Synamedia beefs video team, boosts investment in compression R&D
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Joseph O'Halloran
| 05 May 2020

Hot on the heels of signing an OEM agreement to use HPE ProLiant servers to power its solutions and further advance its video network, video software provider Synamedia has added what it claims are ground-breaking compression technologies to its portfolio alongside making a trio of senior appointments.

Explaining the rationale for the new technology, Synamedia says that with the adoption of 4K-ready devices and new broadcasting standards such as ATSC 3.0 supporting 4K and ultimately 8K streams over-the-air, its investment in compression will meet the growing need for advanced encoding technologies to deliver what it describes as ‘stunning’ low latency live experiences while optimising bandwidth.

The technological basis of the new compression solution was first previewed at IBC 2019 and is part of a programme by Synamedia to focus on driving innovation in content-adaptive encoding including the use of neural networks. The content-adaptive encoding uses automation and machine learning techniques and builds on the Synamedia digital content manager (DCM) with the smart rate control for live ABR.

Other initiatives will include new core video and audio algorithms, filtering noisy source content, and encoding optimisation. Aiming for fully autonomous deployment, Synamedia’s analytics team will aim to accelerate video network development by advancing the automation of video quality assessment and performance benchmarking.

As well as supporting established codecs including MPEG-2, AVC and HEVC, Synamedia is adding newer codecs such as AV1 and MPEG’s Versatile Video Coding codec (VVC). In April 2020 Synamedia joined the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) to advance open standards for media compression and delivery over the web using AV1, furthering Synamedia’s goal of enhancing OTT video streaming experiences at scale.

From the point of personnel, Synamedia’s compression team is now led by Jan De Cock, who has joined as director of codec development. De Cock’s career has been in the compression space, most recently at Netflix where he was manager of video and image encoding for four years. Also joining the video network business as vice president of services is John Hargrave, who was most recently CTO and COO at Zone·tv. as General Manager for Mediaroom and at Telus as national director of professional services. Rounding out the new hires, David Baranski joins as vice president of sales for video network, the Americas. Before his 18 months at Mediakind as VP of sales for US cable operators, David spent six years with encoding specialist Envivio subsequently acquired by Ericsson in 2016.