August 2023: Schedule peaks, IBC events, and meetups get old

This month marked the 10 year anniversary of SF Video Tech! To put 2013 in perspective, here are some other things that happened that year:

• The Edward Snowden leaks
• Higgs Boson was confirmed
• H.265 was finalized as a standard
• VP9 was released
• Vine was launched (although its pièce de résistance didn't come until 3 years later)

A decade later, this meetup brought about Demuxed and played a role in starting other meetups and video tech conferences around the world. Many of us have met amazing friends at this meetup and had the opportunity to speak (and work!) with some of the most brilliant minds in video technology. A video meetup is where Dinesh and Gilfoyle met Carla Walton, after all.

Huge thank you to everyone that's been involved over the years, both in SF Video and the larger community. If you haven't made it out to a local meetup yet, we highly suggest it, and reach out to the organizer and offer to speak while you're at it. 😉

Demuxed

There are still a few talks we're waiting to get final confirmation on from the presenter, but we've got a pretty amazing lineup in hand that we can't wait to show you. The landing page is updated to at least have the teaser for some of the companies that are presenting, but here's a sneak peek at some personal favorite titles:

Why is your encoder so slow? The curse of next-gen standards

JavaScript can be the missing spork in ffmpeg's swiss army knife

When IDR frame insertion backfires

lo-fi spy: video, steganography, and you

Low-level wizardry in dav1d

You may have also noticed the gorgeous new sponsor image at the end of this email. Wow. What a fine collection of companies that are out here supporting the ecosystem. If you, two, would like to join them, let's chat.

Open Office Parties

We're also planning to help organize the usual night of open offices/meetups on the first night of the conference. These are intentionally loosely organized just as a way for other companies and people to get involved. In past years they've been anything from an impromptu meetup at someone's office to a full-blown meetup with speakers. If you're interested in helping to host one of these events, shoot us a note.

These events also play nicely as part of… 👇

Video Tech Week: SF (we're gonna make the name happen)

We've got confirmation from the HLS Interest group that they're going to hold their meeting on the Friday before Demuxed (October 20th). The Foundations of Open Media Standards (FOMS) is going to meet the following Monday (October 23rd). These two events are an incredible opportunity for the video industry to get together and work on the standards that underlie so much of the work we all do, but they're also both intended to be small, focused, and require engagement. If you're interested in attending, check Video Dev or their respective websites and look into whether or not they're a fit for you!

The Wide World of Video

Picasso was the undisputed master of line drawings, but why do line drawings work so well for the human visual system, and how does that differ from edge detection? This paper has the answer.

Are you like me, and curl up in bed thinking “I wish I had a book to read about the cultural impact of live streaming”? Well good news, now there's a book for you!

Working out how to monetise video content is a problem most streaming services have to solve, and many turn to advertising as a solution, but how does targeted advertising intersect with user privacy? The United States Privacy Digest investigates.

Remember when Phil asked “What's in the box?!” If only he was able to use the new conformance tools from MPEG to help him find out?

Ever watched a movie and thought “man, that scream sounds familiar”? Of course I'm talking about the Wilhelm Scream. Recently Craig Smith discovered and restored the original audio, and made it available on FreeSound.

The Internet Archive has been hard at work digitising Pre-1972 78rpm records from deceased artists. This has turned out to be unpopular with the record labels who have hit them with a $400M lawsuit.

Can the BBC help save the planet by picking different static graphics for their radio stations when played on TVs? BBC R&D think so.

In good AI news for a change, Zoom has backed down on its plans to train models on their customer data.

Ever tried to use an old tool for downloading videos from YouTube and found it to be really slow? (yeh, me neither 👀), Well here's what's happening, and how one tool bypassed it.

Another newsletter, another really impressive, while slightly terrifying AI paper from the team at ByteDance.

Sam Lavigne has built a really cool tool for visualising FFmpeg filters, Hacker News upvoted it, but of the discourse descended a debate about the virtues of nazi-punching demo videos, rather than focussing on the tech.

If you've ever built a UGC streaming service, you've almost certainly had to fight pirates uploading ⚽️ or 🏈 streams. Now the sports leagues want DMCA takedowns to be actioned instantly…

Upcoming meetups/community events

9/6 - Cloud Native Media (London)

9/7 - Seattle Video Tech (Seattle)

9/8 - MonteVIDEO Tech (Montevideo)

9/17 - IBC Meta-Meetup (Amsterdam)

9/17 - DASH-IF Networking Reception (Amsterdam)

9/20 - Paris Video Tech (Paris)

9/26 - Kitchener-Waterloo Video Technology (Kitchener-Waterloo, CA)

9/18 - SF Video Technology (San Francisco)