M+E Daily

Along with the explosive growth of free-and-ad-supported content channels (FAST), content publishers are searching for new ways to rise above the “noise floor” of traditional ad insertion with superior engagement and returns, and to find the way out from under the expensive and complex pipelines of media clouds and content delivery networks (CDNs) that have trapped the industry for the past decade or more, according to Eluvio.

The company’s Content Fabric provides a solution, Michelle Munson, CEO and founder of Eluvio, said Sept. 15 at the ITS: Automation event, held during IBC at the W Amsterdam.

During the session, “Automated Distribution for FAST Channels & Live Video,” she explained and demonstrated the Eluvio Content Fabric, authorisation and open architecture content streaming, distribution and blockchain security protocol implemented for the third-generation Internet.

Unlike legacy CDNs and media clouds, the Eluvio Content Fabric allows all forms of media including premium live and on demand video to be published once and re-distributed without limit, with speed and low latency, simplicity, just-in-time authorisation at scale, hyper efficiency and cost savings, and it’s transparent/ tamper-free, she said.

The functions of a legacy CDN, media cloud and digital right management (DRM)/rights authorisation service are replaced by one slim and modern protocol.

“First and foremost, the Content Fabric is an open platform, and it’s decentralised,” she told attendees. “And it is designed for content in the next generation of the internet, which hopefully is also the current generation of the internet.”

She explained: “Unfortunately, as we all know very well, even though the cloud is supposed to be this open data lake, in terms of bringing those together functionally, it really doesn’t happen. You have to do a lot of work to make it happen. It doesn’t mean it can’t be done but it’s not natural.”

Munson showed what she called a “prototypical workflow diagram for microservices and how you’re supposed to stitch together a workflow in this environment.

“While it is well specified, and there are many distinct containers of function … there are so many of these distinct services that the complexity quickly goes out of control,” she said.

“My argument for today is that the present, or what I would call now legacy definition of automation, has been that we do this all cloud first, in a certain way, where we really can’t bring together the native elements of media, the data, the processing,” she noted.

Also important, she said: “that we do it in microservice workflows, which at scale, are extraordinarily complicated.”

She added: “I do think people in technology [and] media today appreciate this. If they don’t say it, they feel it. And this is my argument for why the next generation needs to be different. And when you think about automation at scale, it involves that from the source to the finish of the supply chain. “

Munson pointed out that, later, at ITS, she was “going to give all the demos for a walkthrough of five different use cases which pertain to premium” video on demand (VOD) distribution, live streaming distribution, live channels with ad insertion, FAST channels and then, along with that supply chain automation, which it gets into what you do with a large library or archive when you work with it in place and what our customers are doing to change their supply chains around that.”

To download the presentation, click here.

To view the session, click here.

The inaugural ITS: Automation event was produced by MESA and sponsored by Amazon Studios Technology, Fabric, Eluvio, EIDR, and HAND (Human & Digital).