The VideoVerse

Episode Overview In this episode of the VideoVerse Podcast, we’re joined by Sudeep Kumar, Product Lead at Airtel Digital, one of India’s largest telecom providers. Hosted by Zoe Liu (CEO, Visionular), the conversation dives deep into the evolving video experience in India, from live streaming trends and CDN selection to data usage behavior and the role of perceptual quality in retention. Sudeep brings a unique perspective sitting at the intersection of product, technology, and user experience for millions of Indian users. He unpacks the complexity of streaming in India’s fragmented network landscape and highlights where traditional metrics fail to capture the nuances of real-world video delivery. Key Talking Points ⚡️ The Intersection of AI and Video Compression ⚡️ Redefining Quality, Scale, and Cost in the Telco Era ⚡️ The ROI Equation: Balancing AI, Cost, and Performance ⚡️ The Future of Codecs: AV1 Today, AV2 Tomorrow About Visionular Visionular is an AI-driven video compression and streaming optimization company helping video platforms deliver higher-quality experiences at lower bitrates. With deep codec innovation and perceptual tuning, our tools are used across live sports, UGC platforms, RTC infrastructure, and PGC services. https://visionular.ai/Visionular on LinkedIn

In this kickoff episode of the revived Visionular Podcast, David Lea is joined by Zoe Liu and Krishna Rao to reflect on their experience at NAB 2025. From AI innovations to meaningful product conversations, the trio unpacks what made this year different—and why Visionular’s AI-driven compression and enhancement tools are gaining real traction. This isn’t just another recap. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at what’s really happening in the media and streaming space—from live sports to low-latency video to GPU-based encoding—and why "AI that works" is the future of our industry. Key Talking Points About Visionular Visionular is an AI-driven video compression and streaming optimization company helping video platforms deliver higher-quality experiences at lower bitrates. With deep codec innovation and perceptual tuning, our tools are used across live sports, UGC platforms, RTC infrastructure, and PGC services. https://visionular.ai/Visionular on LinkedIn

In this episode, Romain Bouqueau, CEO and Founder of Motion Spell gives us a deep look into the contributions of the open-source community in the world of video streaming. Romain also shares his insights into how open-source works, how GPAC/Motion Spell has remained ahead of the curve with its focus on R&D, and how open-source and commercial entities can collaborate effectively to fuel innovation in streaming.

Tune in to hear Flavio Ribeiro, Sr. Engineering Manager of Netflix’s Live Streaming Technologies, discuss all things video streaming. Starting in the streets of Campina Grande, Flavio shares his journey from contributing to the recreation of Brazil’s digital television system and working on Globo’s live streaming platform for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, to helping pioneer video processing and delivery in “The Big Apple” at companies like The New York Times, Paramount, and now Netflix. Not only does Flavio share his experience and the things he’s learned along the way, but also his thoughts on what the future holds for video streaming. What will be built today that will continue to be used a decade from now?

Back for a second time on TheVideoVerse, Debargha Mukherjee, Principal Engineer at Google, discusses the upcoming AV2 project, touted as the successor to the popular and powerful AV1 codec. In this podcast, Debargha talks about the advent of the AV2 project and its goals. He delves into the specialized tools newly introduced in AV2, the enhancements to existing AV1 tools, and the resultant performance improvements. As a bonus, Debargha also gives us a glimpse into the use of AI in video compression.

Jill Boyce, Distinguished Scientist at Nokia, is one of the most significant and long-standing contributors to MPEG compression standards. In this episode, we speak with her about her work and experiences, from MPEG-2 through to VVC and beyond. She explains how focusing on what really matters to the users of standards is central to her work, and how having a background in real implementations has been invaluable to her. What does the video world of tomorrow hold for us?

In this episode, we talk to Justin Ridge, President of the Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF). A veteran of video coding standards, he shares his perspective on the video codec landscape and the work of MC-IF in promoting MPEG standards. We discuss the adoption of VVC and how it compares with HEVC, the route map for future standards, the work being done for next-generation video coding, and the influence of the AI revolution on these developments.

In this episode, Eric Sun gives a deep dive into Meta's recent experiences with deploying AV1 for real-time communications across Meta's applications. He describes what proved to be the big advantages of AV1, where Meta saw most benefit in terms of user experience and how Meta demonstrated improved engagement from better video quality, and the practical challenges that he and his team surmounted. Watch on YouTube!

In this episode, Chas Mastin shared his insights about how YouTube ensures premium playback experience for its users. As one of the largest streaming platforms globally, YouTube faces the challenge of delivering supreme experiences to millions of concurrent users and playback sessions from around the world. Chas discusses the technical challenges in CDN peering, obtaining QoE metrics from the players, and how to manage a diverse range of different end devices and video players. Watch on YouTube

Live Captions are Hard! Wait, are they? Browse on over to the latest episode of The Video Verse where we discuss accessibility via Live Captions and Dubbing with Chris Zhang, Senior Solutions Architect at AWS, and Gio Galvez, VP of Business Development at SyncWords. We discuss a bit of history, then move onto the current state of things, followed by where accessibility is headed. Watch on YouTube

The VMAF video quality metric is ubiquitous in the streaming world, and any discussion of video codec performance is seldom complete without poring over VMAFscores. But what is it? In this episode VMAF guru and leader of the Netflix Video Codecs and Quality team joins us to delve into the mysteries of the metric. How did it originate and why was it needed? How has VMAF been developed and what does the future hold for improvements? Along the way we talk about the work he and his team do at Netflix and where quality assessment and codec development is leading in a world of generative AI. Watch on YouTube

In this episode we are joined by Benjamin Bross and Adam Wiekowski, who head the Video Coding Systems Group at the prestigious Fraunhofer HHI research institute. Adam and Benjamin have been central to the development of the latest MPEG video coding standard Versatile Video Coding. They explain VVC's guiding philosophy and what "Versatile" really means, and what it takes to go through the standardization process. We discuss the challenges of developing the reference codebase for such a complex standard, what they aim to achieve with their open source encoder VVenc, and the novel adaptive streaming techniques that VVC enables. All this, and how ready are AI tools for mainstream codec standards, really? Watch on YouTube

We are pleased to host Shashank Vaishnav, CTO and co-founder of Stage.in. In this episode we discuss Shashank's unique entrepreneurial journey, and how he and his team have built hyper-localized OTT products in India. We discuss the challenges of product delivery and what he is focused on this year from a technology perspective.

In this episode, we are joined by Omkiran (Omki) Sharma, Head of Video Engineering at Rakuten Viki. Omki discusses Viki's origin story and how their user-sourced subtitles led to explosive growth in the early years of their service. He also discusses their video "diff" process to share subtitles between multiple pieces of content that are slightly different from one market to another. Omki also highlights the challenges and opportunities that Viki faced heading into and during the pandemic. Watch the full video version. Learn more about Visionular and get more information on AV1.

In this fascinating episode, we are joined by Balu Adsumilli, Head of Media Algorithms at YouTube. In a wide-ranging discussion, he reveals how YouTube balances optimizing video quality with preserving the creative intent of their millions of contributors, and how the media quality task is affected by the changing nature of UGC video with ever-more sophisticated contributors and the trend towards Shorts. Central to the task are metrics for assessing quality, and Balu offers his insights into the state of the art as deployed at YouTube and the limitations of traditional quality metrics. Watch the full video version Learn more about Visionular and get more information on AV1

In this episode, we're joined by Thomas Edwards, Principal Architect of Media and Entertainment at AWS. Here Thomas presents the current situation with regards to sustainability, and the goals set by major M&E companies. Thomas then talks about how the cloud can help meet sustainability goals through higher efficiency and scalable, event-driven operations. Thomas also focuses on M&E applications that take advantage of cloud sustainability such as virtualized remote cloud production and cloud-based media supply chains. Watch the full video version Learn more about Visionular and get more information on AV1

In this episode, Professor Maggie Zhu and her student Zhihao Duan describe the state of the art in AI codecs and their diverse applications. AI compression can be applied to video three ways: augmenting conventional video codecs, completely replacing a conventional codec and also to compress the AI models used for various video applications. They discuss how the proliferation of lightweight video-capable devices is driving new applications and changing the balance between encoders and decoders, and how their novel architecture can beat the state of the art. Watch / listen to see where the next generation of technology is taking us! Watch the full video version. Learn more about Visionular and get more information on AV1.

In this episode of the Video Verse, Casey Bateman shares his insights on the challenges of migrating from H264 to HEVC and optimizing live streaming experiences. He also talks about their recent acquisition of BlueFrame Technology and how it will help teams make money by streaming out games to fans. Tune in for an interesting conversation about the future of video! Watch the full video version. Learn more about Visionular and get more information on AV1.

Welcome to our podcast! Today we have Steve Heffernan, Creator of JS and Co-Founder of Mux joining us. We'll be talking about the challenges that come with scaling video technology for websites, and how this technology has become an integral part of web design in recent years. Steve will share his experience on what it takes to make videos more affordable and efficient, as well as how businesses can leverage these technologies for their own growth. Get ready for a fascinating journey into the world of video streaming! Watch the full video version. Learn more about Visionular and get more information on AV1.

In this episode of the Video Verse, CP (CTO of Mola) joins us to discuss how technology is impacting user engagement on platforms. From understanding metaverse and merging lean back and lean forward experiences together; to leveraging content for increased engagement - CP has a lot of wisdom to share with us! Tune in now for an insightful conversation about tech, users and everything in between. Watch the full video version. Learn more about Visionular and get more information on AV1.