Interlaced, the most energy efficient video delivery system

Mobile World Congress 2023 is an opportunity to discover NESTED: an environmentally efficient solution for streaming multimedia content. It is optimized for 5G, and is being promoted by a consortium led by Ateme, in partnership with Orange.

Presented on the Orange platform at Mobile World Congress 2023, the NESTED project provides a promising solution to reduce the energy impact of digital technology. This innovation is actually able to reduce network congestion by automatically changing the video distribution format (mono / multicast) according to the available broadcast and the number of users. It also provides resolution optimization taking into account the screen being used. With equal user quality, the power consumption of terminals and network equipment will be greatly reduced.

pressure differently

NESTED project – for ” New video standards for enhanced delivery – Result of collaboration between different partners: Orange, through its subsidiary Viaccess-Orca, takes care of ” player including the decoder. Versatile video encoding (VVC) designed at the Institute of Electronics and Digital Technologies (IETR). ENENSYS takes care of the unicast / multicast part, as well as the receiver installed on various equipment (smartphones, tablets, smart TV, set-top box, etc.). This consortium is led by Ateme, a company specializing in video compression and distribution, which gave life to the project in order to reduce the growing impact of video traffic on networks, making it possible to provide high quality services in preserving the environment.

Agnostic technology

5G requires receiving pure streams
OTT (above), which increases the load on the network if you want to receive traditional TV channels. ” NESTED’s goal is to reduce the impact of transmission on the network, Mickaël Raulet, CTO at Ateme sums it up. ” To achieve this, we used properties
from packaging About CMAF (“Common Media Application Format”) containers. The advantage of this format, jointly initiated by Microsoft and Apple and standardized by MPEG, is that it is compatible with all Android and iOS terminals.. Ateme has also implemented a new VVC/H.266 codec, which allows it to halve video bitrate compared to the latest HEVC/H.265. Advantage: By reducing throughput by 2 on the network, VVC enables a reduction in the carbon footprint of video distribution. ” We use a new codec to predict what multimedia streaming will be like tomorrow. That is why the series of innovations proposed by NESTED, CMAF and Multicast, constitute unconventional technologies: they can work with any other type of codec specifies Mickaël Raulet.

Energy efficiency

At the other end of the chain, Viaccess-Orca is participating in the project through its secure video player. ” In the NESTED ecosystem, our player can deliver a user experience similar to the one we have today, but with more energy efficient technology. says Guillaume Debeneix, technical project manager at Viaccess-Orca. The gains come from NESTED’s ability to pass from one mode of delivery to another – from unicast, where each stream is sent separately, to multicast, where the same stream will be sent to multiple users. .” This transition occurs while the video is playing, without any visible effect to the user. »

Engage users

Second innovation: mode Environmentally friendly From Viaccess-Orca secure video player. ” Today you can watch 4K on your mobile screen. But this is irrelevant because with a lower resolution you will have a similar perception. So our player allows the user to participate, by choosing a resolution that is more suitable for his equipment and, if necessary, more energy efficient. “says Guillaume Debeneix. At this stage of the project, the new operator is able to evaluate in real time the power consumption of the microprocessor associated with watching the video. Soon it will also be able to take into account the consumption of the modem and the screen … thus providing accurate information to the user that will allow him to adapt his way of watching the video .

Technology designed for 5G

The NESTED project was launched two years ago, and the development of the NESTED project will end in May 2023. Most of the developments made can then be used on existing equipment after a simple software update. But the solution will take its full scale in three to five years, as part of 5G SA (Stand Alone).