June 2023: It starts with a haiku

Let's start with a June haiku:

The June newsletter
Yes, technically it's July
Bespoke closed on us

A lot of folks have heard by now, but it's been a weird month(ish). At the end of May we found out that our venue for Demuxed 2023, Bespoke, was closing along with the Westfield Mall. Ever since it's been a mad dash to try and find a new home, and we turned over stones that I'm not even sure were technically stones. Apparently we fall in the category of “large event” now, which meant: our options were always limited, but ~6 months out our options were really limited. Cool.

The good news is, we found one, and it's beautiful! The bad news is, we have to shift to a subset of our announced dates. Instead of Tuesday afternoon to Thursday evening, we're now planning for two “normal” days on Tuesday and Wednesday, 10/24 and 10/25.

CFP Update: You can submit through Monday, 7/10

So, with all of this in mind, we haven't done a great job with things like CFP reminders. Thanks to a nudge from Kieran, we launched a (long overdue) update for Demuxed.com. You can find CFP links and such for Demuxed 2023 now, along with the meetups actually staying consistently up to date (theoretically).

We've quietly kept the CFP open while we figured out all the venue logistics, but we're explicitly keeping it open through this coming Monday, July 10th. We're going to kick off selection next week, so make sure you've got 'em in!

Tickets are on sale

The new venue's seated capacity is on the lower end of what we were hoping for, and fully expect to max it out. The setup should make for a really excellent in-person vibe, so if you want to join, please grab a ticket early! It will likely sell out again this year, so please don't be one of the heartbreaking emails the week of the event asking if there's a secret ticket stash somewhere.

To be transparent: we increased the ticket prices a bit (~10% average across them). We want Demuxed to be a sustainable, community event that isn't completely funded by one company (I do appreciate the salary, though, Mux), and our goal every year is to end up with enough reserves to secure the next venue and sponsor some events and projects throughout the year. Last year was the first time we had to dip into our reserves, and although needing to take a bath on our original '22 venue didn't help, it was still a wake up call: running events has only gotten more expensive and the current moment in the economy/tech industry means we might face a different sponsorship environment than we're used to.

We also understand that many have been personally impacted by that same environment. If your company won't help pay for your ticket, please reach out and we'll help make sure you can join. The same deep discounts for students and OSS maintainers apply this year as well so, again, make sure to reach out if you have any questions.

The Wide World of Video

𝙓 Did we mention there's a new Demuxed.com? Yes, that's right, it's no longer stuck in the events of December 2022, and will now ✨magically✨ stay up to date with new events (theoretically).

👴 Google ends support for its first Chromecast child. No more security updates, and users may notice performance gets worse. I loved my first Chromecast so much, but no one in streaming is sad to see old hardware (start to) go away.

🗳️ YouTube's going to stop removing false Presidential election claims. The only thing we can all be 100% sure of is that the 2024 US election is going to get weird.

💁‍♀️ Why does MPEG Transport Stream still exist? The OBE crew did a writeup on the internet's other TS. There was a lively discussion on The Orange Site if that's the kind of thing you're into.

💸 Twitch's new ad rules don't seem very popular. The Internet got real mad, Twitch said “our bad that was too broad we'll clarify,” but the Internet then moved onto something new like the Billionaire Boi Beatdown or whatever.

🤖 The Past, Present, and Future of Video Understanding Applications. The team at TwelveLabs break down the machines' ability to understand video, and how that's evolved over time.

🎭 Speaking of machines, how about a step-by-step tutorial on using Stable Diffusion to turn videos into animation. If anyone does this on the Demuxed back-catalog, let us know.

🎞️ Netflix goes deep on native frame rate playback. Netflix technical content just hits different, and this one's no exception. There are illustrative gifs and everything as they talk about getting content into your eyeballs at the content's original frame rate.

📌 Learn you some FFmpeg with ffmprovisr. We've all seen our fair share of tips/tricks/tutorials for video's software gold standard, but this app's particularly fun. Perhaps most importantly, the name is top notch, so what else can you ask for, really?

Upcoming community events

7/5 - Seattle Video Tech

7/12 - Cloud Native Media

7/19 - Sydney Video Technology (TBA)

7/19 - Taipei Video Technology

7/27 - Kitchener-Waterloo Video Technology

7/27 - SF Video Tech