Advanced Television

Streaming Video Alliance releases new tech specs

July 21, 2017

The Streaming Video Alliance (the Alliance), an industry forum comprised of leading companies from the online video ecosystem, has announced the immediate availability of two new technical specification documents from the Open Caching Working Group. In addition, the Open Caching Working Group has introduced a new sub group for Edge Storage, led by Western Digital. The technical specifications were ratified by the Alliance Membership earlier this week.

As part of its mission to provide the industry with specifications, best practices, and guidance for how to build and operate next-generation streaming services, the Open Caching Working Group publicly issued new specifications for Logging and Service Provisioning:

– Open Caching Logging Specification. This includes the Open Caching System (OCS) technical specifications for logging data to help track data acquisition and the delivery of it to the end user.

– Open Caching Service Provisioning Specification. This includes the functional specification of open-caching service provisioning interfaces enabling a CDN and a service provider (SP) to exchange information to enable the delegation of CDN content requests to the SP Open Caching system.

“We’re making significant progress toward educating and supporting the streaming video industry as well as putting the Alliance’s work into practice — this is another proof point in that journey,” said Jason Thibeault, Executive Director of the Streaming Video Alliance. “In addition to the new technical specifications, the Open Caching Working Group is gaining traction in the second phase of the Open Caching POC and earlier this year initiated the first Open Caching trials.”

As the Open Caching Group expands, a new subgroup has been formed. The Edge Storage Subgroup will be led by Western Digital with the goal to create the functional technical requirements for storage and optimal architecture when streaming online video.

“We are excited to lead this new Open Caching Subgroup on edge storage,” said Enosh Levi, Director, Connected Home Marketing at Western Digital. “We believe that storage at the edge of the distribution network, be it the home gateway or an end user mobile device, will be a critical component of video streaming and watching experience in the coming years. Now is the time to provide some guidance to the industry in how to architect online video solutions with edge storage components.”

Categories: Articles, CDNs, Regulation, Standards