Transitioning from 2018 to 2019
For GPAC Licensing 2018 has been an excellent business year. And 2019 looks even better! Our reading grid of the market got right ; therefore our R&D efforts paid:
- ATSC3 monitoring: our novel approach got awarded at NAB. We hope to push this technology further as we think it has more applications than just multimedia, in particular security. Conformance and Security is still in their infancy and most implementations are easily breakable.
- Multimedia custom tools: our Signals modular platform served many applications during the Soccer Worldcup. Molotov also communicated at the Paris Video Tech conference about how GPAC Signals helped them build their custom "Tabatha" encoder to power half of the streams to their 6.6 million users. We plan to tell you more soon on our mailing-list (you can subscribe at the bottom of this page).
- GPAC: the project kept on contributing at the MPEG standardization body but also on AOM, allowing sponsorships by new companies like Netflix for some VP9 and AV1 support. We think the debate on MP4 for distribution is over and we hope to make it a reality for both production and archiving.
- VR: we got some funding on both Social VR and Accessibility in VR. These technologies are not ready for a public audience deployment but they already push the technology at its limit. VR is the future, the question is "when?".
Motion Spell's CEO Romain Bouqueau holding the ATSC3 innovation award.
Our analysis also goes beyond our own business:
- Privacy: 2018 raised this subject we care about. We hope people will educate themselves and help build a free Internet, not only a platform for the GAFAMs.
- Craftmanship: 2018 proved us that the craftsmanship concept is a reality that can fit our industry. Many of our customers expressed the will to work with small specialized team to produce small specialized tool. We also license you our code so that you don't depend on us after software has been delivered - a combination that mixes the best of the open and proprietary worlds.
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Data at scale:
- IA is everywhere but it covers so many concepts: deepfake contents, chat bots, self-driven cars... We are sure IA has still much to bring to humanity.
- Blockchains don't scale. Blockchain verification costs, whether for the blockchain transactions or for proofs (e.g. "smart contracts") seem too high. This led to the creation of many distributed ledgers to address specific needs.
- Security. Projections are less apocalyptic than the last years. However the bad guys are ahead of the good guys. The software we design is full of protocols or parsers that offer a wide surface for attacks.
- Maturity of the media industry: technology advances are not disruptive enough so that end-users upgrade their equipment anymore. Our industry should size down. Some events such as IBC have started to aggregate their audience without providing the necessary infrastructure to highlight the show. At the same time the NAB Show has more positively evolved and the mediatech economy in the US is thriving.
All the best for you in 2019! We are looking forward to read about you and your projects.
The Motion Spell team
