Raj Nair

Mobile video delivery with HTTP

Expansion in 3G cellular coverage and the emergence of more powerful mobile devices has increased demand for massively scalable mobile video delivery. The rapid adoption of the third screen as a primary screen for video has highlighted inefficiencies in the mobile delivery ecosystem and scalability issues in the mobile delivery infrastructure. This article provides an overview of the current mobile content delivery ecosystem and discusses the expanding role of HTTP-based mobile video delivery. A new class of HTTP-based mobile delivery protocols seeks to address existing quality and scalability issues by simplifying and standardizing mobile video delivery. This article shows how segment-based delivery has enabled HTTP-based live streaming and dynamic bitrate adaptation while increasing scalability through the use of existing CDN infrastructure.

DRM workflow analysis for over-the-top HTTP segmented delivery

Monetization of premium video content requires two key components: quality and security. In the mobile space, quality issues have been largely address in recent years through faster CPUs and segment-based HTTP adaptive bitrate delivery (e.g., Apple® HTTP Live Streaming, Adobe® HTTP Dynamic Streaming, and Microsoft® Silverlight™ Smooth Streaming). This has enabled plethora of new services to deliver high definition video to smart phone and tablet devices. This in turn has brought mobile digital rights management (DRM) under increased scrutiny. Existing DRM guidelines are geared toward monolithic file distribution to fixed end-points. The emergence of segment-based HTTP distribution protocols has produced unforeseen issues in existing content delivery workflows. Support for over-the-top (OTT) delivery has further complicated DRM enforcement. In this paper we analyze the impact of segmented OTT delivery on traditional content preparation and distribution workflows. We discuss the use of pipelining for optimizing transcoding, segmentation, and encryption workflows. We also address security and scalability concerns related to key generation, device registration, and key distribution workflows. Together, these workflows provide the necessary components for an efficient and secure OTT content delivery platform.