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Stories from the trenches: debugging video issues from a client’s perspective

Speaker: Pieter-Jan Speelmans (Chief Technology Officer)

Tuesday, October 24th 11:00 - 11:25 PDT

I have accumulated over a decade of experience in the realm of video player development. Interestingly, when things go awry, the knee-jerk reaction tends to be, "It must be the player's fault." However, I can reveal a spoiler: More often than not, the player isn't the culprit.

Navigating the intricacies of media can be a daunting task. This complexity is amplified when you have only a limited perspective on the entire architectural stack. Thankfully, video players often serve as the convergence point on the client side, offering a treasure trove of information that, if properly harnessed, can lead you to the root of the problem—if only you knew where to look.

Today, many companies lean heavily on analytics dashboards to pinpoint issues, which is undeniably valuable. However, in practice, we frequently encounter scenarios where these tools seem to work against us rather than for us when we're attempting to identify the root causes of problems. Another prevalent issue is the prolonged turnaround time when addressing issues in the field, particularly when dealing with specific customers, devices, or locations. This challenge becomes even more pronounced when trying to replicate issues using a reference app that lacks the genuine threading, UI, and environment. I'm going to make the case that there's no substitute for the effectiveness of interactive debugging in a live production environment.

The curious player of Benjamin Button: reverse video on the web

Speaker: Mattias Buelens (Lead Software Architect)

Tuesday, October 24th 17:10 - 17:25 PDT

The <video> element is the foundation of all video experiences on the web. Yet one key feature is still missing in most browsers: playing a video in reverse. The HTML specification defines how a negative playback rate should be handled, but only a single browser actually implemented this (thanks Safari!). This lack of support is a problem for advanced use cases, such as video editing or subtitle authoring.

In this talk, I will explore how to make a video play in reverse inside a web browser. Since a regular <video> element won’t do the trick, I’ll take control of decoding and rendering the individual frames using WebCodecs. I’ll dive deeper into some of the challenges that arise when playing in reverse, such as:
* How to keep playback smooth without stuttering.
* How to buffer enough GOPs, without stalling the hardware decoder.
* How to adapt a streaming video player’s download loop to support buffering in reverse.

4 players in a trenchcoat:

managing MultiView

Lightning Talk Speaker: Jeroen Veltmans (Software Engineer)

Wednesday, October 25th 13:40 - 14:25 PDT

A single video player on a web page is already a solved problem. However, imagine what happens if this player suddenly multiplies and should work as one entity - introducing the MultiView player! MultiView is getting increasingly popular, with use cases such as sporting events or concerts where multiple angles enhance the viewing experience.

During this talk I’ll bring you up to speed on the biggest hurdles we encountered and how we overcame them. This includes the intricacies of synchronization, API streamlining, ABR and other potential difficulties that may arise while making a MultiView player!