The Future Is Real Time, and It Starts Now
We're on the precipice (aren't we always, in this streaming world?)的先进的实时协作和传统的视频工作流程与新的融合, real-time tools. Last night, 我在西雅图的一家酒店房间里，用手机的LTE热点为我的一个客户进行直播. All of the tech hurdles were anticipated, and contingencies were planned. 我不打算在我的笔记本电脑上做一个传统的视频开关，也不打算在我的工作室办公室里使用专用的视频开关硬件. We set up an Amazon Web Services (AWS) instance running Windows 11 and vMix, controlling the instance via Microsoft Remote Desktop. Thankfully, I didn't need more than a couple of megabits up and down, as the AWS instance was doing all the heavy lifting, and the 2-hour event was a success.
那么，在这个“COVID及以后”时代，“实时”在哪里以及如何适应您的工作流程? Similar to global wars accelerating advances in medicine such as plastic surgery, COVID has pushed all of us working in streaming media to rethink, innovate, optimise, and rebuild many components of our day-to-day responsibilities.
And the big players are recognising it too. Adobe just announced a $1.275 billion acquisition of Frame.io, a video editing collaboration service. 去年，Verizon以4亿美元收购了实时会议平台BlueJeans Network. This summer, Zoom added NDI support to its desktop conferencing apps, 允许远程贡献者馈送到任何支持ndi的视频切换器中，以便更轻松地共享. Real-streaming CDNs such as Millicast, nanocosmos, Frozen Mountain, 和Wowza流媒体云的发展速度比以往任何时候都要快，并且不断增加新功能来满足客户的需求. The list goes on and on. 在过去的18个月里，我很难记录有多少人向我寻求关于构建新的实时协作工具或通过注入实时数据来增强现有系统的建议.
As you and your company's services evolve, 记住，你不需要专注于快速出售你的公司，因为自从“。com”商业世界开始以来，很多人都试图这样做. 不需要筹集数百万美元，把几乎所有的钱都投入到R中，就能赚到真正的美元&D. If you're reading this column, chances are, 您现有的客户端和服务可以从实时协作或数据服务的某些方面获益. 虽然我已经写了其他专栏讨论项目规划和技术开发的“构建或购买”方法, here's my short list of important factors to consider for real-time development:
- Open source isn't "free." While there are many open source codebases to enable real-time applications, such as FFmpeg and Janus WebRTC Server, 你需要有开发人员才能让这些工具与你自己的服务协同工作. 如果你的开发团队不熟悉WebRTC的考验和磨难，你就不可能在30天内使用开源启动一项新服务, video and audio codec transcoding, and so on.
- Utilise existing real-time services from other vendors. 大多数实时流cdn都有意构建自己的平台来满足客户的广泛业务需求. 而一些每月企业服务的价格标签对于小型或初创企业来说似乎过高, 你每月订阅的所有东西都有很多可说的:软件开发工具包, application programming interface documentation, support services, and tech stack management.
- The cloud is diverse and not a singular entity. 诚然，我和我的团队执行的绝大多数云开发都是在AWS上进行的. But there are many companies that may offer cheaper hosted services and servers, such as Google Compute Engine, Microsoft Azure, DigitalOcean, Liquid Web, Vultr, and more. 一定要探索最“物有所值”的方法，以扩大你的开发成本.
- Develop a long-term road map.I can't emphasise this last point enough. 我的许多单一利益相关者客户认为他们需要从第一天起就拥有他们想要的所有知识产权, 我坚信这对大多数小企业和初创公司来说是不切实际的，几乎是不可能实现的. 将新服务的概念验证(PoC)作为路线图的第一阶段启动并运行, utilising whatever resources are readily available, and have as many “knowns” (vs. “unknowns”) as possible. After you've got the PoC done, 进入第二阶段，定义你的MVP(最小可行产品)，以便尽快进入市场, again utilising and piggybacking other vendors' services. Then, if necessary, 建立一个接管和承担其他服务在阶段2中提供的责任的计划.
我希望你们和我一样对我们实时流媒体技术的近期和长期潜力感到兴奋.
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