Year in Review: 2018 Video Streaming Haivision Hailights
2018 has been a tremendous year for everyone at Haivision, and we would like to start by thanking you. To our clients, our partners, our readers, and our friends, thank you for all of your support.
Before we move into 2019, we would like to take a moment to reflect on the year that was.
There were many small moments that helped to put us in the position we are now. Read below to see some of our favorites from 2018, including some highlights you might have missed!
And the award goes to…
2018 could certainly be described as an award-winning year for Haivision. We had the privilege of seeing our developments being recognized across industries, and are grateful for the honors we received.
The biggest news in awards for Haivision in 2018 was clearly the Emmy Award. We were thrilled to be presented with an Emmy for Technology and Engineering. In November, it was announced that Haivision’s development of the SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) video streaming protocol would be presented with an Emmy for “Pioneering Reliable Transmission Method for Live Contribution and Distribution TV Links.”
We also picked up a Best of Show Award at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) 2018 in Amsterdam, presented by our friends from TVBEurope. The SRT Open-Source Protocol won in the Production and Post category.
We were thrilled to find out that members of the industry chose us for two Streaming Media Reader’s Choice Awards. Haivision Video Cloud won Best Live Streaming Platform, and our Makito X Video Encoder Series won Best Encoding Hardware for the third year in a row!
A growing family
In 2018, we made a lot of new connections and welcomed many new customers to the Haivision family.
We were able to help the team at LinkedIn to stream its LinkedIn Speaker Series to each of their employees, and have those same videos available on-demand for their users. We worked with Riot Games to deliver a major-league sports viewing experience to esports fans internationally. In 2018, we also delivered solutions for SAP, Veteran’s Affairs, BILD, and Tencent.
We even helped Microsoft pull off the biggest Microsoft Inspire event ever – it was in fact a first-time combination of their partner event, Inspire, and their internal event, Ready. Thanks to live streams broadcast to overflow rooms, the bigger-than-ever crowd was able to catch all the keynote sessions and stay engaged.
Microsoft not only became our customer in 2018, but our partner as well.
Companies looking to leverage Microsoft Stream, the intelligent video service in Microsoft 365, can now use any of Haivision’s video encoders, to ensure that they are producing broadcast-quality live streams. For internal sessions being broadcast to multiple destinations, or for live events watched by customers, organizations can now be confident that their CEOs, executives and teams will always look and sound their best. And what’s more, the KB Max video encoder is now certified to deliver high quality live streams to Azure Media Services, so you can get your video to large internet audiences outside of your organization.
Like all good partnerships, this is a two-way affair. In September, Microsoft joined the SRT Alliance, to support and promote the adoption of the SRT open-source protocol throughout the industry as a standard.
Speaking of our SRT Open-Source Project…
To put it plainly – it was a great year for the SRT Alliance and the adoption of the low-latency, open-source protocol across the video streaming world.
The SRT Alliance, grew to over 170 members this year, including some very exciting partners who have lent their support to the adoption of the open-source protocol. Some of the organizations that joined this year include, Comcast, Ooyala, MediaKind, Brightsign, Sencore, and (as mentioned before) Microsoft.
It wasn’t just organizations joining the Alliance this year, but a demonstrable jump in interest in the open-source protocol. SRT is now one of the fastest growing video streaming movements in the world and has the support of VideoLAN’s VLC, Wireshark, FFmpeg, and the GStreamer open-source projects. Important industry shows, like NAB, IBC, NAB NY, and InterBEE, featured panels on the adoption of SRT and its implications for the future of live video streaming. These panels had some great speakers from important organizations like Al Jazeera, NBC Sports, and ESPN.
A personal highlight was hearing Al Jazeera’s Miljenko Logozar, tell a room filled with broadcast professionals at IBC 2018, that, within his team, “we have a simple rule – if a vendor does not want to use SRT probably we have to find other options.” It really confirmed that SRT has been changing the video streaming landscape in a real way.
Is SRT starting to sound like something you want to look into? Take a look at the SRT Protocol Technical Overview, which we published this fall.
Secure reliable transport certainly had a great year. But it wasn’t the only innovation that Haivision brought forward in 2018.
The top in tech
Haivision released some of its most exciting developments to date this year, with solutions for broadcasters, enterprise streaming, governments, and houses of worship.
Another exciting development for the broadcast world has been our introduction of Stream Sync for remote production workflows. By being able to sync up multiple camera feeds over the internet, organizations can save on the expense of travelling to remote locations in order to produce live events. Decoders in the production center can synchronize remote feeds that are time-stamped by encoders at the live venue, so that each camera angle is streaming simultaneously. Engineers in New York can switch between cameras in Rio while broadcasting live, without any concern for video glitches or loss of lip-sync.
Earlier in the year, we announced the addition of Haivision Multi-Campus Coaching to our collection of solutions. Faith organizations with multiple locations will be able to monitor their satellite locations and observe the delivery of their message across all locations. By seeing real feedback, these ministries will be able to strengthen their congregation’s culture and work more collaboratively. Worshipers, volunteers, and staff at satellite campuses will feel closer to their main campus.
In April, we launched the KB Max portable video encoder and transcoder for 4K UHD, 360 VR, and HD internet streaming. We were excited to offer broadcasters and enterprises a streaming appliance that was small enough to be easily transported to remote locations, and powerful enough to produce the high-quality video streams that the industry has come to expect from Haivision.
We also took steps forward in ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) this year, with the release of the Makito X HEVC Rugged Encoder. It’s a military-grade appliance designed for the most demanding of environments – it can be deployed in extended temperature ranges and its rugged chassis ensures reliable connectivity even in extreme situations.
We are only getting started
It has been a fantastic year for the team at Haivision, and once again, we would like to take this moment to thank all of our partners and customers for their support. We are proud of what we have accomplished so far, but are even more excited to continue our work, to make high-quality, low-latency video streaming both reliable and secure.
We have some very serious developments in the works for 2019, and cannot wait to share them with you. Want to be among the first to know? Sign up for our blog today to stay up-to-date on the latest in video streaming technology!
Editor’s note: our blog will be going on a short holiday hiatus over the next few weeks. See you in the new year! (And if you want to be the first to know when our first blog post of 2019 will be, sign up to our blog newsletter.)
