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So You Want to Stream

Considerations for Launching a Streaming Service

For the uninitiated, launching

Video streaming on the whole has

a streaming service can be

become much simpler in the past years as

technological and cost barriers have fallen.
Still, a macro understanding of the space
and what questions any vendor or solution
provider in the chain needs to have answered
is going to be a big advantage in rolling out a
streaming service. There are many companies
at different stages that may not fully grasp
the details and nuances of other segments.
There are only a few companies that offer real
end-to-end services, like Tulix, and that have
a good handle on all of the requirements,
from A to Z, of a robust, reliable and revenuegenerating platform.

a very daunting undertaking.

There are many companies
in the streaming space, and
many of these companies are
focused on specific segments
of the streaming process. It is
best to come to the streaming
game with a checklist in
order to understand all the
variables that are in play. As
an operator of a streaming
service, understanding at some
level how video gets streamed
to a customer, and also how
a customer accesses video
streams, is critical. When an

The below diagram represents a high level,

end-to-end overview of all the elements that
need to be considered when rolling out a
streaming service offering. On the left we start
with sources, and on the right we end with
streaming devices. In the middle is where the
magic happens! Those are all the functions
and considerations needing to be deployed
in order to deliver a comprehensive video
streaming solution. In the rest of this paper,
we will discuss all of those considerations and

what some of them can mean for operators of

streaming video platforms.

What is your content?

One of the first questions to answer is
pretty simple: What is your content source?
By this, we mean are you working with live
feeds or files, and what is their physical
format? Both live and pre-recorded
(file-based) content have different needs
and different paths at points in the
streaming workflow. Both live and
file-based content are commercially
in demand and can be streamed and
monetized by platforms like Tulixs VDN
and back office monetization suite.
When it comes to the file type of pre
recorded content, any format is fine, but
there is a process of transcoding that may
need to take place to get your content to an
MPEG4 file format. Content can come in
many file formats. Some of these include
MPEG-4, but they also could be MPEG-2,
and either of these could be 4:2:2 or 4:2:0.
Other formats that are strongly linked
to postproduction could be supported

operator knows where their

company or organization fits
in the streaming landscape,
making informed decisions
becomes much easier.

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include AVC-I, ProRes, DNx, or JPEG2000.

On top of the video codecs just mentioned,
there are also wrappers for the codecs to
consider. These could include MP4, TS, PS,
MXF, MOV, or others.
Your file formats are something to
consider when choosing a streaming
platform. MPEG4 is the most common and
almost universally accepted, but dont fear
if your content is in another format. There
just may need to be a transcode or re-wrap
process to get your content to the MPEG4 codec and correct wrapper. Operators
need to be sure to choose a streaming
platform that supports this, and youll be
able to create streamed VOD and linear
content with very little effort on your part.
If your content is live, consideration
must be given on how you will capture your
live content and get it to your streaming
publishing point. Will this be a live event
you or your company will be at? Will this
be an event where you are streaming
broadcast content? Will content be coming
straight off of a camera? If so, is that camera
a professional one, a prosumer one, or
a consumer one? Can you stream direct
from the event to your publishing point
for streaming? These are all acquisition
questions operators needs to ask themselves.
Oftentimes it is best to have an encoder
to convert your stream to MPEG-4, then
wrap it RTMP and send it via a stable IP
connection to your publishing point. If
your live content is live broadcast content,
that is definitely also OK. In the case of
broadcast content, typically you will
need to have an IRD (Integrated Receiver
Descrambler) where the output can be
either an MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 stream
wrapped in TS, or decoded HD-SDI or SDSDI baseband signals. In the case of SDI

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sources and MPEG-4 encoder will again

be needed. However, something as simple
as an IP camera, phone, or laptop can be
used to deliver a live stream.
No matter what you use, we
recommend testing with your content
delivery network (CDN) to ensure the
compatibility of your encoder. You
may also ask the CDN to recommend
specific encoders. If, like Tulix, they work
frequently with encoder manufacturers
for testing and tuning, they will able to
recommend something that meets your
budget and meets your performance
requirements. Operators will want to
make sure that their CDN can ingest
source formats and output the desired
formats. Some CDNs are limited to only
ingesting HLS and outputting the same,
for example. If you want to source or
deliver your content in other formats, you
will want to find a versatile CDN that can
accommodate this.

How much storage do you need?

even want to offer DVR-like functionality

for your live event. All of these are options
and can be discussed with your CDN
(Content Delivery Network) vendor or
OVP (Online Video Platform) provider.
Again, the main considerations for storage
for live content are much the same as the
considerations for files from a pure storage
perspective. You must think of how many
hours you will store and at what bit rates
of video. Often times you will only want to
store a mezzanine file from which you will
create the ABR (adaptive bit rate) streams
you will serve up to your viewers.
For example, streaming operators will
need almost 3 gigabytes of storage for 1
hour of MPEG-4 video stored at a rate
of 6Mbps (the high end of suitable bit
rate of HD content). This assumes 4:2:0
video. In the event you had 24 hours of
such content this could be stored in 65
gigabytes. A weeks worth of the same
content would run 454 gigabytes. Storage
is not excessively expensive but does
need to be planned for and is a significant
consideration. The below is a good formula
to calculate your storage needs:

There are considerations to be made

for storage requirements. Storage is a big
consideration if you are playing on demand
content or are putting together a linear
playlist for streaming from files. The amount
of content you choose to store for VOD
or playout will determine the size of your
storage needs. There are also considerations
for how often you will update your playout
list or update your VOD content and then
how that VOD content will displayed,
streamed and monetized but we are
getting ahead of ourselves!

How Much Bandwidth do You Need?

Even though you may be streaming

live content you may wish to make that
content available for later viewing. Maybe
you will re-stream the event, maybe you
will offer it on demand, maybe you will

To determine your required bandwidth

you will need to calculate your average
streaming rate for the video (96Kbps,
500Kbps, 1.2Mbps, 2.4Mbps for example),
determine how many viewers you have,
then calculate the average viewing time

Approx. bit rate / 8 (bits in a byte) x 3600s =

KB per hour / 1000 = MB per hour
MB per hour x hours of operation per day /
1000 = GB per day
GB per day x requested period of storage =
Storage need

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(doing the seconds-to-minutes calculation),

which will give you the required bandwidth
needs. There are easy to use bandwidth
calculators available on the web. To get an
idea of rates here are 2 simple examples.
If you have an average of a 2Mbps stream,
with 1,000 viewers for 60 minutes of
content, you will have a requirement of 858
GB. If this same stream were served live to
5000 viewers your requirements would be
4.292 GB of bandwidth.

your organization related to video delivery

or monetization in addition to pure CDN
functionality. Youll also want a CDN that
can accommodate your growth and will
be able to support new technologies as
they emerge (e.g. MPEG-DASH, 4K UHD
streaming). Tulix is a vendor that falls
into all these categories, as a one-stop
shop that offers reliable video delivery
network (VDN) services as well as all the
components to a complete OTT solution.

Sometimes, to quote Stephen Covey,

the best way to come up with a plan is to
begin with the end in mind. The same is
very true with planning a streaming service
and in particular when thinking about
what kind of devices need to be supported
for your streaming offering. Defining up
front what devices your content will be
available on will help you define how your
video needs to be processed so that your
target customers can view it.

Keep in mind that there is a large

difference between content consumed
over the course of a month with fairly
steady average viewer counts (e.g. a 24/7
broadcast) versus a live event with a
sudden spike in viewers. Thirty viewers
watching a 1Mbps stream for 1 month
non-stop consumes 9.5 TB of bandwidth,
the same as 22,000 viewers watching
the same quality stream for just 1 hour.
You may see a 10 TB bandwidth package
offered somewhere and might think it
would support both scenarios, but youll
find that that is almost never the case,
as the streaming architecture needed
for events with high traffic spikes is very
different from one that supports relatively
consistent viewer numbers throughout the
course of a month.

What Devices Need to be Supported?

What Video Encoding, Transcoding,

and Processing are Required?

Anticipated bandwidth needs are

a significant consideration. Rates for
bandwidth will vary some from CDN
vendor to CDN vendor and will be
discounted as the amount of bandwidth
gets higher. What is most important
regarding the selection of a CDN vendor
is that the company selected is reliable,
has a track record, has supported similar
customers to you (so you know they will
understand your needs), offers fast loading
time for your video, fits within your budget
and can potentially offer other services to

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Streaming Media Industry September 2015

Thinking about where you want

your video to be viewed is another big
consideration. Where your video will be
viewed will drive your bandwidth needs,
contribute to technical and business
considerations, and drive your video
transcoding and processing needs. There
are many outlets these days for streaming
video. There are PCs and web pages, there
are also a myriad of different mobile
devices to consider, as well as, the option
to stream directly to TV sets in the home.
Major commercial considerations include
where your web page will be hosted, what
video portals your content will be on, and
where your video will be aggregated with
other offers.
Mobile devices represent a big target for
video streaming. There are considerations
concerning what types of devices will be
supported; tablets, phones, etc. Apple,
Android, and other platforms all come
with different considerations. OTT STBs
are an increasingly important streaming
video target device. These OTT STBs also
come in different flavors. Some of the big
ones include Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire,
Google TV, and a host of STBs running
Android OS or Linux. These Android and
Linux OTT STBs are particularly popular
outside of the USA.

There are two initial considerations

to assess regarding video encoding,
transcoding, and processing:
1. Where is the transcoding going
to take place?
2. How is the stream/video/source
going to get to the transcoding
location?
Most operators these days send one
higher-level mezzanine stream to be
transcoded to ABR (adaptive bitrate) layers
for delivery over the web or mobile networks.
H.264/MPEG-4/AVC is the codec behind
almost all streaming and is the codec format
for mezzanine steams as well as for ABR
streams. HEVC is starting to emerge as an
eventual replacement for AVC, but this will
be a process that will take place over several
years and is a topic for another paper. The
mezzanine stream is most often sent via
RTMP to a location where it is transcoded
to the various ABR layers. The packaging of
the different layers typically takes the form
of HTTP Live Streaming, otherwise known
as HLS, but could also be Flash/RTMP/
Dynamic Streaming, IIS/Smooth Streaming/
Silverlight, or MPEG-DASH.
ABR is a more recent development
and deserves a little consideration at

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this point in our paper. The simplest way

to define or understand ABR streaming
is that a source or mezzanine stream is
encoded at multiple bitrates. All of the
different bitrate streams are segmented
into chunks along with the creation of a
manifest file. The reason for this is so that
viewers can then download or stream the
chunk that is best suited to their current
bandwidth situation. The viewer can do
this because they are made aware of all the
available chunks at differing bit rates by
the manifest file.
A further beauty and advantage of ABR
is that various wrappers for ABR chunks
make them look and pass through the
internet looking like HTML pages. This
bypasses a lot of the firewall and security
issues that troubled earlier streaming
implementations. Again, when starting a
stream the viewer downloads the lowest
bitrate stream/chunk. As the streaming
progresses, bandwidth allowing, higher
and higher bitrate and resolution size
chunks are downloaded. Conversely, if a
viewer takes a hit in bandwidth they will
drop down to lower resolution size and
lower bandwidth utilizing chunk. Typically,
chunks contain about 9 seconds of video.
Below is a good look at some common
sizes, bandwidth, and resolution sized for
various ABR layers.
Rate (Kbps)
200
400
600
800
1400
2200
3400

FPS
25
25
25
25
25
25
25

Resolutions
416 x 234
416 x 234
416 x 234
640 x 360
768 x 432
1280 x 720
1920 x 1080

When ABR streaming first started out,

a lot of the encoding to different layers

streamingmedia.com

was done onsite at the place of the first

encode to MPEG-4. This has shifted over
time and now cloud based transcoding
at CDN/VDN providers or OVPs is more
common. The quality of transcoding
at these locations can vary and is a
differentiating factor among vendors. As is
the case with all things video, there is the
garbage in, garbage out paradigm. It is
incumbent on the operator to get the best
quality stream to the place where it will be
transcoded and where the different layers
will be created and packaged. There is a
common problem called concatenation
that can take place in this process and
is caused by the secondary decode
and re-encode for the ABR formatting.
This secondary encode/transcode can
result in lower quality than the original
stream. Therefore, the first encode should
produce the highest quality encode that is
economically feasible.
There are also video processing issues
to consider. One of the first things to think
about is ad insertion. A lot of streaming
content has no ads in it and revenue is
generated on a subscription model. This
is a great business modelits profitable
for the operator and appreciated by the
consumer. If there are ads, they can be in
the form of pre-roll ads, which are fairly
simple to implement, or ads that are
interspersed within the content. Some
of these ads may even be specific to the
individual viewer.
All of these ad models come with
increasing levels of complexity. The more
complex ones require encoders that
support cue placement and expensive
third-party insertion software or hardware.
However, you may be able to find an OVP/
CDN that provides ad insertion as part of
their core service. Tulix, for example, has

an intuitive and powerful ad-insertion

system that allows for pre- and mid-roll
insertion for both VOD and live content,
giving content providers control over the
ads that stream in front of and during their
streams across all devices.
What are the Network Architecture
and CDN/VDN Considerations?
There are a lot of considerations when
selecting a CDN or OVP partner. In some
cases the capabilities of a CDN and OVP
are combined, as is the case with Tulix.
There is also a distinction to be made
between traditional CDN vendors, which
focus on delivering all types of internet
traffic in addition to video, and CDNs that
focus primarily on the delivery of streamed
video, like Tulix.
CDNs often attempt to differentiate
themselves by talking about the number
of POPs they have. This is sometimes an
overrated number, and bigger does not
always mean better. Tulix, for example, has
a unique infrastructure built to excel at the
delivery of streamed video content. This
involves a centralized distribution system
with a very limited number of POPs,
which ensures the quality and stability
of streamed video in a way that the
infrastructure of traditional CDNs cannot.
Tulix has performed significant testing
to ensure that video load times meet or
exceed those of multi-POP CDN solutions.
Tulix has spent a lot of time discussing this
functionality in other papers. In fact, the
company believes its platform is so unique
and that it offers something more than a
simple CDN and that instead it offers VDN
services.
To bring it full circle, when discussing
or analyzing CDN and VDN options here

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are some of the main things to consider:

Bottom line pricing
Easy-to-understand pricing (in
case of usage bursts)
Comfort with a provider
Support capabilities of a provider
during business hours
and afterwards
Redundancy considerations and
capabilities
Streaming architecture (and
its efficiency)
Security and DRM (Digital Rights
Management) support
Back office control and access
for the operator
Analytics and analysis of customers,
traffic, usage, and other key metrics
Types of monetization models that
can be supported
Scalability for increased users
and traffic
Accessibility of content in
different locations

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Price is always going to be a primary

driver when selecting a CDN/VDN. It is
very important to select a vendor with
competitive pricing. The lowest price
may not always be the best price though.
Oftentimes, additional functionality can be
had by different vendors. OVP functionality
is critical to entities wanting to launch
a streaming offer. As stated earlier, Tulix
provides both OVP and CDN/VDN service,
as well as an easy-to-understand pricing
model with no hidden costs. In case of
increased traffic or adding on additional
functionality, an operator must understand
the economic factors well ahead of time.
Comfort with a vendor and the overall
faith that they can deliver and support
a streaming platform is a primary goal.
Operators should seek out CDN/OVP
providers who have been there and done
that and have experience supporting
customers like themselves. Comfort
with a vendor should also come from

an understanding of their architecture

and the comparison of that architecture
versus other providers. Is the number of
POPs really important, or is an efficient
architecture that is priced accordingly
more importantonly the individual
operator can make these choices. Comfort
with an operator will also come from
support of security features or DRM. Video
rights must be respected, web transactions
must be secure, back office information
must be protected, and the list goes on.
Any vendor selected must be able to
accommodate all of this.
There are business considerations that
also come into play in addition to network
and security ones. Can the business
model an operator envisions be enabled?
Sometimes simple CDN vendors cannot
bring this to the table and an OVP provider
is needed. Does the vendor provide
analytics consistent with what is needed to
run the business of the operator? Are those

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analytics easily accessible to the operator?

Is there back office control to add or delete
users quickly, to update pricing, titles, and
content? All of these are considerations.
Finally, any solution provider selected
should be able to ramp up and provide a
platform that is scalable to future needs. A
disruption in services if an operator need
to change solution providers could be very
costly from a revenue standpoint.

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Some Basic Questions for

Streaming Consideration

What is your video source, and where does it come from? (HD/SD
SDI, SD SDI only, Composite, other)

How many sources need to be streamed?

What output streaming or encoding formats are required at

the source?

How will the source video stream get to your publish or origin site?

Conclusion

Are you dealing with live video only or file based content or both?

Clearly, there is a lot to consider when

rolling out a streaming video service. It
is most helpful to look at all the steps
in the process and try to define all the
requirements for each and every step.
On one side (the left side of our original
diagram), having a complete view of the
signal flow and what happens to the video
along every step of the process from source
to streaming device is critical. On the
other side (the right side of our original
diagram), having a complete view of the
customer interaction from technology and
business perspective back through the
streaming network is also critical.

If you are dealing with primarily file based content how many hours
of content will be in your video library?

If you are offering mostly a live service offering, how many hours
of previous content will be available on your platform?

How high is video quality in the list of considerations?

Where and how will streams be prepared for ABR delivery?

Is an archive file desired, in addition to the live streaming?

Is system redundancy required on the streaming or encoding side?

(1:1, N+1, N+M, etc)

Who are the end users you want to get content to? (Mobile users,
OTT, at home computer users, LAN corporate users?)

What devices will end users utilize to watch your streams?

How many end users do you expect to have?

How many anticipated users by device type?

What is most important to you in a CDN/VDN vendor: pricing,

costing model, support, network, architecture, security, back office,
analytics, monetization capabilities, scalability?

Do you need an OVP solution?

Will you offer DVR features on your offering like rewind, fastforward, pause or delay, start over or catch up, time shift, nPVR?

How will you monetize your content?

What is your budget?

What is your time frame?

There is a lot of noise in the streaming

media space. There are also a lot of
companies in the streaming media space.
It is in the best interests of streaming
video operators to align themselves with
companies like Tulix that can cut through
the noise and also master both paths vital
to the success of a streaming platform
the video path from source to consumer,
and the customer transaction path from
device to the streaming platform.
In conclusion, we will leave you with a
summary of questions to think about and
discuss when you roll out a service and
when engaged with companies offering
services and solutions.

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Knowing the answers to these questions will be invaluable in your search for
a streaming solution that meets your needs. Be sure to articulate them in your
interactions with the vendors you contact, as they will help you get an accurate
picture of their capabilities and costs, and prevent unpleasant surprises in the
future! Happy streaming!

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