FAMIUM SAND

Viewership Prediction: FAMIUM SAND facilitates viewership prediction, a critical component for effective CDN load planning. By leveraging machine learning techniques, the system analyzes collected streaming metrics in conjunction with contextual data such as time of day, program duration, program type, and specific channel information. This predictive capability allows providers to anticipate demand, optimize resource allocation, and ensure smoother content delivery, especially during peak viewership periods.

Automated Anomaly and Outlier Detection: Given the vast amounts of metric data collected from numerous streaming sessions, manually sifting through this information to identify subtle issues can be challenging and time-consuming. FAMIUM SAND employs advanced AI algorithms for automated anomaly and outlier detection. These algorithms analyze the extensive datasets to pinpoint unusual patterns, performance deviations, or error correlations that might indicate underlying problems with specific devices, network segments, or content encodings. Highlighting these anomalies significantly accelerates the troubleshooting process, enabling quicker resolution of streaming issues and improving overall service reliability.

Content Steering within FAMIUM SAND is a key feature for dynamically optimizing content delivery across multiple Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). Its primary objectives are to enhance Quality of Experience (QoE) for viewers, reduce overall delivery costs, enable effective load balancing between CDNs, improve service resilience against CDN performance issues or outages, and facilitate A/B testing of different CDN providers or their configurations.

The system operates via a standardized mechanism compatible with DASH and HLS clients. These clients fetch a steering manifest from the FAMIUM SAND Content Steering Server, which intelligently adjusts the prioritized order of available CDNs listed in this manifest. These steering decisions are guided by provider-defined policies and informed by a rich set of real-time performance metrics—such as error rates, average bitrate, and buffer levels—collected from clients via SAND (Server and Network Assisted DASH) and CMCD (Common Media Client Data). Furthermore, AI capabilities can be employed to learn from the outcomes of previous CDN switching decisions, continually refining the steering logic for improved performance over time.

Key benefits of this approach include the ability to make real-time adjustments to content delivery paths in response to changing network conditions or CDN performance. The vendor-agnostic design also provides content providers with greater flexibility and control in managing their CDN resources, aiming for consistently optimal streaming performance.

Uncoordinated streaming in shared networks (e.g., households, public WiFi, in-flight entertainment) often leads to playback instability and a poor Quality of Experience (QoE), particularly with high-bandwidth content. FAMIUM SAND's Client Coordination feature directly addresses these issues by enabling fair and efficient use of shared network resources.

The FAMIUM SAND-Server functions as a central coordinator, utilizing performance metrics reported by the streaming clients. Based on this data, it guides client behavior by recommending or assigning appropriate bitrates. This is achieved through standardized mechanisms such as SAND Shared Resource Allocation (SRA) or CMSD.

Clients supporting these standards then adapt their Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) streaming logic according to the server's guidance. The server can implement various strategies for allocating network resources, ranging from a simple equal division of the estimated available bandwidth among active clients to more sophisticated, policy-driven approaches. This active shared resource allocation ensures fair bandwidth sharing of multiple DASH/HLS clients competing for bandwidth in the same network.

This coordinated approach yields significant benefits, including improved playback stability, enhanced QoE for all users in shared environments, and more efficient and equitable utilization of the available network bandwidth.

Core Benefits & Capabilities

FAMIUM SAND offers a range of powerful features to optimize streaming workflows:

• Real-time streaming analytics for DASH/HLS 
• Comprehensive QoE Analysis 
• Advanced Debugging, Alerting, and Troubleshooting features 
• Detection of problems related to new devices or software updates 
• In-depth error analysis 
• Reliability analysis for VoD/Live sessions and ad-insertion 

Deployment Flexibility

FAMIUM SAND supports on-premise or cloud-based deployments, offering flexibility and scalability.

Commitment to Standards

Adherence to open standards is a core principle of FAMIUM SAND, ensuring interoperability and future-proofing:

The solution leverages key industry standards including Server and Network Assisted DASH (SAND, ISO/IEC 23009-5), Common Media Client Data (CMCD, CTA-5004), and Common Media Server Data (CMSD, CTA-5006).

Testing and Validation

The capabilities of FAMIUM SAND are used in the FAMIUM Media Streaming Test Suite to collect metrics for detailed playback test reports.