DASH, HLS and HbbTV. Dynamic digital video advertising can be integrated per user and in real time, in both traditional linear and on-demand content. Content manipulation and dynamic ad insertion is powered by the FOKUS components Manifest Stitcher and Aggregation Service, operating on manifest level in a highly flexible and scalable system architecture. Individual stream management and channel orchestration is available via the FOKUS Stream Scheduler.

The Cloud-based 360° Video Playout offers a high quality 360° video experience for smart TV devices (HbbTV, Android TV, Fire TV, WebOS, Chrome…) as well as on the Web and on mobile devices. It provides a 4K Field of View using Adaptive Streaming to render the view in the cloud and streams only the visible area of the 360° content to the client. This reduces the required transfer bit-rates to the client, which can provide smooth playback of 24 K 360° source videos - on widely deployed TV platforms), web, and mobile. The solution supports Live and On-demand 360° Video Streaming. Content playout is compatible with existing CDNs using DASH and supports DRM over EME.

Video streaming content differs in terms of complexity and requires title-specific encoding settings to guarantee a certain visual quality. A classic “one-fits-all” encoding ladder ignores this characteristics and applies the same encoding settings to all videos.  FAMIUM Deep Encode leverages different machine learning techniques to identify the optimal encoding ladder for all types of video content. Our solution supports title- and scene-based encoding for VoD and live streams. By constant validation and retraining of our models the accuracy and efficiency of the underlying algorithms is improved with each input and the entire system learns on its own. Furthermore, it uses information from SAND metric reporting to enable context-aware encoding and meet the desired QoE expectations.

SAND (ISO/IEC 23009 DASH Part 5) defines standardized message formats for server and network assisted DASH. FAMIUM SANDLibrary and SANDServer cover SAND metric reporting and SAND shared resource allocation. The solution offers real-time metric reporting to monitor OTT player performance and allows fair bandwidth sharing of multiple DASH clients competing for bandwidth in the same network (e.g. sports stadium, plane, train, home networks etc.). Furthermore, ML-enabled analytics can derive the QoE Score for streaming sessions.

Playout Side AD Insertion (PSAI) allows to dynamically insert ads into a linear broadcast TV channel at the broadcaster’s playout, whereby the ad decisioning for a specific ad is made based on real-time audience data provided by a linear broadcast TV measurement solution. Thus, it enables broadcasters to sell their TV inventory in a digital-like approach (programmatic advertising) in real-time based on the actual viewership of their program. In addition to traditional viewership profile data as age, gender and social status, the solution features advanced data as program affinities and interest groups allowing advertisers to buy inventory for similar target groups both digital and on TV.