Secure Frames (SFrames): end-to-end media encryption with #webrtc now in chrome.

A Story of three years of work, by multiple partners.

  • 12-MAY-2020: The original (2017) draft for PERC-Lite has been uploaded as an informal IETF Draft here.
  • 19-MAY-2020: A more recent and more formal version of SFrame has been uploaded as a standard track IETF draft here.

For several Years now, CoSMo has been providing end-to-end encryption solutions, from clients to media servers and more, fully webrtc compliant, to many. The most famous customer is maybe Symphony Communications, using an early modified version of PERC called PERC-lite, but there are many more using the second generation version called SFrame co-developed originally by Google, including the real-time streaming platform MilliCast.com for the customers in need of something better than DRM.

There was a catch though, it would not work in Browsers, one would have to go native only. Not a problem for most mobile apps, and DUO has been leveraging it for more than a year now, but still, less than ideal. Since last week, it is now possible to support SFrame in the browser. So the cat is out of the bag.

In this post we will give you some technical details about SFrame, how it is better than PERC’s double in terms of overhead, and provide a free, open-source working example, with an E2EE ready SFU! Obviously, it is nowhere close to the quality you can get from the full CoSMo E2EME packages, and don’t get me started on the key exchange, but it will illustrate the concept.

Continue reading

#WebRTC Jobs !

With all of CoSMo businesses growing, especially our Millicast real-time streaming platform doing 10x revenue YoY, and on track for +65% this Quarter (eq. to 7x annual), time has come again to hire.

We are duplicating our operation team, adding a Singapore Center in addition to the Existing US center based in California. As a result, we are opening a mid-level to senior Media DevOps position in Singapore, co-located with our global HQ, most of the C-Level, and the R&D team.

I took the opportunity to create a “Jobs” section in this blog. Do not hesitate to come back and visit, as we are likely to open more position as the year advance.

AV1 News – in preparation of NAB

Within AOMedia things are moving fast with the preparation for AV2 in full speed.
Outside of AOMedia, the adoption of AV1 is like a blazing fire. With the first AV1 adoption by Browser (decoder) two years ago, Netflix switching to AV1 for all content, recently on mobile as well, Hardware acceleration available for more than a year, and Real-Time codec implementations by google and Cisco, all is already on the table for success. Cisco demoed publicly real-time AV1 in webex, on a MacBook Pro in june 2019 !
With NAB around the corner, a lot of big player are positioning themselves, not only to differentiate their offer in production, but also internally to position themselves as the implementation reference for AV2. Netflix/INTEL SVT-AV1, google’s libaom, and xvc from Divideon (non-aom member)

Continue reading

Real-Time AV1 in (lib) #WebRTC m80 … ?

WebRTC M80 release notes announced for the first time some support for AV1 in #webrtc. This is the closest one gets from official announcement of support, but it is also difficult from the one-liner in the release note to understand what it is about and how to use it. This blog post will present some details on video codecs support in libwebrtc, position the m80 release in that scope and provide some visibility on the AV1 support in #webrtc timeline.

Continue reading

I want to support #WebRTC, do I really need to use google library?

WebRTC has been a magical word for the best part of the 2010 decade, starting, if we had to put a date on it, with 2011 Google IO presentation. From conversations as early as 2018, and many small signs (dropping support for official mobile release in m80 release notes), it was clear that, for Google at least, the WebRTC star itself was already the past. Still, more people depend on webRTC, or want to adopt it, today than ever. What are the options out there? How should one prepare for WebRTC in 2020?

Continue reading

WebRTC Standard Status Update Q3 2019

W3C TPAC @ fukuoka Japan, October 6 to 20, 2019

Greetings from Fukuoka, Japan – or, your essential update to all things WebRTC…

As ever year, the technical plenary meeting of the World Wide Web consortium  took place in the fall. After Lyon, the French “culinary capital”, in 2018, it was hosted this year in Fukuoka, Japan, during  the week before the first Rugby World Cup hosted by Japan.

Continue reading

Quality with Real-Time OTT media? It’s all about the feedback!

There are many that happened this week, both during IETF sessions and in the ecosystem, that troubled me enough to write a dedicated blog post. People from the streaming industry, and from the webrtc industry alike, are approaching OTT media in general, and webrtc specifically, the wrong way. It works, but it does not work well enough. It connects, it streams in perfect conditions, but it does not stream with good quality, at scale and in real-time. What is missing?

Continue reading