DATE: Thursday, September 22, 2011
TIME: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
PLACE: Gates 8102 - NOTE SPECIAL LOCATION

SPEAKER: Aditya Ganjam, Conviva

TITLE: Bringing Internet Video to Prime Time

ABSTRACT:
After long anticipation, Internet Video is finally going prime time. Today, Youtube and Netflix are among the most popular sites on the Internet; Olympics, World Cup, Presidential Inauguration, and world's most important events are broadcast live on the Internet; consumers can watch HBO, ESPN, and the world's premium video content over the Internet any time, any where, and on any device such as PC, Television, smart phone, and iPad.

With this growth comes higher demand on the infrastructure, higher user expectation for quality, and the need to form profitable long-lasting business around Internet video. Conviva builds and operates a video optimization platform designed to address the challenges of large scale and high quality video delivery. We argue that (a) accurate viewer centric measurement is essential to optimizing video quality, (b) optimization must also be done at the viewer level within the video player and (c) we will achieve the best results only with a real-time control plane decoupled from the data plane that has a view of the entire audience and can control the delivery at an individual viewer level. In addition, we will share some of the findings from our analysis, which shows that a large portion of the audience experiences quality problems on a regular basis and that quality does impact viewer engagement. We will also share some of the experience we have gained through deploying this platform across a number of premium video sites.

BIO:
Aditya Ganjam is the Vice President of Engineering at Conviva. Conviva optimizes video quality for premium content properties such as HBO, ESPN3, ABC, CBS, Fox. Conviva's technology has powered some of the world's largest on-line events such as Olympics, FIFA World Cup, NCAA College Basketball March Madness, Major League Baseball, and Academy Awards.

Aditya is currently responsible for leading and growing the software development team, driving the technology behind Conviva's real-time optimization platform, and developing Conviva's innovative products. Aditya is a founding member of the Conviva team and has held several key roles in engineering.II Most recently, Aditya was Conviva's Chief Architect and lead product definition, technology strategy, and new product incubation. Prior to joining Conviva, Aditya was a PhD student in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where, a member of the End System Multicast, he contributed to the building of the worlds first peer-to-peer live streaming system. Aditya also received his Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

VISTOR HOST: Hui Zhang

VISITOR COORDINATOR: Kathy McNiff (kmm@cs.cmu.edu) 8-5099

SDI / ISTC Seminar Questions?
Karen Lindenfelser, 86716, or visit www.pdl.cmu.edu/SDI/