Since the Operation MySpace event we have been getting many questions from many different folks. So, we prepared a little Q&A document to help answer things. Below are many of the questions we are getting with answers and if you don’t see yours let me know and we’ll get you an answer as soon as we can. Hope this helps!

Q: Was the event a success?
A: The event was an amazing success! It was by far a historical entertainment and technology event for live streaming media over the internet that was managed very well and provided a high quality user viewing experience.

Q: Can the Kulabyte HD encoders transcode live streams AND record streams at the same time or do you spilt the feed into two boxes?
A: Yes. One encoder can encode the live stream and record/archive the stream at the same time.

Q: How many streams were served?
A: Six (6) total streams. Three (3) primary and three (3) back-up streams.

Q: How many of the users understood that they could toggle stream quality?
A: The Low, Medium and High profiles were provided on the lower left hand corner of the player. Additionally, a viewing experience FAQ was provided on the right hand side of the player.

Q: I experienced a couple glitches: When restarting the stream, the audio would lag (video displayed first for a few seconds, then came the sound).
A: From time to time, this may happen when the user’s bandwidth is too slow to view the stream or the computer does not have the processing power to play back the video. In this case, the user should try a lower bit rate stream.

Q: The video / audio got severely out of synch at one time. The host was talking, but the image showed “metal senaz"(or other talent?) interviewing people/performing. Was that a pre-production thing?
A: We believe this was a production issue. Note: Kulabyte engineers verified the audio / video synchronization was received in sync and delivered in sync to the CDN. Given the complexity of the workflow process a number of contributing factors could have caused such glitches for an end users viewing experience.

Q: I lost connection 2 times - any idea as to why this happened? A: There were instances when the primary commercial satellite feed was lost and/or the CDN publishing points experienced minor failures. However, contingency plans were executed well and streams were restored quickly for a quality user experience. The loss of connection could have also been a last mile issue. Other factors might include:

Q: What were the exact profiles being streamed (resolution, video, audio, CBR/VBR, 1-Pass, 2-Pass)? A: The exact profiles confirmed by Chris Gottschalk, CTO of Kulabyte were:

Q: Can you explain the entire production workflow from capture to delivery? What was each technology pieces role in the broadcast?
A: From Kuwait, two satellites delivered a high bit rate HD & SD MPEG-2 transport stream to the East Coast, which was then bounced to the El Segundo broadcast truck. There a Tanberg MPEG-2 took the stream and decoded to 1080i HD/SDI at 29.97 Frames Per Second and delivered to the video hub. At the hub, the HD/SDI stream was encoded into the three different profiles High, Medium and Low on a primary and back-up Kulabyte XL-800 encoders. Then the transoded primary streams were sent to the Flash Media Server 3 origin servers and then pushed to the Akamai entry point then out to the client side Flash Player. After being transcoded, the back-up streams were sent directly to the back-up Akamai entry points for client distribution to the Flash player.

Q: Is this technology ready for Prime Time?
A: At the encoding level, yes! While the remaining delivery and client-consumer side issues were reported as minimal for this production, there are several issues that must be worked on for a consistent high quality viewing experience that relate to capture, publishing, players and client side education as it relates to hardware requirements and end-user ISP bandwidth limitations. Most importantly, all partners involved in producing such events as Operation MySpace are currently improving technologies to create the best viewing experience possible. Live events from end-to-end always present challenges and experience periodic technical difficulties even in a traditional broadcast environment. Technology and production companies must have contingencies, which in the case of Operation MySpace were executed very well. Delivering HD Television viewing experiences over the internet is here today.

There is also a very good article that was written by Tim Siglin over at Streaming Media that does a great job of recapping the event here.

Since we are getting questions from all over the world, we are preparing a technical recap of the event and will be posting it here soon.  We promise to answer your questions as soon as possible and want to thank you for your patience in advance.  Operation MySpace was a huge success for us and all our partners.  Believe me, we are working very hard to provide as much information about the event as quickly as we can so stay tuned.
Cheers,
Jason

We are here at the Kulabyte lab just getting ready for Operation MySpace.  I shot a short video of Blake before the event just to see he what he was feeling.  Here it is (Note: Not using Kulabyte encoding).
Kulabyte Gets Pumped For OMS

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