InBroadcast - April 2022 - 76

76
www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 12 - Issue 4 | April 2022
InForm
The Greening of Streaming
Information and communication technologies may consume a fraction of the carbon of
the aviation industry but, unlike flying, the internet is used by pretty much everyone.
As connectivity and video streaming increases so will video's share of the global
carbon footprint - by Adrian Pennington...
T
he
2021
Carbon
Trust
estimated that one hour of
video streaming emitting a
total of 50-60g of Co2. Petrol
cars emit many times that
amount
but
the climate
emergency is such that M&E
needs to do more to eliminate
carbon in the system.
" The industry is late to the party
when it comes to sustainability, " says
Remi Beaudouin, CSO, Ateme. " The
initially pure broadcast
landscape
is now turning into a multi-screen
playground where much of the focus
goes
to optimizing performance.
The first challenge is to change the
mindset and take into account the
carbon footprint of all the various
services. "
There are multiple carbon cost
for content, including
to processing
centres
production itself
(compression), delivery and display
(TV, mobile). Most
carbon cost comes from the display
side but this poses some awkward
questions: How to account for the
lifespan of content across multiple
services? How do streaming
providers
control
and
measure
a device they don't own? On the
measurement side, what
metrics?
are the
A new multi-vendor group,
Greening of Streaming, of which
Ateme is a founding member, was
recently
formed
need
to
address
the
growing concerns about the energy
impact of the streaming sector.
" We all
to contribute to
of the current
report
Carbon impact of video streaming
changing the paradigm: that
is,
choose and adopt standards whose
first driver and priority are not
engineering performance,
but
carbon footprint
reduction, " says Beaudouin.
Here are some insights
into how the industry can
measure the carbon cost of
processing and delivery. First
up, Ateme.
" Our technology
is
quite CPU
demanding. After all, compression
and
packaging are all
BitSave mimics
about
computation and CDN/caching is all
about speed and access. In other
words, Ateme's technologies provide
best-of-breed performance based on
CPU horsepower: the more we have,
the better/faster/further we will
process the video.
" We see the consequence of this
when the optimisation of solutions
(in terms
of
caching efficiency) is
processing density,
inversely
correlated with the resources that
we need. The more our solutions are
optimised, the less CPU they need,
the lower the carbon footprint is by
channel/content. "
Beyond that, Ateme aims to reduce
bitrates while maintaining pristine
images, which leads
to further
carbon reduction: " lower bitrate
means less storage, less bandwidth
required to stream, and reduced
consumption on the display device, "
he says.
Based on its analytics, Ateme can
dynamically adjust compression and
streaming to match what is strictly
needed and optimise on the enduser
device, again contributing to
carbon reduction. The firm is also are
involved in VVC, the next-gen codec
expected to divide the bitrate by half,
as well as developing Open Caching,
for Interconnected CDN.
" We're able to do all this because
we control our entire technology
stack in-house, and they
based on industry
are all
standards. As
a result, Ateme can optimize any
single step of the processing and any
step in the delivery chain to reach
maximum of performance. "
Streaming's
carbon footprint
isn't growing as fast as it has in the
past.
" The efficiency gains
of current
technologies may be unable to
keep pace with growing data
demand, " warns Sergio Grce, CEO,
iSIZE Technologies. " The industry
urgently
needs
investments
alongside ongoing efforts
in
efficient next generation computing
and communications
technologies,
to
is
based on the electricity usage of
data centres, data transmission and
devices, plus the CO2 emissions
associated
with electricity
generation. The overall footprint of
streaming video is also inextricably
linked
to how the electricity
generated.
is
While the energy
efficiency of digital technologies has
improved rapidly, more investments
in renewable energy to power data
centres and networks means the
environmental impact of streaming
ENABLING GREENER VIDEO SERVICES
Encoding
per 100 HD services
(MWh/year)
Remi Beaudouin,
Ateme
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
74
-61%
29
100
150
200
250
50
50
Market Average 2018
Ateme 2021
TITAN & NEA innovations: a huge energy reduction for OTT delivery, a two-third reduction in 3 years
while improving viewers' experience
Storage & Delivery
per 100.000h of HD video
& 100.000 peak sessions
(MWh/year)
198
-67%
65
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
Satellite Transmission
per 100 HD services
(CO2eq tons/year)
373
decarbonise the electricity supply,
if we are to reduce rising energy use
and emissions in an impactful way. "
Consumer awareness
the impact
about
of video streaming is
increasing and end-users are more
willing to choose environmentally
friendly
are hitting a
to achieve
pre-processing
solutions. However, they
also expect image quality to continue
to rise. At the same time content
streaming services
processing bottleneck
high quality at the lowest possible
bitrate.
iSIZE's
patented
technology,
BitSave, uses AI and
deep learning techniques
-67%
124
Sergio Grce,
iSIZE Technologies

http://www.inbroadcast.com https://www.isize.co https://www.carbontrust.com/resources/carbon-impact-of-video-streaming https://www.isize.co https://www.ateme.com

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