Dr Christian Timmerer is a Professor at the Institute of Information Technology (ITEC) at the University of Klagenfurt and one of the co-founders of Bitmovin. We had a quick chat with him to see how Project GAIA is progressing.

For those who aren’t aware, why is it important to reduce video streaming’s carbon footprint?

Climate change is the biggest threat facing this generation, requiring urgent action. We are already seeing the impact of climate change around the world, with record-breaking temperatures and more natural disasters. Everyone has to work together in the coming years if we are to turn the tide against it, including everyone working in the video streaming industry. 

Currently, internet data traffic is responsible for more than half of digital technology’s global impact, which is 55% of energy consumption annually. Video processing and streaming generate 306 million tons of CO2, which is 20% of digital technology’s total GHG emissions and nearly 1% of worldwide GHG emissions. It’s why Bitmovin and the University of Klagenfurt are working together on Project GAIA to enable more climate-friendly video streaming solutions providing better energy awareness and efficiency through the end-to-end video workflow. 

Combining Bitmovin’s history of innovation in video streaming with the University of Klagenfurt’s strong academic background in technology research means we are well-primed to help make video streaming more sustainable.

We are now three months into Project GAIA. What have been some of the key learnings?

Over the last three months, we have been deeply focused on investigating the challenges and opportunities associated with reducing emissions in video streaming. One thing we have been examining is data centres, which handle the video encoding process and storage of video content. They consume huge amounts of power, but there are ways to make them more sustainable, including selecting energy-optimized and sustainable cloud services to help reduce CO2 emission; identifying cloud computing regions with low carbon footpring; using more efficient and faster transcoders and encoders; and optimizing the video encoding parameters to reduce the bitrates of encoded videos without affecting quality.
We have also identified challenges and opportunities in video delivery within heterogeneous networks. Ways of reducing carbon emissions centre around energy-efficient network technology for video streaming and lower data transmission to reduce energy consumption.  Lastly, we have also examined challenges and opportunities in end-user devices. Research actually shows that end-user devices and decoding hardware make up the greatest amount of energy consumption and CO2 emissions in the video delivery chain. We believe the best carbon emission reduction strategies lie in improving the energy efficiency of end users’ devices by improving screen display technologies or shifting from desktops to using more energy-efficient laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

What role will GAIA play in helping reduce video streaming’s carbon footprint?

I am incredibly excited about Project GAIA and the results it will yield. Our aim is to design a  climate-friendly adaptive video streaming platform that provides complete energy awareness and accountability, including energy consumption and GHG emissions along the entire delivery chain, from content creation and server-side encoding to video transmission and client-side rendering; and reduced energy consumption and GHG emissions through advanced analytics and optimizations on all phases of the video delivery chain.
Our research will focus on providing benchmarking, energy-aware and machine learning-based modelling, optimization algorithms, monitoring, and auto-tuning, which will provide more quantifiable data on energy consumption in video streaming through the video delivery chain. Eventually, we hope to be able to use our findings to optimize encoding, streaming and playback concerning energy consumption.

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Dr. Christian Timmerer is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Information Technology (ITEC) at the University of Klagenfurt and one of the co-founders of Bitmovin. We asked him a few questions to learn more about the goals and motivation behind the ‘GAIA’ project. 

When you co-founded Bitmovin back in 2013, was there any focus on sustainability? What changes have you seen over the last 10+ years?

Christian: With our research background, we always tried to utilize the latest technology and research results which includes our focus on video codecs. For example, our first FFG-funded project termed “AdvUHD-DASH” aimed at integrating HEVC into our video encoding workflow; later, we were among the first to showcase AV1 live streaming (2017 NAB award); and now we’re already successfully experimenting with VVC (Collaboration with Fraunhofer HHI). 

Each new generation of video codec reduces the amount of storage by approximately 50%, which contributes to sustainability goals. Over the past 10+ years, there has been a shift to focus on more efficient usage of the available resources, where in the beginning of video streaming over the internet, much was solved using massive over-provisioning. I think this is no longer the case, and people are starting to think about environmental and climate-friendly video streaming solutions in the industry.

GAIA is a two-year joint research project between Bitmovin and the University of Klagenfurt. What is the end goal, and how soon do you think there will be actionable results and recommendations?

Christian: The results of the GAIA project will (i) enable complete awareness and accountability of the energy consumption and GHG emissions and (ii) provide efficient strategies from encoding and streaming to playback and analytics that will minimize average energy consumption.

In the beginning, we will mainly focus on collecting data and benchmarking systems with regard to energy consumption that will hopefully lead to publicly available datasets useful for both industry and academia at large, like a baseline for later improvements. Later we will use those findings to optimize encoding, streaming and playback concerning energy consumption by following and repeating the traditional “design – implement – analyze” work cycles to iteratively devise and improve solutions.

Will the results of this research be exclusive to Bitmovin?

Christian: We will showcase results at the usual trade shows like NAB and IBC., while scientific results and findings will be published in renowned conferences and journals. We will try to make them publicly available as much as possible to increase the impact and adoption of these technologies within the industry and academia. 

This is the fourth time Bitmovin and the University of Klagenfurt have collaborated on a research project. What makes this one unique?

Christian: Environmental-friendliness was always implicitly addressed within the scope of previous research projects; GAIA is unique as it makes this an explicit goal, allowing to address these issues as the top priority. 

You can read more details about the GAIA research project here

Ready to make your own video workflows more eco-friendly with HEVC or AV1 encoding? Sign up for a free Bitmovin trial today!

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