January 2, 2025 • 56 mins
Discover the journey of JP Saibene, co-founder of Qualabs, as he reveals what it takes to build a tech powerhouse from humble beginnings in Uruguay. With a background in video technology and telecom engineering, JP shares his experience of expanding a local company into a global player with over 100 professionals. Gain insights into the trials and triumphs of entering the global market, especially the U.S., and how a passion for video technology propelled their continuous innovation. Listen as JP emphasizes the importance of authenticity over marketing hype and the real value of creating products that genuinely solve industry problems.
Join us as we explore the challenges technical founders face when shifting from product development to sales. JP discusses his experiences at major industry events like NAB and IBC, revealing the lessons learned from connecting with global peers. This episode offers a deep dive into the world of video tech and entrepreneurship, illustrating the perseverance needed to succeed in a competitive market. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned tech professional, JP's story is sure to inspire and inform, providing a firsthand look at the intersection of technology and business growth.
Stay tuned for more in-depth insights on video technology, trends, and practical applications. Subscribe to Voices of Video: Inside the Tech for exclusive, hands-on knowledge from the experts. For more resources, visit Voices of Video.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Voices of Video.
Voices of Video.
Voices of Video.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Voices of Video.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Without further ado, I want to welcome JP, jp Sibeni
from Qualab.
So hey, jp, welcome to Voicesof Video.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Thank you so much, mark, so happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yeah, it's great, we're really happy to have you
on the show.
And you know, you and Iconnected, I guess probably a
year and a half ago or so, andin reality I think we were
always you know sort of you knowshaking hands and exchanging
pleasantries at various cocktailparties right Through the
industry.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Totally, that's what the industry is about, yeah
that's right.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
That's right.
Yeah Well, you are a verysocial person.
You always have a huge smile onyour face, social person, you
always have a huge smile on yourface and you know, so I can
always find you.
At any event, you know wherever, it's great.
But no, in all seriousness, youknow we connected about a year
and a half ago over, you know,some development work that your
(01:20):
team was doing with a partner ofNetEnt and, as a result, we got
to know a fair amount about whoyour company is, and I made a
mental note we need to have themon the show and let them tell
their story.
So here we are, so it's greatto have you.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Thank you so much, Mark, and actually I would say
exactly the same about you.
You're everywhere.
It's impossible to go to NAV,IVC, CES, whatever industry or
trade show we go.
You're there Also, smiling andbitching about encoding.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Talking about video.
Good, well, you know, let'sdive in and start with.
Tell us about Qualabs.
You know, tell us about thecompany, the.
You know the founding story,what your journey has been, and
let's start there.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Awesome.
So actually, my journey videostarted about 15 years ago, when
I was just getting out ofengineering school and I worked
for 80 years at a local companyhere in Uruguay.
I'm based in Uruguay, southAmerica.
That's why I drink mate.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And seven years ago, after being an engineering
manager for several yearsbuilding all sort of technology,
from broadcast, multicast, DVVheadings and monitoring systems,
and then streaming andplatforms and OBPs, then,
(03:01):
together with Nico, we decidedto found Qualabs Seven years
back.
We started being three of us atthe beginning.
Well, it's been such a journey.
Let's say we have a strongbackground in video tech and
software engineering.
I'm not a software engineer,I'm a telecom engineer, software
(03:25):
engineer and I'm a telecomengineer and.
But we identified that therewas like a growing need of a
moving video and mediatechnologies into.
Uh, with the software.
There was a growing marketthere and but the the uruguayan
market was so small.
You're why we're only threemillion people, so you can
imagine it's not enough for amarket.
So we have to look for to therest of the world immediately.
(03:47):
If not, we would be like what?
Three, four people in thecompany?
Yeah, and well, it's, it's beena journey.
Um, we're mostly based inuruguay.
We have some people in argentinatoo and now we have over 100
people working, uh, from herefrom south america, but mostly
(04:10):
working globally, primarily tothe us.
Um, and actually how it's beena challenge to to get into a
market because we were likelocals and we had no access to
the industry you mentioned.
I had never been to nab ibcamazing, maxed my high video
before, so it was like it's huge, you know, um, yeah, it's, it's
(04:34):
always amazing.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
so I I've been, you know, I feel really honored, um,
throughout my career to haveworked really almost exclusively
with technical founders,generally engineers or very
heavy, we would say, productpeople, and I really enjoy that.
I love it because it puts youclosest to the center of where
(04:57):
the real stuff is.
It's not marketing hype andfluff and hand-waving, it's like
they're building real products.
But everybody has the samechallenge because a lot of times
the founders that I've workedwith throughout the years and
(05:17):
supported were sometimes in muchlarger organizations and they
were quite removed from what ittakes to actually then sell.
Because at the end of the dayyou can be the very best team or
you can build the best product,the best solution, etc.
But if you don't have a marketfor it, if you don't find a
(05:38):
market, if you don't develop amarket, unfortunately the best
doesn't just win automatically,you know.
And so it's a real fascinatingjourney.
I'm sure we could probably do awhole nother podcast of what
it's been like being an engineerand then you know, dare I say,
(05:58):
sort of learning the sales andthe marketing and the business
side.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
That's probably quite an interesting conversation
definitely and and we've seen, Ithink we've navigated different
um market changes, because in2021, that's right yeah, you
recall like it was all video,like 2020, like video was going
to be the the only thing left.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
We were going to be a full remote yeah, yeah, we were
all going to just stay in ourhouses, never leave.
Food was going to be deliveredto us and we were just going to
like interact with the worldthrough video screens.
I remember, and that's how westarted growing.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
We grew like from from 10 to 50 people in a couple
of years, just because, wow,we're saying I need to launch
these new, I need to launchapplication for move to the
cloud.
For these we need to scale tomillions.
Everyone was doing everything.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Yeah, okay, so we just lost Juan Pablo.
He will come back.
Looks like a quick littletechnical glitch there, so I
will improvise.
Hey, there we go, you're backall right, perfect.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
You know this is part of the technical challenges,
for some reason.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
That's right, that's right and and, by the way, less
somebody you know say well, theinternet must not be that good
wherever jp is.
That's not the case, we canassure you.
There's just some configurationissue.
We've been trying to get to thebottom of it, but anyway.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Actually, Uruguay is the fourth country in the world
in mobile Internet speed.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, amazing, amazing, and you know I love.
So we're going to get back.
You know I'm not going to takethis over because I want you to
finish your story, but I justlove a couple things and you
know.
First number one you come froma small market and yet you're
(07:54):
dealing with global leaders.
I love that, you know.
I love it because there's soyou know there's so much.
I guess you could say almostlike assumption that oh, if you
want to go to the biggestmarkets, you know like, say,
america, or, you know, westernEurope or and, and, by the way,
latin America is a very bigmarket.
So.
But the point is, you know, ifyou want to go to some of these
markets, you kind of have to bethere or have come from there,
(08:17):
and yet you know you come from,like you say, a very small
market and yet you're servicingall these massive players in
these big markets.
I love it, I, I really lovethat.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
so that's cool and and actually that's thanks to
these great community we have,that they have embraced us
because they've let us in as ifwe were part of it, like yeah,
yeah, we do travel a lot and weare there all the time and
events and so.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
But yeah everybody's so welcoming, so yeah, yeah, so,
um, so tell us then, let youknow.
Let's get back to the story.
So you, you started with threeyourself and essentially two
other, I guess, co-founders.
Uh, in 2017, um, sounds likeduring the pandemic, you know,
(09:05):
went from you said 10 to 50, andthat was 21 to 22.
Was that roughly the time span?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
It was mostly that, and then we grew to 100, even in
2023.
Sorry, by the end of 2022, butthen 2023 and 2024 have been
rough, yeah, and we've seen sortof a shift in the market, yeah.
So we kind of consolidated inlarger clients, either in video
technology companies or liketechnology vendors, or in media
(09:38):
entertainment.
We're working with some of thelargest streaming and
broadcasters in the worldlargest streaming and
broadcasters in the world.
But mostly, the shift we see isthat if we had the same clients
in 2021, we would be a thousandpeople.
They would be buildingeverything, and now everyone's
taking care about profitabilityand making things that have an
(09:58):
impact in the next quarter.
So it is, yeah, it's been ashift, but thankfully we're
working in innovation andproduct development and
engineering with quiteinteresting companies and
projects.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
You hinted at the fact that, like you said, during
that video internet streamingfrenzy era the, you know, 2021,
22,.
It sounds like you werebuilding like full solutions,
(10:35):
maybe even like end to end.
Now you're maybe buildingportions.
Can you describe, like whatyour projects look like today,
what you're being called in todo and why, why companies are
calling you and not, you know,building it themselves or even
buying commercial solutions?
Because I think that's alsoalways a consideration, right,
(10:58):
you know, do we build or buy?
And if we're going to build it,do we use our internal team or
use an outside external teamlike yourself, like Qual Labs?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Excellent, yeah, so it's a great question actually.
And so in what we specialize,we do software engineering and
product engineering around videotechnology.
So we do backend and platformengineering, we do frontend and
client-side applications, we docloud infrastructure and devops,
we do data engineering and andvdr and d, but always around
(11:34):
media workforce and streaming.
I would say we specialize fromthe content to the consumer.
So we're not like in theproduction side of things, like
that's not our expertise, butyeah, we do work in so many
different platforms with becausewe we build cms, we build
security systems, delivery, wework on on encoding and
(11:54):
processing with like we work inall the chain, and so normally
video technology companies callus when they need to augment
their engineering with the teamsthat might specialize in one of
these areas but that haveexpertise in video.
So it's that not just softwareengineering, it's software
engineers that know about video,and also, I think it's we're
(12:20):
not just selling hours, wereally focus on teams and I
think that's what makes usdifferent from a software
engineering standpoint.
We focus a lot on and I thinkthat's a challenge in the
software industry as a whole andnot just in video it's that at
some point everyone neededresources and treated people as
(12:40):
resources and started sayinglike you were like players and
that you want to senior, theseand this yeah full stack these
yeahand we've seen that we can
complement each other way betterif we build teams, and that's
where we focus on building teams.
For that, the reason have haveburied a long time.
So at the beginning, everyonewas saying we need more
(13:02):
resources and we don't haveenough.
Yeah, and now it's been morelike either needing flexibility,
with changing priorities allthe time, bringing in and hiring
I don't know React Nativespecialists to build
applications, and then you don'tknow if React Native is going
to be there in two years.
Or you need people that knowthese or that, and the same
(13:23):
happens in data and DevOps andeverything you know.
Everyone was moving to thecloud.
Everyone's going back from thecloud.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, and now people are actually moving off the
cloud, or at least they wouldlike to.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yes or doing hybrid.
I'm going to do some stuff inthe cloud in the edge, some
stuff on-prem, so you need andyou cannot hire and fire people
all the time.
So companies are tending tohave this changing environment
like a core team, and then thestaff around the edge.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
They tend to outsource it.
So does this mean that youtypically, once you begin to
engage with a company, you'reworking beyond just that initial
engagement or project?
Do you work with your companiesfor like a long time or do you
do kind of more project-basedcome in, you know, deliver
something, and then you knowyou're done and you move on work
(14:14):
with someone else?
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yeah, no, I'd say that 90% of our work is more
like long-term engagements, liketeams that might shift the
composition, might shift thepriorities.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Sure, sure, sure Again, based on the needs of
that client and what theirpriorities are.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Right, yeah, exactly so even some companies we have
like what we call pools, whichis a set of teams three, four
teams Because what they know forsure for the year is not the
priorities, they know the budget, yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
So they know I have this amount of money to spend.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
This is my, my, my burn rate.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
But they may even change from quarter to quarter,
like the priorities, thetechnologies, and sure that's
what we do.
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Several clients that have been there three, four
years already.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Amazing.
Yeah, let me ask you a question.
I'm curious your perspective.
We went through an era whereengineering teams bulked up and
I like to call it again.
I spend a lot of time in kindof the startup side of the
ecosystem, which means that Ihave a lot of exposure to
companies that are generallyventure funded, even private
equity, but you know kind ofventure money, and so during the
zero interest rate period youknow the Zerp era, as we like to
call it in Silicon Valley itwas easy to go out there and
build huge teams and there was,and there were, some very good
reasons to do that.
There also was, I think now wecan look back and see a lot of
over building.
(15:51):
You know people.
You know the engineeringmanagers wanted 25 people
because that's better than 12,right, meaning a lot of teams
bulked up, maybe bigger thanthey should have.
Is that still the case?
Or have those teams been pairedback, and are those teams still
(16:16):
doing engineering work, or arethey more or less doing some
internal projects but thencoordinating with firms like
yourself, like you know what'shappening.
So what do you see happening?
Speaker 2 (16:29):
It's interesting and actually that's that's a big
shift we've seen from 2022 to 23and four, and I don't know if
we're going to have a new serpera in three or four years and
maybe we're back in this crazyexactly, yeah, yeah and then
free money, but um yeah, freemoney yeah, but there's no free
(16:52):
money now there's no free money,no free lunch.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
no for lunch, yeah for anyone.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
And we've seen two shifts.
One is engineering versussoftware development.
Previously everyone was talkingabout software development and
about stacks.
We need more React people, weneed more Java people, we need
more.
They needed builders only, andnow they need engineers because
(17:18):
they're refocusing.
So it's not that we're doingthe new UI thing, the new data
thing and they need 100 peoplebuilding all that.
They're definitely focusing onsmaller teams, focused teams,
more capable teams and actuallythat's a differentiator for us
compared to, I don't know, themassive Asian low cost
(17:42):
outsourcing development houses.
We don't do that, we cannotcompete with that, with our
costs.
We're engineering house.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yes, yes.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
And and also, yeah, what we're seeing is that
everyone's so conscious abouthow they're building and that's
why I say that we're growing inthe size of the companies we
work for.
We're working with the Fortune500 companies at the moment, yet
they're not buying 100engineers, they're buying like
five for the three.
(18:11):
Let's build a data platformit's four engineers.
Let's build a workflow it'sthree engineers, it's not 25 as
before.
I hope that time's not comingback, because that seemed crazy
too, because then they had allthese overhead because they
needed the project manager andthe scrum master and the and the
coordinator and the.
Yeah, you know, and all theoverhead a lot of overhead.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Yeah, it's super interesting.
I am a student, I think I wouldsay, of product management and
you know, of course I spend mytime really on the marketing
side.
But I believe that you can havethe very best marketing
initiatives and if your productisn't good or if it's not what
(18:58):
the market needs, then none ofit matters.
You know, interestingly enough,conversely with an amazing
product, you can barely know howto sell it and barely know how
to market, and you'll besuccessful.
It's pretty interesting.
So, at the end of the day, youknow, product is crucial, is
absolutely everything, andthere's a, there also was a
(19:19):
trend on the product side, andI'm talking about, you know,
kind of larger tech orgs.
So you know, smaller,medium-sized companies never had
this luxury.
But you know, you wouldliterally have a senior product
manager, you would have anassociate product manager.
You would have like to supportthat person.
You might have two or three orfour people and they all I mean
(19:40):
everybody had their little roleand it just it.
What it led to was a lot of bulk, a lot of inefficiency, a lot
of lack of decision and, frankly, it just moved the product
further away from the market,from the real user.
And that's why in some cases,we, you know, we can all think
of examples where something wasbuilt and you scratch your head
(20:02):
and go how could they have builtthat?
Like, that's not what themarket needed.
They did a wonderful job, theybuilt an amazing, but the
solution's not what the marketneeded.
So so I think getting lean yeah, getting lean is a good thing.
So go ahead.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Definitely.
And I said that's something,that's something that that uh
surprised us when we startedworking in the industry because,
uh, we came from working for anoperator, so we operated a
satellite and cable andstreaming network yeah and so so
we actually had built solutionsfor ourselves, but actually
based on our own pains, sure.
And then when we started workingfor for technology companies,
(20:41):
we we met, uh, we actuallystarted working at the beginning
for our own previous vendors.
That's the people we knew, yeah, like previous vendors, and and
, uh, um, I was surprised thatnone of their in product
engineers, engineering managers,had ever used their product,
even didn't even know how theirproduct was used by the clients.
I know, like we were givingfeedback all the time about the
(21:03):
pain points we had previouslybecause, yeah, they, like
someone from support, hadtickets that was given to the
product manager that actuallyhad the product owner, was
processing from a roadmap and atsome point it got to an
engineer like you got to buildthis feature, but didn.
I didn't know why.
What the client needed, likethey have poor visibility, so
disconnected, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Yeah, yeah, I, I so.
So we're going to move pastthis, but I actually you know
this subject of, like you know,a product in the business side,
but I really love the fact thatwe've spent you know 20 minutes
or so talking about this, andhere's why, because we're
hitting on.
I really hope for the listenersthat you consider carefully
(21:49):
what we've just said, and thatis that there are too many
things being built in ourindustry, in the market, that do
not solve real pains, and wehear the expression a lot I hear
it anyway of it's a solutionlooking for a problem.
(22:10):
Well, let me tell you, asolution looking for a problem
is a failed product andultimately, probably a failed
company, just plain and simple.
There's no easy way to put it.
So it doesn't matter how coolthat solution is.
If it truly is a solutionlooking for a problem, it's
failed.
And I see there's actually aquestion in the chat that I'm
(22:32):
going to sort of answer, butmaybe we'll loop back around to
it, and the question was someonejust asked it when do you think
this shift in the market willend?
I am assuming, just based onthe time that the question was
entered in the chat and where wewere that you know they're sort
of talking about this shiftfrom the go-go era to the, you
(22:56):
know, to the more lean era, andcertainly companies, you know,
pulling back their investment inR&D and engineering, et cetera,
et cetera.
So I'm going to assume thatthat's the shift this person's
talking about and I have to saythat, obviously, you know, we
all hope and you know, dependingon the part of the world you're
(23:19):
in, it really is a tale of twokingdoms.
It feels like when you talkabout the economy.
So there's certain markets,certain industries that maybe
you can't say they're absolutelybooming, but they're doing well
, they're certainly more thansurviving, and there's others
(23:39):
that are really struggling.
So I always have to put thatout there when I'm asked this
question.
But the fact is is that therehas been a slowdown.
But I really think that thereis an element of this slowdown
that we are not going to go backto the previous era Because, as
referenced, there was a lot ofbulking up, there was a lot of
(24:01):
building big teams because, justcandidly, people wanted big
teams.
I want to be able to feel proudthat my group is 200 people when
in reality it probably shouldbe 35.
I mean, that's just the reality.
But it makes me feel better asa manager, et cetera, as an
(24:22):
executive, to say I've got 200people in this org or that org
or in this team and that team,and so there's that element, and
I do not believe that we'regoing to go back just suddenly
to bulking up.
Justification for resources iskind of never going to go away.
But related to that is thatthen, as a result, there were a
(24:45):
lot of products being built thatwere solutions, looking for a
problem, because, hey, you'vegot to keep these 200 people
busy, right, they need to bedoing something.
We're paying them, we're payingthem well, so let's put them to
work.
And so then what happened was,especially on the vendor side,
the market just began to getflooded with either a lot of me
(25:05):
too products, a lot of productsthat just simply didn't really
get to the to, to the real coreneed of the market.
And so, consequently, whenthere was cash flowing down the
street, you could, you couldsell some of those.
Because there was cash flowingdown the street, people like, ah
of those, because there's cashflowing down the street, people
are like, oh, I don't know,there's this one feature that
looks kind of cool.
All right, let's buy it Now,when there's not cash flowing
(25:28):
down the street.
I mean, it's just the lightswitch is turned off on selling
any of those.
So I don't know if you have areaction, jp, to what I just
said.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I totally agree and my personal wish is that it kind
of stays that way, knowing theslow down, because I know that's
impacted a lot of people intheir jobs, but really to the,
let's build something reallyvaluable.
Yeah, because I think there wasa trend in the market to just
build everything.
Yeah, and maybe if I go back toIBC 2017, 18, 19, and I see now
(26:02):
there used to be like one trendBecause in 2018, everyone was
building the OTT apps.
Yes, Like do we need 85companies building OTT apps for
smart TVs Do we Like?
is there a market for that?
Or is it that people have asolution and looking for a
problem and now you go and it'sdifficult now to find.
(26:22):
Like one trend, like one thing.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Yeah, the trend is now profitability.
That's a good trend yeah,that's a good, I know.
And isn't it weird that we haveto say, oh, this is a trend
like hold on, isn't it?
And you know you're a businessowner, you know you're a founder
, so hey, at the end of the day,you are.
So hey, at the end of the day,you are for profit At the end of
the day.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
But I think it is also because of the purpose
companies have in the industry.
We exist in the market as anorganization to create value.
So we've got to have someresources and build something
more valuable.
Yeah, If we're just spendingmore than what we make in the
long term, then we're destroyingvalue actually.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
Okay, well, this leads perfectinto something I can't wait for
you to talk about.
So you really invest in theindustry and community, and I
would love for you to talk abouta couple, a couple initiatives
that you guys are leading anddriving.
So tell, tell us about whatyou're doing to build the tech
(27:30):
community and, yeah, Definitely.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
And so so you know, we we really depend on on, for
the business we do we reallydepend on on trust and business
we do.
We really depend on trust fromothers because it's difficult
for us to show the value of ourwork, product and service before
.
So we have a strong presence inthe industry through our
(27:54):
community that actuallyvalidates our work.
It's a way for us to show whatwe do because, of course, most
of the work we do is NDAprotected work.
It's a way for us to show whatwe do because, of course, most
of the work we do is nbaprotected.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
It's confidential exactly, by definition, you
can't talk about it, so yeahyeah, and that's part of the
reason why they hire us.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
That yeah, talking about what we do, and the
internals but we've got to showwhat we're able to do.
So, uh, in 2019 we started withthe monte video technique uh
community, this one.
You see the logo here.
Yeah, actually it's coolbecause the cd name monte video
has video name and we haven'tfound other cities with the
video in the name.
Actually, it was inspired by sanfrancisco video tech and all
(28:32):
the other meetups, and then westarted like shifting and
creating our own events.
We have meetups that focus onthe technical challenges.
Actually, today we have one topresent the summer project.
I think it's at 6 pm, uruguaytime.
It's 5 pm East Awesome.
But then we started having themate talks.
(28:55):
Mate, is this what we drinkhere?
It's like a round table, likewhat we're doing now, but
instead of one person it's around table for industry experts
to discuss issues fromdifferent angles.
And maybe our I think our mosticonic event we do once a year,
it's the Montevideo Tech SummerCamp.
(29:16):
It's happening in January, lastweek of January, next year,
2025, 2025, which is your summer, our summer?
Speaker 1 (29:26):
yeah, exactly, exactly.
So for now, you know, I'm inarizona, so actually january is
like heaven here.
But um, for those who livefurther north, uh, they would be
very happy to escape the snowand go somewhere where it's warm
and beautiful.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
So it's a mix of two things.
One is the summer week thatit's actually in your Y in
person.
We host industry experts andpeople from different angles.
It's people from operations,from technology, from product.
They come for a week and it'sabout collaboration.
It's also about, of course,getting to know your why,
(30:03):
getting to know our team.
Of course, it's also good forour team to get to know people
from the industry.
But then we have the summerprojects, which is a way to
bring together industry leadersto work on open source
initiatives, and we invest on onsome of our engineering teams
to actually work on the twoprojects that the community
chose.
So today we're presenting 12different ideas we got from
(30:27):
different industry leaders.
Like the ideas go from, I'd say, from continuing to work on the
CMCD there's a player work.
There's also work around MOQ.
Like, the ideas are various andwhat we choose is to um invest
for three months four engineersworking for free, like paid by
(30:50):
qualabs, to contribute to thoseopen source projects, and that's
how we're cool back to thecommunity.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, yeah, how cool.
So how could somebody do?
They just go to the Qual Labswebsite if they wanted to sign
up or participate or learn more.
How can somebody learn aboutthat?
Speaker 2 (31:10):
If they go to multivideotechdev.
Ah okay, okay, actually we have, and they can find us in
meetupcom with themultivideotech and they have
today's event.
They can join.
They'll see the projects we'reworking on and also, if they
want to see what we've worked.
In about 10 days we'll be inSan Francisco for DMAXed.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
And we're going to be showcasing a few demos of the
work we did in some of thepresentations.
There are going to be threepresentations that are showing
work we've done.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Yeah, amazing, amazing.
Yeah, I just I love that you'reinvesting in the community and,
at the same time, you knowyou're connecting to, like you
said, this brings people toUruguay and you know they get to
see your beautiful country andyou know experience, you know
(32:03):
the culture and the people andall that great stuff, but you're
also, you know, helping toserve to build the community,
support the community.
You're, you know you'redonating engineering resources.
You know, again, like you said,those are engineers that you're
paying, you know, out of yourpayroll, but they're actually
participating on these wideropen source, you know,
(32:25):
development efforts, which isgreat.
It's really, really amazing.
Why don't?
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Actually, everyone is open to join.
Like the idea of this opensource project, is not that only
we work?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yeah sure it's like this kind of manpower.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Everyone can collaborate on a part-time basis
, maybe as a side project fromyour job if you want to do.
There are some architecturesessions that everyone can join.
So the idea is that it's acollaborative approach to open
source and not just contributing.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah, that's right.
That's right, that's amazing.
Well, this dovetails well intoyou mentioned Demuxed and that's
coming up just in a week and ahalf or so.
I will get to see you, I willdefinitely be there.
So for any listeners, make sureyou find Juan Pablo, you know,
say hi, introduce yourself.
(33:16):
You know I'd love to meetanybody who's there.
So anyway, with that plug outof the way, you are actually
participating in twopresentations and so why don't
you tell us what you're going tobe presenting there at Demox?
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Excellent.
Actually, we're going to be inthree.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
So one is.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Koti Costanza from our team.
She's going to be presentingthe work we did for CMF Ham,
which is how you can play dashcontent on an HLS player, and
that was actually part of theSummerCamp 2024 open source
projects that we did togetherwith Zach Cava from Disney and
(33:57):
with Alex Zambelli from Dolby.
They kind of presented thatinitiative and we worked on it.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Also, there are two more presentations that we've
done, the demos for One is fromWill Law from Akamai, which I'm
sure everyone knows.
Yes, he's quite famous in theindustry, so it's his
presentation I don't want tospoil.
But it's going to be the CMCDversion 2 implementation that
(34:24):
has new operation modes andintegration with the players and
all that.
We built that as an open sourcecontribution actually to not
only be working on the spec butactually, while we build the
spec, which is still inconstruction, it's a way to
actually test it, understand thechallenges.
We build the spec, which isstill in construction.
It's a way to actually test it,understand the challenges, the
implementation challenges, theambiguities in the draft.
(34:47):
So we're building a referenceplatform while we're all working
on the spec.
And the second is on AlexGilati's presentation from
Comcast, also a very well-knownguy in the industry for.
Dashif and we work with him onsome overlays for Dash, which
(35:09):
again I think it's his idea.
It's very interesting.
On avoiding reprocessing andcosts for the reuse of VOD
assets for different lifescenarios, so it's a quite
interesting approach.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Amazing.
Yeah, yeah, it's great, yeah,really really good.
Well, jp, this has been anamazing discussion and I really
enjoyed, you know, especiallykind of the first half of it or
so, where we, you know, justreally, I think, got practical
and I would even use the wordsreal about why the industry is
(35:52):
in the state it's in need to dothat.
We can do that.
You know whether we are ICs.
You know individualcontributors working inside
these.
You know large companies, theselarge organizations.
You know, or we're managers oryou know we're.
You know, looking at strategiesand looking at how we're going
(36:15):
to build.
I think it's really helpful.
I want to transition.
We have some questions, soshould we go to some Q&A and
continue the conversation thatway?
All right, good, good, yeah.
So sometimes we get some verycreative questions and it's not
(36:36):
always easy to tell what thereal question is.
So I'm going to do my best hereand again, if you happen to
write one of these, submit oneof these questions, but we
didn't quite hit it.
You know, I know that JP isvery accessible on LinkedIn.
I'm accessible.
There's a lot of ways to get intouch with us.
You know, come introduceyourself at Demuxed or, you know
(37:00):
, the next show, so okay.
So here's a question that camein.
Scroll up here.
Okay, what can we expect fromAI in the video space, with all
of the profitability discussions?
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah, I have the same reaction.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Yeah, that's deep, let's see.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
So in general, I think and that's what every
marketer would say that I thinkAI will drive efficiencies.
It is already doing so.
I think now we're seeing itmore on the content creation
side.
There's a lot of ai applied onencoding and you know about it
(37:49):
because you you actually promoteit a lot yeah and um.
So I think there's being aiapplied in in different parts of
the workflow.
Yet in the short term andactually last year we were
really worried about it it'slike are we really um, getting
behind on falling behind on theai, innovation, um and?
(38:10):
And then we start asking all ofour clients, like what their
initiatives were in the shortterm?
How much of your budget's goingto be there?
Where are you going to investit?
Yeah, and no one was eveninvesting one percent of their
budget in a, not even by far.
I mean not the ai companies, Imean, like general companies
yeah, yeah, exactly understandso everyone has like initiatives
(38:33):
, pocs, and I'd say thatsomething similar happened many
years ago with the, when the bigdata thing came out, and then
you would go to a bank and bigdata analytics yeah, and they
had like one data guy and now,you know, data is out there.
Actually, what we're seeing inthe short term is that now
(38:55):
companies are starting to work alot on data, like now they
realize they need to grab datafrom everywhere.
So that's what we're seeing nowactually happening and
investment happening.
And I think what's happeningwith AI and profitability is
that now companies are notwilling to invest.
(39:18):
There's no free money, so noone's willing to invest.
Crazy amount of money is justto find the thing.
That's going to be the hit,like yeah, I see everyone
cautious, building pocs.
Yeah, trying to figure outwhere to put their money.
That's what I'm seeing.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
I don't know what you're seeing, mark largely the
same, and my um both you know myobservations like what I really
am seeing in the market, lineup with exactly what you just
said.
And then my personal feeling isI actually think I have a
little bit of a higherperspective is that I think that
(39:58):
the transformation and I don'twant to say, you know, is it
over the next one year, twoyears, three years, I don't know
the time horizon but the AItransformation within companies
is at the personal employee orresource level.
And so what do I mean by that?
And we could go department bydepartment.
(40:19):
Marketing is kind of an easyone, and that's the domain that
I primarily work in, so I'llstart there.
We'll talk about engineering.
So what does it mean?
Well, it means that you used toneed to have a small team of
writers If you were really goingto be producing high quality
content on a regular basis.
Now, you know, it didn't meanyou had 25 writers, but you
(40:43):
probably had two or three.
You certainly had one, and thenyou probably had some
freelancers that were supportingyou, and that was required.
Now, the reality is that,because I'm building it, we have
a very small team here atNetEnt, and people are always
amazed at the volume of contentthat we push out and the
(41:05):
assumption is wow, netin'sreally investing in marketing.
Yes, we are investing inmarketing, but not in ways maybe
people would think.
In other words, it isn't a bigteam, and what is it?
It's a handful of knowledgeablepeople who understand the
market, who are able totranslate that into prompts and
(41:27):
or into some basic contentframeworks.
That then ChatGPT, cloud, etcetera, produces incredible
content.
Okay, so the transformation.
And then you can say well, howdoes that affect profitability?
Well, it means that now I don'thave to go lobby to get an
extra writer because we'refalling behind, because we can't
(41:49):
produce enough content.
I don't have to go lobby to getan extra writer because we're
falling behind, because we can'tproduce enough content.
I don't have to do that.
In fact, if anything, you know,it's like hey, I have almost
this gas pedal and you know I'mgoing a hundred miles an hour.
I could actually go 200, but Idon't need to go 200, you know
like we can crank it up, crankit down.
And if you look at engineeringwith the co-pilots, et cetera, I
(42:13):
think that that same level oftransformation in some
organizations it's alreadybeginning or has begun.
In others maybe they're I'lluse the word lagging a little
bit, but it's 100% coming.
So it's at the individualproductivity level that
transformation is happening, youknow with AI, and then that's
(42:33):
going to get built intosolutions and obviously, over
time there is going to be realapplications where AI is applied
within a product, within asolution, within a video encoder
, you know within a transcodingpipeline, you know within a
streaming.
You know video workflow, youknow that is going to.
(42:55):
You know add value, lower cost.
You know increase performance,et cetera.
So that's my answer.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Yeah, yeah, I, I a hundred percent agree in that,
and I you're also more flexiblenow, yeah, and you're also more
flexible now, yeah, and yourcosts, yeah exactly yeah,
exactly Exactly yeah, sointeresting.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
So then the very next question, and I'm just taking
them as they came in, so thenext one.
Maybe it's the same person, Idon't actually know.
They get copied and pasted inour chat here.
They get copied and pasted inour chat here, but how do you
envision AI and next-gen codecslike AV1 transforming the
trade-offs between video quality, bandwidth and processing power
(43:38):
?
This is a good one.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
That's a good one for you more than for me.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Okay, I'll keep my answer short, yeah, so yeah,
this is a very good question andit is something you know.
For those to know me and knowthe background of various
companies I've worked for overthe years, you know that I I did
spend a period of time, youknow, working on technology that
(44:05):
was all based on taking juststandard H.264 encoded content
and making it perceptuallyidentical but reducing the file
size.
That process, you know this,was developed many, many, many
years ago and even though whatwas happening inside the
(44:26):
algorithms it was, it wassomewhat close to machine
learning, but you know it wasn't.
You know it definitely was notAI, and the way that we think
about it the point is, thereason why I give that reference
is that we found ourselves inthe market quite often making
the case that you didn'tnecessarily have to go to these
(44:48):
more advanced codecs.
You could use a standard thatyour pipeline already supported,
your player ecosystem alreadysupported, but you could get, if
not all of the benefits, youcould get a lot of the benefits
of the bit rate reduction.
So this idea that AI could takeH.264 or HEVC or even AV1, any
(45:13):
codec, make that codec be thatmuch more efficient than it is
base and there's technologieslike LCEVC, there's different
approaches, right, and then youdon't have to go to AV2 or you
don't have to go to VVC.
That actually is a very, veryvalid concept.
(45:44):
You know, next gen codecadoption is that there's always
then the.
On the one side, there is thewhat compute requirements are
required to run these you knowcontent, adaptive processes to
run these AI drivenoptimizations.
So it's great that you can dothat.
(46:04):
But what if I have to 3x mycompute cost?
What if I have to 2x my computecost?
Now, that trade-off may stillmake sense because in the case
of like VVC AV2, of course,isn't out, the bitstream isn't
even ratified yet but that is areally, really, really heavy
(46:26):
codec.
You know that is a really,really, really heavy codec.
So you know I am actually notdoing a lot in the area of VVC.
So I don't know, but my guess isat least my hunch is is that if
you look at the computeoverhead from HEVC to VVC,
especially if you're going todeliver with the bitrate
efficiencies, in other words,really meet the promise of VVC,
(46:49):
maybe it's a 4x or a 5x computeoverhead.
Now somebody's probably goingto write in and say, no Mark,
it's actually 2x and we'repushing it down to 1.5.
Great, but the point is that itstill comes back to these
trade-offs.
And then you have to say, okay,fine, so maybe my compute on
the encoding side stays the samefrom using some sort of an AI
(47:11):
adaptive process, but do I haveplayer support for these next
gen codecs?
And then that's often wherepeople go oh, you know, you're
right, like HEVC now and I'mjust choosing it just as an
example finally has reached thetipping point where it's for the
most part, ubiquitous, you know, for the most part in most
(47:33):
markets and most playerecosystems.
So there is no single answer tothis question, which I, which I,
I I'm sure the person who wrotethis is going to be slightly
disappointed, but it isabsolutely contextual as to what
the right choice is.
And yeah, I'd be curious, youknow, jp, if you know, if you're
(47:58):
hearing similarly.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
Definitely that every new codec is also a challenge,
not only on the processing sideand on the client side, but also
for like it's more storage,because now you have five times
the content, now you have it sixtimes.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
It's about distribution costs and I said so
, yeah, you definitely need toget to a tipping point to
actually that codec to becomeactually usable.
But yeah, I think actuallythere's a lot of opportunity for
AI in that area Because, yeah,I think we cannot expect more
(48:40):
from the discrete cosinetransform.
Like it's done enough for usalready.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely.
Well, it's a very interestingspace to watch and a lot of
innovation in coding and, youknow, codec development is in
play and so yeah, so stay tuned.
So hey, here's a great question.
This person asked what makesyou most proud of the Uruguay
(49:07):
team and their journey.
So I'm assuming now you knowmaybe some people would think,
wait, are you talking the soccerteam or actually, sorry
football team, football, sorryFootball team.
But, yeah, but yeah, how do youanswer that?
You know that's a, it's a goodquestion.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
I think, I'm, I'm, I'm proud of our entire team for
for the I'd say in the lastcouple of years, for their
resilience, their creativity,their commitment because I think
it's been challenging times andeveryone's found a way to you
know um in the role, um adaptand and and, of course, about
(49:59):
our culture and ournon-transactional approach.
I think that's um like this iskind of our work ethic, but um
about their maybe their theirlong-term uh approach always to
relationships to um to um, tobuilding uh, to always thinking
(50:24):
in the long term and not just inthe short term.
So it's um I would sayflexibility, resilience,
creativity and um long-termpartnerships yeah, awesome,
awesome sounds good.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
Well, let's um go through.
We have just a couple moreminutes, so if you want to get a
question and make sure you youtype it in.
But, um, yeah, so, uh, this, uh.
This next person says or askswhat will be the impact of
massive data explosion and thedata movement limitations.
(50:57):
Again, I'm assuming you knowdata.
There certainly is metadata inwhat we do in video, but I think
I assume they're talking aboutCDN and, as the world is moving
from broadcast clearly to OTT,Well, if we assume that's it, I
(51:18):
think there's still a hugechallenge on the networking,
because we were used to massiveevents happening like these
one-to events yeah, um beingbroadcasted.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
Broadcasted using only like one resource at a time
yeah, that's right and I think,um, we're we're still not there
to eliminate all the broadcast,like I don't think internet
would would actually support it.
Yeah, um, I know there are hugeefforts out there on on the on
the codec side, on the cdns, andgoing to the edge that's right
(51:54):
that requires massiveinvestments.
and well, we're seeing more andmore of these investments of
moving, also processing to theedge and like there there's all
these um.
So I think there is a lot ofinvestment there, yeah, but I'm
not sure we're quite there yet.
I don't think we're going to bethere in a couple of years.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
Broadcasting is still going to exist for a couple
more Olympics.
Speaker 1 (52:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are good benchmarks.
The Olympics, yeah.
So what are the most difficultsteps for streaming and you know
I'm going to kind of tack on tothis question and you know,
direct it to you workflow orportions of the end-to-end
(52:55):
solution where you find areexceptionally challenging
compared to others.
Does anything stand out or anyareas that you find universally
teams not your team necessarily,but companies struggle with?
Speaker 2 (53:11):
necessarily, but you know companies struggle with.
So I I think the the thechallenge is is what is in the
details?
Um, like, the devil is in thedetails.
If you want to do a video in amobile application, that's easy,
like, yeah.
If you want to do a video in aweb application, that's easy.
But if you want to have allyour content available on all
devices in different regions atthe same time, with the security
, and when you start adding allthese different dimensions to it
(53:34):
, like oh, I want it to beavailable on all devices, oh,
but we have people that havesmart TVs that are 10 years old.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
Yes, and we have all these brands and then so you
have all these differentnetworking.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
It's like you know, in, yeah, in the us everyone has
good internet connectivity.
But then you go to to india andyou see hot star streaming way.
Larger scale on mobile networks, there are 3g, and then you say
oh, okay, so it's not aboutultra hd and 20 megabit per
second streams, it's maybe onemegabit per second streams yeah,
(54:07):
that's right, and 25 million ofthem concurrent, you know, like
in the case of a cricket.
Uh, you know match or somethingyeah so if I were to say if, if
you go from from the, from theus, to the rest of the world,
the challenge I'm seeing is that, um, the rest of the world can
be really um, different in manyways, not only cultural,
(54:31):
different languages, different,like when you start adding like
dimensions to it.
It's not like english andclosed captioning.
It is now that you have 100different languages, now you
have 100 different subtitles,now you have 100 different
mobile devices.
It's not roku out there, it'snot, that's right, apple first
out there, like when you startbecoming, you know, uh, global.
(54:53):
I think there are hugechallenges in the, in all the
different dimensions.
That's what I think it getsreally.
Um, you can struggle like, yeah, having a player in a iphone,
everyone can do that.
Speaker 1 (55:06):
Yeah, yeah, that's true, yeah, yeah, definitely,
well, good, well, we couldcertainly continue on.
I think there's a few otherquestions, but they sort of
overlapped with some things wealready talked about, so I'm
going to jump over those.
But, jp, you know, thank youagain.
It was a wonderful discussionand really appreciate you coming
(55:28):
on the show.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
Mark, thank you.
Thanks, anita, for inviting meto be here.
Yes, proud to be here, it's atrue honor.
Well, thanks for everyone forjoining, and see you in a couple
of weeks at the At the MUXT.
Speaker 1 (55:44):
That's right, absolutely Okay.
Well, great, have a wonderfulevening and thank you again for
everyone for joining us live onVoices of Video.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
This episode of Voices of Video is brought to
you by NetInt Technologies.
If you are looking for cuttingedge video encoding solutions,
check out NetInt's products atnetintcom.
Voices of Video.
Voices of Video.
Voices of Video.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Voices of Video.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Without further ado, I want to welcome JP, jp Sibeni
from Qualab.
So hey, jp, welcome to Voicesof Video.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Thank you so much, mark, so happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yeah, it's great, we're really happy to have you
on the show.
And you know, you and Iconnected, I guess probably a
year and a half ago or so, andin reality I think we were
always you know sort of you knowshaking hands and exchanging
pleasantries at various cocktailparties right Through the
industry.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Totally, that's what the industry is about, yeah
that's right.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
That's right.
Yeah Well, you are a verysocial person.
You always have a huge smile onyour face, social person, you
always have a huge smile on yourface and you know, so I can
always find you.
At any event, you know wherever, it's great.
But no, in all seriousness, youknow we connected about a year
and a half ago over, you know,some development work that your
(01:20):
team was doing with a partner ofNetEnt and, as a result, we got
to know a fair amount about whoyour company is, and I made a
mental note we need to have themon the show and let them tell
their story.
So here we are, so it's greatto have you.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Thank you so much, Mark, and actually I would say
exactly the same about you.
You're everywhere.
It's impossible to go to NAV,IVC, CES, whatever industry or
trade show we go.
You're there Also, smiling andbitching about encoding.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Talking about video.
Good, well, you know, let'sdive in and start with.
Tell us about Qualabs.
You know, tell us about thecompany, the.
You know the founding story,what your journey has been, and
let's start there.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Awesome.
So actually, my journey videostarted about 15 years ago, when
I was just getting out ofengineering school and I worked
for 80 years at a local companyhere in Uruguay.
I'm based in Uruguay, southAmerica.
That's why I drink mate.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And seven years ago, after being an engineering
manager for several yearsbuilding all sort of technology,
from broadcast, multicast, DVVheadings and monitoring systems,
and then streaming andplatforms and OBPs, then,
(03:01):
together with Nico, we decidedto found Qualabs Seven years
back.
We started being three of us atthe beginning.
Well, it's been such a journey.
Let's say we have a strongbackground in video tech and
software engineering.
I'm not a software engineer,I'm a telecom engineer, software
(03:25):
engineer and I'm a telecomengineer and.
But we identified that therewas like a growing need of a
moving video and mediatechnologies into.
Uh, with the software.
There was a growing marketthere and but the the uruguayan
market was so small.
You're why we're only threemillion people, so you can
imagine it's not enough for amarket.
So we have to look for to therest of the world immediately.
(03:47):
If not, we would be like what?
Three, four people in thecompany?
Yeah, and well, it's, it's beena journey.
Um, we're mostly based inuruguay.
We have some people in argentinatoo and now we have over 100
people working, uh, from herefrom south america, but mostly
(04:10):
working globally, primarily tothe us.
Um, and actually how it's beena challenge to to get into a
market because we were likelocals and we had no access to
the industry you mentioned.
I had never been to nab ibcamazing, maxed my high video
before, so it was like it's huge, you know, um, yeah, it's, it's
(04:34):
always amazing.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
so I I've been, you know, I feel really honored, um,
throughout my career to haveworked really almost exclusively
with technical founders,generally engineers or very
heavy, we would say, productpeople, and I really enjoy that.
I love it because it puts youclosest to the center of where
(04:57):
the real stuff is.
It's not marketing hype andfluff and hand-waving, it's like
they're building real products.
But everybody has the samechallenge because a lot of times
the founders that I've workedwith throughout the years and
(05:17):
supported were sometimes in muchlarger organizations and they
were quite removed from what ittakes to actually then sell.
Because at the end of the dayyou can be the very best team or
you can build the best product,the best solution, etc.
But if you don't have a marketfor it, if you don't find a
(05:38):
market, if you don't develop amarket, unfortunately the best
doesn't just win automatically,you know.
And so it's a real fascinatingjourney.
I'm sure we could probably do awhole nother podcast of what
it's been like being an engineerand then you know, dare I say,
(05:58):
sort of learning the sales andthe marketing and the business
side.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
That's probably quite an interesting conversation
definitely and and we've seen, Ithink we've navigated different
um market changes, because in2021, that's right yeah, you
recall like it was all video,like 2020, like video was going
to be the the only thing left.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
We were going to be a full remote yeah, yeah, we were
all going to just stay in ourhouses, never leave.
Food was going to be deliveredto us and we were just going to
like interact with the worldthrough video screens.
I remember, and that's how westarted growing.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
We grew like from from 10 to 50 people in a couple
of years, just because, wow,we're saying I need to launch
these new, I need to launchapplication for move to the
cloud.
For these we need to scale tomillions.
Everyone was doing everything.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Yeah, okay, so we just lost Juan Pablo.
He will come back.
Looks like a quick littletechnical glitch there, so I
will improvise.
Hey, there we go, you're backall right, perfect.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
You know this is part of the technical challenges,
for some reason.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
That's right, that's right and and, by the way, less
somebody you know say well, theinternet must not be that good
wherever jp is.
That's not the case, we canassure you.
There's just some configurationissue.
We've been trying to get to thebottom of it, but anyway.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Actually, Uruguay is the fourth country in the world
in mobile Internet speed.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, amazing, amazing, and you know I love.
So we're going to get back.
You know I'm not going to takethis over because I want you to
finish your story, but I justlove a couple things and you
know.
First number one you come froma small market and yet you're
(07:54):
dealing with global leaders.
I love that, you know.
I love it because there's soyou know there's so much.
I guess you could say almostlike assumption that oh, if you
want to go to the biggestmarkets, you know like, say,
america, or, you know, westernEurope or and, and, by the way,
latin America is a very bigmarket.
So.
But the point is, you know, ifyou want to go to some of these
markets, you kind of have to bethere or have come from there,
(08:17):
and yet you know you come from,like you say, a very small
market and yet you're servicingall these massive players in
these big markets.
I love it, I, I really lovethat.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
so that's cool and and actually that's thanks to
these great community we have,that they have embraced us
because they've let us in as ifwe were part of it, like yeah,
yeah, we do travel a lot and weare there all the time and
events and so.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
But yeah everybody's so welcoming, so yeah, yeah, so,
um, so tell us then, let youknow.
Let's get back to the story.
So you, you started with threeyourself and essentially two
other, I guess, co-founders.
Uh, in 2017, um, sounds likeduring the pandemic, you know,
(09:05):
went from you said 10 to 50, andthat was 21 to 22.
Was that roughly the time span?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
It was mostly that, and then we grew to 100, even in
2023.
Sorry, by the end of 2022, butthen 2023 and 2024 have been
rough, yeah, and we've seen sortof a shift in the market, yeah.
So we kind of consolidated inlarger clients, either in video
technology companies or liketechnology vendors, or in media
(09:38):
entertainment.
We're working with some of thelargest streaming and
broadcasters in the worldlargest streaming and
broadcasters in the world.
But mostly, the shift we see isthat if we had the same clients
in 2021, we would be a thousandpeople.
They would be buildingeverything, and now everyone's
taking care about profitabilityand making things that have an
(09:58):
impact in the next quarter.
So it is, yeah, it's been ashift, but thankfully we're
working in innovation andproduct development and
engineering with quiteinteresting companies and
projects.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
You hinted at the fact that, like you said, during
that video internet streamingfrenzy era the, you know, 2021,
22,.
It sounds like you werebuilding like full solutions,
(10:35):
maybe even like end to end.
Now you're maybe buildingportions.
Can you describe, like whatyour projects look like today,
what you're being called in todo and why, why companies are
calling you and not, you know,building it themselves or even
buying commercial solutions?
Because I think that's alsoalways a consideration, right,
(10:58):
you know, do we build or buy?
And if we're going to build it,do we use our internal team or
use an outside external teamlike yourself, like Qual Labs?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Excellent, yeah, so it's a great question actually.
And so in what we specialize,we do software engineering and
product engineering around videotechnology.
So we do backend and platformengineering, we do frontend and
client-side applications, we docloud infrastructure and devops,
we do data engineering and andvdr and d, but always around
(11:34):
media workforce and streaming.
I would say we specialize fromthe content to the consumer.
So we're not like in theproduction side of things, like
that's not our expertise, butyeah, we do work in so many
different platforms with becausewe we build cms, we build
security systems, delivery, wework on on encoding and
(11:54):
processing with like we work inall the chain, and so normally
video technology companies callus when they need to augment
their engineering with the teamsthat might specialize in one of
these areas but that haveexpertise in video.
So it's that not just softwareengineering, it's software
engineers that know about video,and also, I think it's we're
(12:20):
not just selling hours, wereally focus on teams and I
think that's what makes usdifferent from a software
engineering standpoint.
We focus a lot on and I thinkthat's a challenge in the
software industry as a whole andnot just in video it's that at
some point everyone neededresources and treated people as
(12:40):
resources and started sayinglike you were like players and
that you want to senior, theseand this yeah full stack these
yeahand we've seen that we can
complement each other way betterif we build teams, and that's
where we focus on building teams.
For that, the reason have haveburied a long time.
So at the beginning, everyonewas saying we need more
(13:02):
resources and we don't haveenough.
Yeah, and now it's been morelike either needing flexibility,
with changing priorities allthe time, bringing in and hiring
I don't know React Nativespecialists to build
applications, and then you don'tknow if React Native is going
to be there in two years.
Or you need people that knowthese or that, and the same
(13:23):
happens in data and DevOps andeverything you know.
Everyone was moving to thecloud.
Everyone's going back from thecloud.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, and now people are actually moving off the
cloud, or at least they wouldlike to.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yes or doing hybrid.
I'm going to do some stuff inthe cloud in the edge, some
stuff on-prem, so you need andyou cannot hire and fire people
all the time.
So companies are tending tohave this changing environment
like a core team, and then thestaff around the edge.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
They tend to outsource it.
So does this mean that youtypically, once you begin to
engage with a company, you'reworking beyond just that initial
engagement or project?
Do you work with your companiesfor like a long time or do you
do kind of more project-basedcome in, you know, deliver
something, and then you knowyou're done and you move on work
(14:14):
with someone else?
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yeah, no, I'd say that 90% of our work is more
like long-term engagements, liketeams that might shift the
composition, might shift thepriorities.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Sure, sure, sure Again, based on the needs of
that client and what theirpriorities are.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Right, yeah, exactly so even some companies we have
like what we call pools, whichis a set of teams three, four
teams Because what they know forsure for the year is not the
priorities, they know the budget, yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
So they know I have this amount of money to spend.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
This is my, my, my burn rate.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
But they may even change from quarter to quarter,
like the priorities, thetechnologies, and sure that's
what we do.
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Several clients that have been there three, four
years already.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Amazing.
Yeah, let me ask you a question.
I'm curious your perspective.
We went through an era whereengineering teams bulked up and
I like to call it again.
I spend a lot of time in kindof the startup side of the
ecosystem, which means that Ihave a lot of exposure to
companies that are generallyventure funded, even private
equity, but you know kind ofventure money, and so during the
zero interest rate period youknow the Zerp era, as we like to
call it in Silicon Valley itwas easy to go out there and
build huge teams and there was,and there were, some very good
reasons to do that.
There also was, I think now wecan look back and see a lot of
over building.
(15:51):
You know people.
You know the engineeringmanagers wanted 25 people
because that's better than 12,right, meaning a lot of teams
bulked up, maybe bigger thanthey should have.
Is that still the case?
Or have those teams been pairedback, and are those teams still
(16:16):
doing engineering work, or arethey more or less doing some
internal projects but thencoordinating with firms like
yourself, like you know what'shappening.
So what do you see happening?
Speaker 2 (16:29):
It's interesting and actually that's that's a big
shift we've seen from 2022 to 23and four, and I don't know if
we're going to have a new serpera in three or four years and
maybe we're back in this crazyexactly, yeah, yeah and then
free money, but um yeah, freemoney yeah, but there's no free
(16:52):
money now there's no free money,no free lunch.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
no for lunch, yeah for anyone.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
And we've seen two shifts.
One is engineering versussoftware development.
Previously everyone was talkingabout software development and
about stacks.
We need more React people, weneed more Java people, we need
more.
They needed builders only, andnow they need engineers because
(17:18):
they're refocusing.
So it's not that we're doingthe new UI thing, the new data
thing and they need 100 peoplebuilding all that.
They're definitely focusing onsmaller teams, focused teams,
more capable teams and actuallythat's a differentiator for us
compared to, I don't know, themassive Asian low cost
(17:42):
outsourcing development houses.
We don't do that, we cannotcompete with that, with our
costs.
We're engineering house.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yes, yes.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
And and also, yeah, what we're seeing is that
everyone's so conscious abouthow they're building and that's
why I say that we're growing inthe size of the companies we
work for.
We're working with the Fortune500 companies at the moment, yet
they're not buying 100engineers, they're buying like
five for the three.
(18:11):
Let's build a data platformit's four engineers.
Let's build a workflow it'sthree engineers, it's not 25 as
before.
I hope that time's not comingback, because that seemed crazy
too, because then they had allthese overhead because they
needed the project manager andthe scrum master and the and the
coordinator and the.
Yeah, you know, and all theoverhead a lot of overhead.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Yeah, it's super interesting.
I am a student, I think I wouldsay, of product management and
you know, of course I spend mytime really on the marketing
side.
But I believe that you can havethe very best marketing
initiatives and if your productisn't good or if it's not what
(18:58):
the market needs, then none ofit matters.
You know, interestingly enough,conversely with an amazing
product, you can barely know howto sell it and barely know how
to market, and you'll besuccessful.
It's pretty interesting.
So, at the end of the day, youknow, product is crucial, is
absolutely everything, andthere's a, there also was a
(19:19):
trend on the product side, andI'm talking about, you know,
kind of larger tech orgs.
So you know, smaller,medium-sized companies never had
this luxury.
But you know, you wouldliterally have a senior product
manager, you would have anassociate product manager.
You would have like to supportthat person.
You might have two or three orfour people and they all I mean
(19:40):
everybody had their little roleand it just it.
What it led to was a lot of bulk, a lot of inefficiency, a lot
of lack of decision and, frankly, it just moved the product
further away from the market,from the real user.
And that's why in some cases,we, you know, we can all think
of examples where something wasbuilt and you scratch your head
(20:02):
and go how could they have builtthat?
Like, that's not what themarket needed.
They did a wonderful job, theybuilt an amazing, but the
solution's not what the marketneeded.
So so I think getting lean yeah, getting lean is a good thing.
So go ahead.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Definitely.
And I said that's something,that's something that that uh
surprised us when we startedworking in the industry because,
uh, we came from working for anoperator, so we operated a
satellite and cable andstreaming network yeah and so so
we actually had built solutionsfor ourselves, but actually
based on our own pains, sure.
And then when we started workingfor for technology companies,
(20:41):
we we met, uh, we actuallystarted working at the beginning
for our own previous vendors.
That's the people we knew, yeah, like previous vendors, and and
, uh, um, I was surprised thatnone of their in product
engineers, engineering managers,had ever used their product,
even didn't even know how theirproduct was used by the clients.
I know, like we were givingfeedback all the time about the
(21:03):
pain points we had previouslybecause, yeah, they, like
someone from support, hadtickets that was given to the
product manager that actuallyhad the product owner, was
processing from a roadmap and atsome point it got to an
engineer like you got to buildthis feature, but didn.
I didn't know why.
What the client needed, likethey have poor visibility, so
disconnected, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Yeah, yeah, I, I so.
So we're going to move pastthis, but I actually you know
this subject of, like you know,a product in the business side,
but I really love the fact thatwe've spent you know 20 minutes
or so talking about this, andhere's why, because we're
hitting on.
I really hope for the listenersthat you consider carefully
(21:49):
what we've just said, and thatis that there are too many
things being built in ourindustry, in the market, that do
not solve real pains, and wehear the expression a lot I hear
it anyway of it's a solutionlooking for a problem.
(22:10):
Well, let me tell you, asolution looking for a problem
is a failed product andultimately, probably a failed
company, just plain and simple.
There's no easy way to put it.
So it doesn't matter how coolthat solution is.
If it truly is a solutionlooking for a problem, it's
failed.
And I see there's actually aquestion in the chat that I'm
(22:32):
going to sort of answer, butmaybe we'll loop back around to
it, and the question was someonejust asked it when do you think
this shift in the market willend?
I am assuming, just based onthe time that the question was
entered in the chat and where wewere that you know they're sort
of talking about this shiftfrom the go-go era to the, you
(22:56):
know, to the more lean era, andcertainly companies, you know,
pulling back their investment inR&D and engineering, et cetera,
et cetera.
So I'm going to assume thatthat's the shift this person's
talking about and I have to saythat, obviously, you know, we
all hope and you know, dependingon the part of the world you're
(23:19):
in, it really is a tale of twokingdoms.
It feels like when you talkabout the economy.
So there's certain markets,certain industries that maybe
you can't say they're absolutelybooming, but they're doing well
, they're certainly more thansurviving, and there's others
(23:39):
that are really struggling.
So I always have to put thatout there when I'm asked this
question.
But the fact is is that therehas been a slowdown.
But I really think that thereis an element of this slowdown
that we are not going to go backto the previous era Because, as
referenced, there was a lot ofbulking up, there was a lot of
(24:01):
building big teams because, justcandidly, people wanted big
teams.
I want to be able to feel proudthat my group is 200 people when
in reality it probably shouldbe 35.
I mean, that's just the reality.
But it makes me feel better asa manager, et cetera, as an
(24:22):
executive, to say I've got 200people in this org or that org
or in this team and that team,and so there's that element, and
I do not believe that we'regoing to go back just suddenly
to bulking up.
Justification for resources iskind of never going to go away.
But related to that is thatthen, as a result, there were a
(24:45):
lot of products being built thatwere solutions, looking for a
problem, because, hey, you'vegot to keep these 200 people
busy, right, they need to bedoing something.
We're paying them, we're payingthem well, so let's put them to
work.
And so then what happened was,especially on the vendor side,
the market just began to getflooded with either a lot of me
(25:05):
too products, a lot of productsthat just simply didn't really
get to the to, to the real coreneed of the market.
And so, consequently, whenthere was cash flowing down the
street, you could, you couldsell some of those.
Because there was cash flowingdown the street, people like, ah
of those, because there's cashflowing down the street, people
are like, oh, I don't know,there's this one feature that
looks kind of cool.
All right, let's buy it Now,when there's not cash flowing
(25:28):
down the street.
I mean, it's just the lightswitch is turned off on selling
any of those.
So I don't know if you have areaction, jp, to what I just
said.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I totally agree and my personal wish is that it kind
of stays that way, knowing theslow down, because I know that's
impacted a lot of people intheir jobs, but really to the,
let's build something reallyvaluable.
Yeah, because I think there wasa trend in the market to just
build everything.
Yeah, and maybe if I go back toIBC 2017, 18, 19, and I see now
(26:02):
there used to be like one trendBecause in 2018, everyone was
building the OTT apps.
Yes, Like do we need 85companies building OTT apps for
smart TVs Do we Like?
is there a market for that?
Or is it that people have asolution and looking for a
problem and now you go and it'sdifficult now to find.
(26:22):
Like one trend, like one thing.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Yeah, the trend is now profitability.
That's a good trend yeah,that's a good, I know.
And isn't it weird that we haveto say, oh, this is a trend
like hold on, isn't it?
And you know you're a businessowner, you know you're a founder
, so hey, at the end of the day,you are.
So hey, at the end of the day,you are for profit At the end of
the day.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
But I think it is also because of the purpose
companies have in the industry.
We exist in the market as anorganization to create value.
So we've got to have someresources and build something
more valuable.
Yeah, If we're just spendingmore than what we make in the
long term, then we're destroyingvalue actually.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
Okay, well, this leads perfectinto something I can't wait for
you to talk about.
So you really invest in theindustry and community, and I
would love for you to talk abouta couple, a couple initiatives
that you guys are leading anddriving.
So tell, tell us about whatyou're doing to build the tech
(27:30):
community and, yeah, Definitely.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
And so so you know, we we really depend on on, for
the business we do we reallydepend on on trust and business
we do.
We really depend on trust fromothers because it's difficult
for us to show the value of ourwork, product and service before
.
So we have a strong presence inthe industry through our
(27:54):
community that actuallyvalidates our work.
It's a way for us to show whatwe do because, of course, most
of the work we do is NDAprotected work.
It's a way for us to show whatwe do because, of course, most
of the work we do is nbaprotected.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
It's confidential exactly, by definition, you
can't talk about it, so yeahyeah, and that's part of the
reason why they hire us.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
That yeah, talking about what we do, and the
internals but we've got to showwhat we're able to do.
So, uh, in 2019 we started withthe monte video technique uh
community, this one.
You see the logo here.
Yeah, actually it's coolbecause the cd name monte video
has video name and we haven'tfound other cities with the
video in the name.
Actually, it was inspired by sanfrancisco video tech and all
(28:32):
the other meetups, and then westarted like shifting and
creating our own events.
We have meetups that focus onthe technical challenges.
Actually, today we have one topresent the summer project.
I think it's at 6 pm, uruguaytime.
It's 5 pm East Awesome.
But then we started having themate talks.
(28:55):
Mate, is this what we drinkhere?
It's like a round table, likewhat we're doing now, but
instead of one person it's around table for industry experts
to discuss issues fromdifferent angles.
And maybe our I think our mosticonic event we do once a year,
it's the Montevideo Tech SummerCamp.
(29:16):
It's happening in January, lastweek of January, next year,
2025, 2025, which is your summer, our summer?
Speaker 1 (29:26):
yeah, exactly, exactly.
So for now, you know, I'm inarizona, so actually january is
like heaven here.
But um, for those who livefurther north, uh, they would be
very happy to escape the snowand go somewhere where it's warm
and beautiful.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
So it's a mix of two things.
One is the summer week thatit's actually in your Y in
person.
We host industry experts andpeople from different angles.
It's people from operations,from technology, from product.
They come for a week and it'sabout collaboration.
It's also about, of course,getting to know your why,
(30:03):
getting to know our team.
Of course, it's also good forour team to get to know people
from the industry.
But then we have the summerprojects, which is a way to
bring together industry leadersto work on open source
initiatives, and we invest on onsome of our engineering teams
to actually work on the twoprojects that the community
chose.
So today we're presenting 12different ideas we got from
(30:27):
different industry leaders.
Like the ideas go from, I'd say, from continuing to work on the
CMCD there's a player work.
There's also work around MOQ.
Like, the ideas are various andwhat we choose is to um invest
for three months four engineersworking for free, like paid by
(30:50):
qualabs, to contribute to thoseopen source projects, and that's
how we're cool back to thecommunity.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, yeah, how cool.
So how could somebody do?
They just go to the Qual Labswebsite if they wanted to sign
up or participate or learn more.
How can somebody learn aboutthat?
Speaker 2 (31:10):
If they go to multivideotechdev.
Ah okay, okay, actually we have, and they can find us in
meetupcom with themultivideotech and they have
today's event.
They can join.
They'll see the projects we'reworking on and also, if they
want to see what we've worked.
In about 10 days we'll be inSan Francisco for DMAXed.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
And we're going to be showcasing a few demos of the
work we did in some of thepresentations.
There are going to be threepresentations that are showing
work we've done.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Yeah, amazing, amazing.
Yeah, I just I love that you'reinvesting in the community and,
at the same time, you knowyou're connecting to, like you
said, this brings people toUruguay and you know they get to
see your beautiful country andyou know experience, you know
(32:03):
the culture and the people andall that great stuff, but you're
also, you know, helping toserve to build the community,
support the community.
You're, you know you'redonating engineering resources.
You know, again, like you said,those are engineers that you're
paying, you know, out of yourpayroll, but they're actually
participating on these wideropen source, you know,
(32:25):
development efforts, which isgreat.
It's really, really amazing.
Why don't?
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Actually, everyone is open to join.
Like the idea of this opensource project, is not that only
we work?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yeah sure it's like this kind of manpower.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Everyone can collaborate on a part-time basis
, maybe as a side project fromyour job if you want to do.
There are some architecturesessions that everyone can join.
So the idea is that it's acollaborative approach to open
source and not just contributing.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah, that's right.
That's right, that's amazing.
Well, this dovetails well intoyou mentioned Demuxed and that's
coming up just in a week and ahalf or so.
I will get to see you, I willdefinitely be there.
So for any listeners, make sureyou find Juan Pablo, you know,
say hi, introduce yourself.
(33:16):
You know I'd love to meetanybody who's there.
So anyway, with that plug outof the way, you are actually
participating in twopresentations and so why don't
you tell us what you're going tobe presenting there at Demox?
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Excellent.
Actually, we're going to be inthree.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
So one is.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Koti Costanza from our team.
She's going to be presentingthe work we did for CMF Ham,
which is how you can play dashcontent on an HLS player, and
that was actually part of theSummerCamp 2024 open source
projects that we did togetherwith Zach Cava from Disney and
(33:57):
with Alex Zambelli from Dolby.
They kind of presented thatinitiative and we worked on it.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Also, there are two more presentations that we've
done, the demos for One is fromWill Law from Akamai, which I'm
sure everyone knows.
Yes, he's quite famous in theindustry, so it's his
presentation I don't want tospoil.
But it's going to be the CMCDversion 2 implementation that
(34:24):
has new operation modes andintegration with the players and
all that.
We built that as an open sourcecontribution actually to not
only be working on the spec butactually, while we build the
spec, which is still inconstruction, it's a way to
actually test it, understand thechallenges.
We build the spec, which isstill in construction.
It's a way to actually test it,understand the challenges, the
implementation challenges, theambiguities in the draft.
(34:47):
So we're building a referenceplatform while we're all working
on the spec.
And the second is on AlexGilati's presentation from
Comcast, also a very well-knownguy in the industry for.
Dashif and we work with him onsome overlays for Dash, which
(35:09):
again I think it's his idea.
It's very interesting.
On avoiding reprocessing andcosts for the reuse of VOD
assets for different lifescenarios, so it's a quite
interesting approach.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Amazing.
Yeah, yeah, it's great, yeah,really really good.
Well, jp, this has been anamazing discussion and I really
enjoyed, you know, especiallykind of the first half of it or
so, where we, you know, justreally, I think, got practical
and I would even use the wordsreal about why the industry is
(35:52):
in the state it's in need to dothat.
We can do that.
You know whether we are ICs.
You know individualcontributors working inside
these.
You know large companies, theselarge organizations.
You know, or we're managers oryou know we're.
You know, looking at strategiesand looking at how we're going
(36:15):
to build.
I think it's really helpful.
I want to transition.
We have some questions, soshould we go to some Q&A and
continue the conversation thatway?
All right, good, good, yeah.
So sometimes we get some verycreative questions and it's not
(36:36):
always easy to tell what thereal question is.
So I'm going to do my best hereand again, if you happen to
write one of these, submit oneof these questions, but we
didn't quite hit it.
You know, I know that JP isvery accessible on LinkedIn.
I'm accessible.
There's a lot of ways to get intouch with us.
You know, come introduceyourself at Demuxed or, you know
(37:00):
, the next show, so okay.
So here's a question that camein.
Scroll up here.
Okay, what can we expect fromAI in the video space, with all
of the profitability discussions?
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah, I have the same reaction.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Yeah, that's deep, let's see.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
So in general, I think and that's what every
marketer would say that I thinkAI will drive efficiencies.
It is already doing so.
I think now we're seeing itmore on the content creation
side.
There's a lot of ai applied onencoding and you know about it
(37:49):
because you you actually promoteit a lot yeah and um.
So I think there's being aiapplied in in different parts of
the workflow.
Yet in the short term andactually last year we were
really worried about it it'slike are we really um, getting
behind on falling behind on theai, innovation, um and?
(38:10):
And then we start asking all ofour clients, like what their
initiatives were in the shortterm?
How much of your budget's goingto be there?
Where are you going to investit?
Yeah, and no one was eveninvesting one percent of their
budget in a, not even by far.
I mean not the ai companies, Imean, like general companies
yeah, yeah, exactly understandso everyone has like initiatives
(38:33):
, pocs, and I'd say thatsomething similar happened many
years ago with the, when the bigdata thing came out, and then
you would go to a bank and bigdata analytics yeah, and they
had like one data guy and now,you know, data is out there.
Actually, what we're seeing inthe short term is that now
(38:55):
companies are starting to work alot on data, like now they
realize they need to grab datafrom everywhere.
So that's what we're seeing nowactually happening and
investment happening.
And I think what's happeningwith AI and profitability is
that now companies are notwilling to invest.
(39:18):
There's no free money, so noone's willing to invest.
Crazy amount of money is justto find the thing.
That's going to be the hit,like yeah, I see everyone
cautious, building pocs.
Yeah, trying to figure outwhere to put their money.
That's what I'm seeing.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
I don't know what you're seeing, mark largely the
same, and my um both you know myobservations like what I really
am seeing in the market, lineup with exactly what you just
said.
And then my personal feeling isI actually think I have a
little bit of a higherperspective is that I think that
(39:58):
the transformation and I don'twant to say, you know, is it
over the next one year, twoyears, three years, I don't know
the time horizon but the AItransformation within companies
is at the personal employee orresource level.
And so what do I mean by that?
And we could go department bydepartment.
(40:19):
Marketing is kind of an easyone, and that's the domain that
I primarily work in, so I'llstart there.
We'll talk about engineering.
So what does it mean?
Well, it means that you used toneed to have a small team of
writers If you were really goingto be producing high quality
content on a regular basis.
Now, you know, it didn't meanyou had 25 writers, but you
(40:43):
probably had two or three.
You certainly had one, and thenyou probably had some
freelancers that were supportingyou, and that was required.
Now, the reality is that,because I'm building it, we have
a very small team here atNetEnt, and people are always
amazed at the volume of contentthat we push out and the
(41:05):
assumption is wow, netin'sreally investing in marketing.
Yes, we are investing inmarketing, but not in ways maybe
people would think.
In other words, it isn't a bigteam, and what is it?
It's a handful of knowledgeablepeople who understand the
market, who are able totranslate that into prompts and
(41:27):
or into some basic contentframeworks.
That then ChatGPT, cloud, etcetera, produces incredible
content.
Okay, so the transformation.
And then you can say well, howdoes that affect profitability?
Well, it means that now I don'thave to go lobby to get an
extra writer because we'refalling behind, because we can't
(41:49):
produce enough content.
I don't have to go lobby to getan extra writer because we're
falling behind, because we can'tproduce enough content.
I don't have to do that.
In fact, if anything, you know,it's like hey, I have almost
this gas pedal and you know I'mgoing a hundred miles an hour.
I could actually go 200, but Idon't need to go 200, you know
like we can crank it up, crankit down.
And if you look at engineeringwith the co-pilots, et cetera, I
(42:13):
think that that same level oftransformation in some
organizations it's alreadybeginning or has begun.
In others maybe they're I'lluse the word lagging a little
bit, but it's 100% coming.
So it's at the individualproductivity level that
transformation is happening, youknow with AI, and then that's
(42:33):
going to get built intosolutions and obviously, over
time there is going to be realapplications where AI is applied
within a product, within asolution, within a video encoder
, you know within a transcodingpipeline, you know within a
streaming.
You know video workflow, youknow that is going to.
(42:55):
You know add value, lower cost.
You know increase performance,et cetera.
So that's my answer.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Yeah, yeah, I, I a hundred percent agree in that,
and I you're also more flexiblenow, yeah, and you're also more
flexible now, yeah, and yourcosts, yeah exactly yeah,
exactly Exactly yeah, sointeresting.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
So then the very next question, and I'm just taking
them as they came in, so thenext one.
Maybe it's the same person, Idon't actually know.
They get copied and pasted inour chat here.
They get copied and pasted inour chat here, but how do you
envision AI and next-gen codecslike AV1 transforming the
trade-offs between video quality, bandwidth and processing power
(43:38):
?
This is a good one.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
That's a good one for you more than for me.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Okay, I'll keep my answer short, yeah, so yeah,
this is a very good question andit is something you know.
For those to know me and knowthe background of various
companies I've worked for overthe years, you know that I I did
spend a period of time, youknow, working on technology that
(44:05):
was all based on taking juststandard H.264 encoded content
and making it perceptuallyidentical but reducing the file
size.
That process, you know this,was developed many, many, many
years ago and even though whatwas happening inside the
(44:26):
algorithms it was, it wassomewhat close to machine
learning, but you know it wasn't.
You know it definitely was notAI, and the way that we think
about it the point is, thereason why I give that reference
is that we found ourselves inthe market quite often making
the case that you didn'tnecessarily have to go to these
(44:48):
more advanced codecs.
You could use a standard thatyour pipeline already supported,
your player ecosystem alreadysupported, but you could get, if
not all of the benefits, youcould get a lot of the benefits
of the bit rate reduction.
So this idea that AI could takeH.264 or HEVC or even AV1, any
(45:13):
codec, make that codec be thatmuch more efficient than it is
base and there's technologieslike LCEVC, there's different
approaches, right, and then youdon't have to go to AV2 or you
don't have to go to VVC.
That actually is a very, veryvalid concept.
(45:44):
You know, next gen codecadoption is that there's always
then the.
On the one side, there is thewhat compute requirements are
required to run these you knowcontent, adaptive processes to
run these AI drivenoptimizations.
So it's great that you can dothat.
(46:04):
But what if I have to 3x mycompute cost?
What if I have to 2x my computecost?
Now, that trade-off may stillmake sense because in the case
of like VVC AV2, of course,isn't out, the bitstream isn't
even ratified yet but that is areally, really, really heavy
(46:26):
codec.
You know that is a really,really, really heavy codec.
So you know I am actually notdoing a lot in the area of VVC.
So I don't know, but my guess isat least my hunch is is that if
you look at the computeoverhead from HEVC to VVC,
especially if you're going todeliver with the bitrate
efficiencies, in other words,really meet the promise of VVC,
(46:49):
maybe it's a 4x or a 5x computeoverhead.
Now somebody's probably goingto write in and say, no Mark,
it's actually 2x and we'repushing it down to 1.5.
Great, but the point is that itstill comes back to these
trade-offs.
And then you have to say, okay,fine, so maybe my compute on
the encoding side stays the samefrom using some sort of an AI
(47:11):
adaptive process, but do I haveplayer support for these next
gen codecs?
And then that's often wherepeople go oh, you know, you're
right, like HEVC now and I'mjust choosing it just as an
example finally has reached thetipping point where it's for the
most part, ubiquitous, you know, for the most part in most
(47:33):
markets and most playerecosystems.
So there is no single answer tothis question, which I, which I,
I I'm sure the person who wrotethis is going to be slightly
disappointed, but it isabsolutely contextual as to what
the right choice is.
And yeah, I'd be curious, youknow, jp, if you know, if you're
(47:58):
hearing similarly.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
Definitely that every new codec is also a challenge,
not only on the processing sideand on the client side, but also
for like it's more storage,because now you have five times
the content, now you have it sixtimes.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
It's about distribution costs and I said so
, yeah, you definitely need toget to a tipping point to
actually that codec to becomeactually usable.
But yeah, I think actuallythere's a lot of opportunity for
AI in that area Because, yeah,I think we cannot expect more
(48:40):
from the discrete cosinetransform.
Like it's done enough for usalready.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely.
Well, it's a very interestingspace to watch and a lot of
innovation in coding and, youknow, codec development is in
play and so yeah, so stay tuned.
So hey, here's a great question.
This person asked what makesyou most proud of the Uruguay
(49:07):
team and their journey.
So I'm assuming now you knowmaybe some people would think,
wait, are you talking the soccerteam or actually, sorry
football team, football, sorryFootball team.
But, yeah, but yeah, how do youanswer that?
You know that's a, it's a goodquestion.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
I think, I'm, I'm, I'm proud of our entire team for
for the I'd say in the lastcouple of years, for their
resilience, their creativity,their commitment because I think
it's been challenging times andeveryone's found a way to you
know um in the role, um adaptand and and, of course, about
(49:59):
our culture and ournon-transactional approach.
I think that's um like this iskind of our work ethic, but um
about their maybe their theirlong-term uh approach always to
relationships to um to um, tobuilding uh, to always thinking
(50:24):
in the long term and not just inthe short term.
So it's um I would sayflexibility, resilience,
creativity and um long-termpartnerships yeah, awesome,
awesome sounds good.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
Well, let's um go through.
We have just a couple moreminutes, so if you want to get a
question and make sure you youtype it in.
But, um, yeah, so, uh, this, uh.
This next person says or askswhat will be the impact of
massive data explosion and thedata movement limitations.
(50:57):
Again, I'm assuming you knowdata.
There certainly is metadata inwhat we do in video, but I think
I assume they're talking aboutCDN and, as the world is moving
from broadcast clearly to OTT,Well, if we assume that's it, I
(51:18):
think there's still a hugechallenge on the networking,
because we were used to massiveevents happening like these
one-to events yeah, um beingbroadcasted.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
Broadcasted using only like one resource at a time
yeah, that's right and I think,um, we're we're still not there
to eliminate all the broadcast,like I don't think internet
would would actually support it.
Yeah, um, I know there are hugeefforts out there on on the on
the codec side, on the cdns, andgoing to the edge that's right
(51:54):
that requires massiveinvestments.
and well, we're seeing more andmore of these investments of
moving, also processing to theedge and like there there's all
these um.
So I think there is a lot ofinvestment there, yeah, but I'm
not sure we're quite there yet.
I don't think we're going to bethere in a couple of years.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
Broadcasting is still going to exist for a couple
more Olympics.
Speaker 1 (52:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are good benchmarks.
The Olympics, yeah.
So what are the most difficultsteps for streaming and you know
I'm going to kind of tack on tothis question and you know,
direct it to you workflow orportions of the end-to-end
(52:55):
solution where you find areexceptionally challenging
compared to others.
Does anything stand out or anyareas that you find universally
teams not your team necessarily,but companies struggle with?
Speaker 2 (53:11):
necessarily, but you know companies struggle with.
So I I think the the thechallenge is is what is in the
details?
Um, like, the devil is in thedetails.
If you want to do a video in amobile application, that's easy,
like, yeah.
If you want to do a video in aweb application, that's easy.
But if you want to have allyour content available on all
devices in different regions atthe same time, with the security
, and when you start adding allthese different dimensions to it
(53:34):
, like oh, I want it to beavailable on all devices, oh,
but we have people that havesmart TVs that are 10 years old.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
Yes, and we have all these brands and then so you
have all these differentnetworking.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
It's like you know, in, yeah, in the us everyone has
good internet connectivity.
But then you go to to india andyou see hot star streaming way.
Larger scale on mobile networks, there are 3g, and then you say
oh, okay, so it's not aboutultra hd and 20 megabit per
second streams, it's maybe onemegabit per second streams yeah,
(54:07):
that's right, and 25 million ofthem concurrent, you know, like
in the case of a cricket.
Uh, you know match or somethingyeah so if I were to say if, if
you go from from the, from theus, to the rest of the world,
the challenge I'm seeing is that, um, the rest of the world can
be really um, different in manyways, not only cultural,
(54:31):
different languages, different,like when you start adding like
dimensions to it.
It's not like english andclosed captioning.
It is now that you have 100different languages, now you
have 100 different subtitles,now you have 100 different
mobile devices.
It's not roku out there, it'snot, that's right, apple first
out there, like when you startbecoming, you know, uh, global.
(54:53):
I think there are hugechallenges in the, in all the
different dimensions.
That's what I think it getsreally.
Um, you can struggle like, yeah, having a player in a iphone,
everyone can do that.
Speaker 1 (55:06):
Yeah, yeah, that's true, yeah, yeah, definitely,
well, good, well, we couldcertainly continue on.
I think there's a few otherquestions, but they sort of
overlapped with some things wealready talked about, so I'm
going to jump over those.
But, jp, you know, thank youagain.
It was a wonderful discussionand really appreciate you coming
(55:28):
on the show.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
Mark, thank you.
Thanks, anita, for inviting meto be here.
Yes, proud to be here, it's atrue honor.
Well, thanks for everyone forjoining, and see you in a couple
of weeks at the At the MUXT.
Speaker 1 (55:44):
That's right, absolutely Okay.
Well, great, have a wonderfulevening and thank you again for
everyone for joining us live onVoices of Video.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
This episode of Voices of Video is brought to
you by NetInt Technologies.
If you are looking for cuttingedge video encoding solutions,
check out NetInt's products atnetintcom.
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