With a very early Chinese new year this time around, the month of January was gone before we could even realise it was around. So many good things happened though, with even more to come toward the end of the quarter, that we thought a post was overdue. Be careful, it is a short post, but on steroid, with many #webrtc news in it!

webRTC has a clear application in Gaming, AR and VR, or any immersive and interactive media app really. Stadia by google, and many other initiatives by Facebook, microsoft (mixer) and other gaming companies are perfect illustrations. However, webrtc as a media transport is just a part of the puzzle.

While cosmo with its Millicast Platform and SDKs already helps a lot adopting real-time media transport, collaboration with AR/VR hardware vendors, and game or app developers is necessary to create a full application. CoSMo has been pushing to make millicast and it’s portfolio of solutions the state of the art, by working ahead of time on e.g. AV1, or QUIC, and providing feedback plus testing capacity back to the browsers vendors and several standard committees.

These efforts translated in a few high-visibility partnerships with e.g. with INTEL, through the Intel Innovators program, and by the Infocomm Media Development authority (the government agency in charge of internet infrastructure and content in Singapore), through the SPARK program, last year.

We are happy to announce that CoSMo has been accepted in the PIXEL innovation space, a 25,000 sqf space reserved for selected Infocomm and Media (ICM) industry companies. By the time you read this post, we will have already move our Singapore HQ there. Timing couldn’t be better as our previous building will be teared down in April. Most importantly, moving to PIXEL will provide us with the opportunity to bring Webrtc expertise to the other ICM companies present there, and to benefits from theirs, all with the generous support of the Singaporean government.

This is the perfect opportunity to also announce officially what many at AOMedia knew, and a lot outside guessed: after the great job done on WebRTC testing with KITE, specifically on simulcast testing, and early work on Real Time AV1 implementation in libwebrtc, Google has now engaged CoSMo to provide a compliant webrtc SFU implementation, and tests for AV1 in chrome. The goal being to accelerate and improve the quality of implementation of real-Time AV1 (with SVC) in Chrome. The tests of decoding targets, and layers manipulations in an SFU is a special focus of the 6 months project.

Beyond the already announced AV1 effort there will be a specific push on AR, especially on data/media synchronisation, and on immersive technology, with a focus on hardware acceleration support. There will be more announcements on the later subjects around mid-march (IETF In Vancouver) and mid-April (Thai New Year: Songkran festival).

This will be done in parallel with an effort to raise the quality of the media over WebRTC. Expect surround sound (5.1 and 6.1), expect 10bits / HDR video, as well as of course the bandwidth saving for you and your own customers thanks to VP9 and later AV1, all in real-time.

In parallel with this move, our Millicast real-time streaming platform is enjoying a great growth, and we felt the need now to create an operation and support team here in Singapore, in addition to the American team based in L.A. Given the time zone difference, adding this center would greatly help providing better support to our growing base of customers. If you want to join a team of experts in a growing company co-located with other fantastic gaming and media design companies, contact us, we are hiring.