While most streaming technologies utilize Linear Encoding Pipelines, Microblock Technology has enabled a new breed of encoders featuring Real-Time Distributed Encoding. These encoding pipelines consist of two interlinked stages; A primary Synchronization stage, followed by a second Distributed Encoding stage.

As streams are ingested into the encoding pipeline, they first pass through the Synchronizer, which converts the source stream to a Microblock stream, where each individual Microblock represents an image frame. Each Microblock is time synchronized at the point of ingestion.

The second stage of the Encoding pipeline involves a cluster of encoding nodes, that work together to encode each individual Microblock. As Microblocks are time synchronized through the Synchronizer, the Distributing encoding Pipeline has the ability for each encoding node to take any available Microblock in the queue and process these out of sequential order, slotting Microblock’s back into alignment during the packager output phase.

Microblock enabled Real-Time Distributed Encoding represents the fastest possible achieved Encoding architecture. A major additional advantage of this architecture is that it is extremely efficient making far greater usage of existing compute resources when compared to conventional Linear Encoding Pipelines.  

This means encoders are more efficient, faster and you can support more encoding pipelines. Microblock architecture is deployed on our range of physical encoders and can also be deployed to Virtual Machines in the cloud.  

CDN’s provide a cost effective and reliable means of distributing streaming video content at scale over existing internet infrastructure. While they are generally able to serve video streaming content quickly within a geographic region, there is a limit to how fast they can serve streaming video content globally, which in turn impacts the latency delivery of content from a global perspective.

Mobii’s Co-Ordinator overcomes this challenge by distributing streaming content in Microblock format quickly from ingest regions to global edge clusters where content is then egressed to and served via regional CDN’s to Playback devices, utilizing CDN as a last mile distribution solution instead.  

This not only solves a significant global latency challenge, but also enables organizations to be strategic with the CDN distribution costs on a per region basis. This regional Multi-CDN approach enables you to use one CDN provider in a specific region and an entirely different CDN in another. This decision can be driven by cost/performance factors in each specific region, enabling significant cost savings, without impacting streaming performance

Many low latency solutions use proprietary streaming output formats that require you to adopt their specific video player and/or pay royalties to play their streaming outputs. With Mobii, this changes, you can achieve sub-1 second latency, rivalling WebRTC, in the player control of your choice.  This is because we fixed the problem in the pipeline before it got to the CDN, and we generate normal CMAF (MPEG-Dash / HLS) that works seamlessly in all major players. We also provide our customers with a free to use, highly configurable player control that they can use in their web and mobile applications. There would be two considerations for when this is required:

While we generate frame synchronized video streams that you can implement with the player control of your choice, this usually requires development effort. Mobii provides a free to use embeddable video player that has already being customized to play back synchronized multi-stream video, enable slow motion and frame-step control, as well as overlay interactive data that is in perfect sync with your video.

With MPEG-Dash, Mobii can achieve an End-to-End latency of less than 1 second. MPEG-Dash has the advantage of being compatible on every playback device, except iOS devices which instead require HLS.

HLS, however, is limited by the Apple HLS Spec and although the stream is delivered with a sub-1 second latency to a player control, video players on iOS will hand over to the OS and play the HLS stream at 3x the segment size. HLS playback within a browser is therefore generally limited to a 3 second latency when streaming a 1 second segment size. While some video players have implemented a custom Community HLS spec to work around HLS playback on other devices, these do not solve playback on iOS devices themselves.

For customers that require ultra-low latency HLS playback on iOS devices, Mobii has overcome this latency barrier with a specific iOS video player that can be freely utilized in iOS apps by our customers, meaning that browsers can use device detection to hand-over to the player control and achieve ultra-low latency playback.

Cable/Satellite broadcast currently achieves a latency of approximately 4-6 seconds, while live video streaming is significantly delayed by 15 – 45 seconds. This makes it difficult to offer an equivalent experience to viewers on both platforms and inhibits the ability to leverage video streaming as a primary means of consumption by subscribers.

With Microblock Technology, we achieve sub-1 second latency, which means that we can deliver a live video stream faster than cable/satellite broadcasting. What it also means is that we have the ability to slow down our video stream and align this with the cable/satellite broadcast to enable broadcasters to leave no viewer behind, offering an equivalent viewing experience to all viewers, regardless of whether they consume content via cable/satellite or live video streaming.

Every video streaming platform today is simply an extension of traditional cable/satellite broadcasting, it’s the same linear, passive experience, just digital and with substantial latency delay.

Offer your viewers more than just a passive linear experience. Mobii enables you to deliver multiple video streams with perfect synchronization, allowing your viewers to “direct their own experience” and be more active in their consumption of content.

Transition between video streams without buffering and offer viewers a unique viewing experience by enabling them to change their viewing experience in real-time.

High Video streaming latency means that it’s difficult to create interactive data overlays. For example, in a sports game with a scoring event taking place, the score would update before viewers see the event occurs in the video stream.

For this reason, live video streaming today is limited in following processes found in traditional cable/satellite broadcasts, where static overlays are encoded into the video stream.

Mobii’s ability to achieve sub-1 second latency and its ability to perfectly frame synchronize video streams means that broadcasters can now leverage interactive data overlays in their live video streaming broadcast, where live data is synced to live video streams.

This opens the opportunity to create a more immersive viewing experience where interactive overlays can be tailored to different fan persona, that they themselves can engage with and view based on how they would like to experience the live video stream.  

While Mobii has ready to use overlays for specific event types, broadcasters can create and build their own or integrate with interactive overlays from Singular Live to build out their own unique offerings.

By delivering a smooth fragmented stream to player controls, we enable broadcasters to extend the functionality of their player controls. Viewers can replay events instantly with slow-motion replay, frame-step control across every available synchronized video stream. Video plays instantly without buffering, creating an unrivaled quality viewing experience.