Unified Streaming’s research and development division kept itself occupied with all sorts of projects this past year.

In the streaming industry, just as it is in the R&D team at Unified Streaming, a big share of technological progress can be chalked up to collaboration.

Teaming up takes place either inside diverse working groups embedded in global consortia, or in tandem with other likeminded companies’ researchers, who are equally keen to optimize how particular parts of streaming workflows do their thing.

There’s also individual research, of course. (And researchers at Unified Streaming do that, too.)

What Unified R&D accomplished in 2024 follows, in a shortlist of highlights. (At the end, take a glance at what’s in store for 2025.)

‍Got standards down cold (as a Denver February): Mile-High Video

Mile-High Video, the annual USA-based conference for video streaming coders, R&D engineers, and industry bigwigs, happened in Denver, February 11 – 14.

Unified’s Research Engineer Roberto Ramos Chávez and co-founder and CEO Dirk Griffioen attended the gathering on behalf of the company.

On February 12, Ramos Chávez presented an extended abstract (aka summary of a research project) titled ​“Standards-based OTT A/B Watermarking at Scale,” which he co-wrote with Varnish Software’s VP of Engineering Espen Braastad. Ramos Chávez’s colleagues Rufael Mekuria, Jamie Fletcher, and Arjen Wagenaar had also collaborated on the project.

Ramos Chávez outlined the integration of forensic watermarking standards with live media streaming workflows. This innovation helps organizations identify copies of streaming media that have been shared illegally.‍

April: REaP-ing the benefits in Rennes

In April, Standardization Rep Mohamad Raad went to Rennes, France to participate in MPEG 146 (aka the Motion Picture Experts Group’s 146th meeting).

There, he worked on REaP. (If you’re not deep in the weeds when it comes to standardization, you won’t automatically know what the acronym REaP might stand for.)

REaP means Redundant Encoding and Packaging, for segmented live media. By applying the standard, companies can make streaming workflows stronger, more robust.

Specifically, ISO/IEC 23009 – 9 (also known as REaP) aims to enable the synchronization of distribution encoder output, so that media segments from different encoders may be used interchangeably. REaP also enables the same kind of synchronization for packagers.

But first, some (humblebrag) backstory.

Unified Streaming has led the development of REaP at MPEG from the very beginning of the project. At the Rennes rendezvous, Raad moved REaP to the DIS stage (Draft International Standard, or the second-to-last stage before the document is published as a standard).

A REaP PoC (Proof of Concept) was implemented later in the year. Raad credits his colleague Ramos Chávez for its implementation, and notes that the PoC will serve as the basis for reference software.‍

ISO . . . ISO ready to enhance

While at Rennes, Unified R&D also contributed enhancements to ISOBMFF (ISO Base Media File Format) to fit some of Unified’s use cases (large recordings) better.

Essentially, the enhancements to ISOBMFF meant a change to the “sidx box,” allowing it to be placed at the end of a recording, instead of only at the start of a recording.

The sidx box (segment index box) provides a compact index of one track within the media segment, and describes the segment. It’s useful for “trick modes” such as seeking, fast-forward, fast-rewind, etc.

Placing the sidx box at the beginning of a recording allocates memory more efficiently.‍

June in Berlin: time to FOKUS up

In June, Ramos Chávez traveled to Berlin to attend Fraunhofer’s 11th FOKUS Media Web Symposium. There, he presented “Evaluation Framework for Optimizing Live Streaming Latency Using Common Media Server Data.” Unified cofounder and CTO Arjen Wagenaar and Staff Engineer Mark Ogle also worked on the document.

Common Media Server Data (CMSD) is also the subject of a study within a DASH-IF working group of the SVTA (Streaming Video Technology Alliance). The study will be completed by the end of this year, reports Unified Streaming Standardization Representative Mohamad Raad.‍

DVB: bringing out brand-new BlueBooks

In June and October, Unified’s team attended DVB technical module (TM) meetings, where they contributed to the new editions of DVB-DASH and DVB-TA BlueBooks.

What are DVB BlueBooks? They’re documents about specifications, approved for publication by the DVB Steering Board.

What’s the DVB Steering Board? The Steering Board is an elected body that approves DVB specifications and offers them for standardization to suitable international standards bodies. Its current chair is Remo Vogel.

Snow globe foretells flight to Colorado‍

Unified’s going back to Mile High City.

Mile High Video 2025 has officially accepted the extended abstract of Unified Streaming’s “Open-source Evaluation Framework for Reducing Media Start Delay” for presentation at the conference, which will take place February 18–20, 2025.

Collaborators from Unified on the research include Roberto Ramos-Chavez, Jamie Fletcher, Ksenia Rabinovich, and Arjen Wagenaar. Contributing from Norway: Espen Braastad of Varnish Software.‍

Looking back, looking forward: no matter where, things’re looking up

Unified Streaming is known not only for its stable, trustworthy software, but also for the disproportionately large role it plays in research and standardization.For more information on Unified’s research work, please visit our research page or get in touch.