Hello, I’m Andrew Reich, Vice President of Business Development here at Zixi and I’m joined by Xavier. Xavier, why don’t you introduce yourself? Yeah, so I’m Xavier. I’m the owner of Octal. So it’s a company that is doing engineering mainly on, I work a lot in fashion show developing custom solution for a big show like Chanel, Dior, on this kind of stuff. It can be specific camera or a specific solution like I did for Dior for the VIP streaming. And why don’t we just, why don’t we just hop right into it? So I knew if you could talk a little bit about the Dior event this past summer, the use case and how Zixi was able to, you know, help you with the desired outcomes you were trying to accomplish and how it was integrating your overall workflow. Yeah. So I was contacted early this year. They contact me like they wanted to stream the VIP going from the hotel to the venue. So in Paris, you have a fashion week. It’s like every three months you have men, women, haute couture, ready to wear on this kind of stuff. So you have really a lot of events and now the pre show takes more and more importance. So it’s not only showing new clothes, etcetera. It’s also showing the VIP for the social network, etcetera. So it is taking more and more importance, especially with the Asian markets. So they contact me because they wanted to have a valuable feed from the VIP car from the hotel to the venue. They had initially only two cars with one camera per car and they wanted a good stream, good quality because they are filming with cinema camera like ARRI, Sony VENICE on this kind of stuff and something really valuable because it’s just one single shot. You cannot lose it And they integrate this into the main feed. So it’s really like a kind of remote production, but from a car to the venue because VIP arrives and then we can really include it into the current mix. So they change between cars, between VIP and coming to the venue. There’s kind of Steadicam also when they arrive, so you have a lot of camera around. On the VIP car, it was somehow small because it’s only a couple of cars, a couple of cams, but it’s really important because it’s the most important VIP. On the complexity that you are in a city, it’s central Paris. So you have a car moving around the city. So it’s quite a complex and challenging environment. It’s not just sitting there with fixed setup. It’s really moving. So it was quite complex. So I contacted Kieran from OBE. I work a lot with him for various stuff. I use this encoder to get the signal from the camera over IP. And then I use Zixi for the bonding because the environment was quite challenging. So the 5G was mandatory. So I use multiple 5G modem in the car. So I had 4 modems from 5G using SIMs from different operators to be able to have the most reliable signal possible. And I was also having a Starlink Mini on the windshield in front of the car. So I was mixing like five different networks, four from 5G and one from Starlink to be able for Zixi to handle the bonding properly. So the workflow was camera to OBE encoder to Zixi for the bonding and then to AWS and then back to the venue where I was Zixi back to the decoder and feeding it to the router mixer for the actual director. Awesome. No, and that a lot of great information in there. So just to kind of zone in a little bit, you mentioned how Sorry, I’ll start to trip you up. No, there’s a lot of great information in there. And obviously Dior Fashion Week is a big event. You’d mentioned that the environment with moving cars and being in big city, the environment can be tricky for this type of production and what you were trying to accomplish. So directly, how was Zixi able to help you with this operation production? Zixi was really a key element in this setup because you have a lot of news gathering encoders and solution from Live View or other stuff like that, but it’s for news gathering. So they are totally fine with a shitty network signal that goes down to one megabyte. We saw a lot of artifacts on the use embedded modems and they are totally fine with it. Here we are at an event on the level of Super Bowl. They have thirty cinema cam and they want really the best quality because when you take the time to put FX6 very nice on every camera, you want really the top quality in terms of streaming on. You need a network that is really reliable. And with this kind of solutions, they usually have not concerned bit rates. So they have different bit rates varying along the time. So you have sometimes artifacts, etcetera, on here. It’s impossible to have that in live during the show. So having Zixi was really fantastic because I was able to feed all my encoded video directly to Zixi on having multiple feed in the cloud in AWS. The setup is really cool, having this flexibility. Like it started with two camera in two cars, and I ended up with four cars with two camera per cars. So having this flexibility to just, okay, I need more. I just pop the new feed in AWS. I can scale easily and the price is really nice because you just pay what you use. And Zixi also allows me on a car level to have a kind of flexibility because usually with the other backpack solution, you have like two packs and they will both do bonding. Here, I was able to have multiple encoders, so to scale the number of camera by choosing a single Zixi instance. So the Zixi was handling all the bonding from multiple encoders at the same time. So having this kind of reliability and flexibility on having everything available in the cloud, it was really fantastic because then once you are in the cloud, I was able to decode it to the venue, but I was also able to transcode it, build a multi view in the cloud to have a view for all my feed at the same time. I had statistics on it. It’s not bullshit marketing. I was able really to put a lot of, you can really control everything. You can control the delay on the encoding. You can control the delay of the decoding and you have the statistic in OB, in Zixi, in AWS. So it’s really no bullshit. It’s not the fake 5G stuff that you see a lot in the marketing. It’s really complex to do that on a year. Indeed, you cannot have a one hundred percent reliable feed. It’s a car moving in city center on a public 5D, but having this kind of flexibility plus the robustness, it’s really incredible. Yeah. Awesome. No, and so I actually just going to ask about how, you know, to emphasize, you’re taking in content from moving cars. And so over, to your point, over public cellular connectivity, you found that really the workflow and using Zixi really still was able to be fairly seamless? Yeah, it was really easy. Like you have a web interface with all the parameters that you need and you have control and everything. So it’s both advanced because you have a lot of statistics on advanced parameters, but it’s really simple. Like in the end, it was just setting up an IP on a port that I set up in AWS. AWS integration is also fantastic because you don’t have to set up any server, etcetera. You just log in, you purchase credits and you just can create a new flow on your link, your Zixi instance with these flows. So it’s really easy. Like, yes, I am an engineer, so I know all this stuff, but it’s really accessible for anybody. Like, as long as you can do a copy paste, you can do it and still you have really real statistics, no bullshit or whatever. So it was really important because when you’re in this kind of event, you have a lot of stuff happening. So if it is too complex, sometimes you can be lost, etcetera. So here I was really so happy to have this flexibility, the robustness on the ease of use because it’s just a web page. I was able to control the Zix instance in the car through a simple VPN. So it was really fantastic. Awesome. And it’s a highly visible event. There’s a lot of pressure, a lot of moving parts. Talk a little bit about the fact that you’re getting video from cars. Was there any concern about the connectivity? A little bit, if you could talk a little bit about the 5G contribution, that’d be great. Yeah. So indeed, I was not sure because it was the first time I was doing that. They contact me because it was impossible with other solution. So usually that’s where I end up. Like everybody contacts me when they cannot find on the shelf solution. So it can be a specific camera or a specific workflow. So here it was streaming on a typical streaming solution is not working to this environment because it’s really difficult when you want the robustness, the quality on bitrate, all of that with multiple network feed. On here, really, so I did for some tests. So I use a 5G modem from ZTE. So it was easy because it’s PoE modem. I was able to use Webbing SIM on it. So it’s really fantastic. It’s also an important point because you need different network and you need something stable, both easy on a good quality because you need to stream high bandwidth data for a long time. So here I tested multiple modems. I ended up with these PoE modems. It was really easy because it’s PoE. So you can rig it in the car easily. You can put it in good location facing the window on having programmable SIM from Webbing was also fantastic because when you are on the venue, it’s not your country. You need to find SIMs, local SIM from different operators. It’s a nightmare. While here, I was able to just order like programmable SIM, just put it in the modem and select which operator it was. I have just a single APN to enter, a single PIN to enter, and done. Then from the portal of Webbing, I can choose which operator it is. So it’s really easy on the Starlink, but also helping because in some tough situation, the Starlink is not good for our main source of stream because I’m in a car. So the car is turning left and right. So you lose alignment for the satellites, especially because I was using the mini version. But as a backup or as a complementary source of data, it was really fantastic. Again, it was on public 5G. So sometimes you can go in streets where you don’t have any 5G or the 5G is poor, or if you need to change operators. So here we did this combo of four modems plus a Starlink on being able to scale. Like it was not necessary for me to have more, but here I was able to do some tests and I ended up with the setup of four 5G modems plus the Starlink. It’s also great to have this flexibility, thanks to Zixi, because you are not limited to the input. I could add WiFi, I could add a fifth modem if it is needed. I could add a private 5G on the venue if it is needed also. So it’s really, really cool to have this flexibility. So the kind of the, no, I don’t wanna say this. So the type of connectivity, if you will, you were able to, you know, use 5G, you’re able to use Wi Fi and you felt good about kind of adjusting a little bit on the fly because, you know, of the other solutions that you had in place. Yeah. The other solution I’m quite used to work also on, for example, onboard car for twenty four hours of Le Mans, etcetera. So I already played with other competition solution. It’s always shit for this kind of stuff because basically when you have a shitty network, you’re not in constant bitrate and you don’t handle properly the bonding, you have an issue and then the network will drop and then it will take ages to recover. And when it’s recovered, you are again in the same loop and you lose the network. So your quality is always shit in the end. While here with Zixi, it’s really stable. Like you have really, it’s not just a bonding of different network. It’s really adapting, doing error correction. So the data that you use is really small in the end. I was really surprised to have really few data used in the end. And it’s really cool to have all these statistics. I was able to check-in the encoder, etcetera. So indeed, I did some tests before the event to validate the possibilities of feasibility. Know, it’s not perfect because it’s a car moving in the city. It’s a fashion show. So you have a lot of fashionista streaming on Instagram in front of the venue. So it’s really tough. But in the end, it was even better the day of the show than I expected. The people on-site, they were like, what is this magic? They really thought it was a RF transmission because the signal was flawless on so much high quality. I was delivering per car to feed at twenty megabits per So it’s quite RF quality, but it’s something that you cannot achieve with a typical news gathering backpack solution. So overall, were pleased with how Zixi was incorporating your workflow, especially given the different elements and factors that you were working in? Yeah, definitely. I’m really happy with Zixi and it’s even a little bit more than that. It’s that we saw Zixi, this wouldn’t be possible at all because we saw the solution. Yes, it’s easy because it’s a battery. You plug it, you click on play, it’s a lot of bullshit about latency. Here you can control it and check it. You don’t have this flexibility and you don’t have this quality because you’re being able to stream at two times twenty megabits per second per car. It’s really a lot like usually people cannot do that. A typical stream that you see on YouTube or stuff like that, it’s under five megabits. So having this kind of quality and this robustness and this control on it, without Zixi would be impossible. So this was really unique, but possible only thanks to Zixi definitely. You know, given that you’re dealing with different types of connectivity and, you know, what are some of the challenges that you’re finding in general with bonding or, you know, working with streams over public 5G or other types of connectivity? So I already did some tests in the past with already Zixi. I was streaming onboard camera with OBE and Zixi in a car. And at the time I was already really happy with Zixi. But the main struggle was a SIM because when you’re in a when you travel across different countries and with car on board swimming, it’s typically that you’re in Le Mans, then you go in Monza in Italy, then you go in Japan, etcetera. So you are really changing country on finding local SIM. It’s really a nightmare because in some country you need to take a monthly bill. Sometimes you need to show your ID on here with my four cars, with four modem cars. I had sixteen SIM to find in the end. So if I had to find that in a coffee shop or something like that, it would be a nightmare. Like, it’s like two weeks job just for that, because you need to go in the shop, you need to buy from different operators. So even this webbing SIM also helps. I think that I would not do it at this scale with sixteen modem total resources because it really helps both on the sourcing because you have the SIM on you and you can program different operator in different country, but also on a billing point of view, because usually when you take a data plan, have limited bandwidths, you have limited data rates, you have limited amount of data you never know, you have no guarantee. So maybe at some point they will throttle you. So ear webbing, it’s really nice. Like it’s really unlimited. It’s you pay as you go. So here I think I stream in total like multiple terabytes of data in 5G per Starlink because I was streaming like for one week long, hold the car because the car was parked there. And just to show it that it was stable, I was streaming all the day and it’s impossible to have this amount of data on a typical SIEM. So it also helps to have to SIM. It’s easy to build, easy to source and easy to use. It was really also a game changer because of the scale of the sixteen modem. If you have only a couple of modem in a static environment, then you can source it locally one or two SIEM. But at this scale, it’s more difficult. And yes, you can be afraid of 5G indeed because sometimes you have the impression that we sort your smartphone, you cannot go on Instagram, etcetera. But here you have good modems. The modem is like ten times the size of my phone and it’s basically just an antenna. So it’s better sensibility. Modem can withstand like one gigabit per second. So it’s quite high for streaming. I had four of them from different operators. So it’s really totally different. I was able to stream I was not able to browse the Internet next to it. So it can be like, it’s a question indeed, but it’s quite, it’s a different game. Like you cannot compare your smartphone streaming and 5G with actual streaming like that. It’s totally different game. On ear, I think also Starlink was something that was also good as a backup. Was not able to use it as a main source of data, but as a backup, it’s perfect because when the modem was totally dead, I was able to stream using a Starlink. Awesome. And given, you know, Dior Fashion Week obviously is a major event and sounds like the integration of was very successful. As you said, it wouldn’t have even been possible. What does the roadmap look like? Like do you see yourself using Zixi for more events or upcoming events? Or if you could talk a little bit about that, that would be great. It sounds like you’d be obviously more than comfortable and happy to use it, but what does the future look like? Yeah, definitely. Here it was the first streaming that I did using Zixi on the fashion show. I would use Zixi in other fields. But on fashion show, it was the first test, but it brought really a lot of interest from different brands. So here by end of the month, I will do LOEWE, which wants to do something similar than Dior. So I will continue to do Dior and also LOEWE. They want this kind of streaming, etcetera. And I also work with Chanel for the corporate events because they want to feed different studio from different location to teams. So when they do kind of corporate events, they want also to have a proper feed to feed into the teams. So it’s like a team meeting, but on a corporate level, but they still use cinema cameras. They have a proper feed on because it’s in different location, being able to just stream over fiber plus a backup with Starlink, etcetera, on public 5G from different locations in the world, being able to go to AWS, transcode the feed, stream it in RTMP to Teams. It’s really fantastic because once you are in the cloud, you have really a lot of possibility. It’s not here for Dior car streaming. It was quite easy because it was point to point using just the cloud as a rendezvous server. But then once you are there, you have a lot of possibility. You can transcode, you can have multiple output of the same feed. So it creates a lot of interest. I think it’s only the beginning and already here, I will do more car streaming from different brands on probably also corporate events with different studio across the world. Yeah. Awesome. Given the, you know, again, the circumstances, you know, varying types of connectivity, you would really feel comfortable using Zixi in many different situations or use cases. Yeah, definitely. Because nowadays you have 5G everywhere. You have multiple antennas on multiple operator per antenna. So it’s everywhere. And I’m feeling really confident because you have the possibility to mix multiple modems in different location on, because for example, here, my modem was in PoE tenant. So if I don’t have that here, I can just put a long Ethernet cable on, put my antenna in a better location and get data from a proper location, proper angle, etcetera. So yeah, really, think that nowadays I would be confident to totally replace even fiber solution by public 5G, because if you have the capability to do bonding on your mix, different kind of data input, then you can be totally confident, I think, to stream. Indeed, you have some dead zone. If I go in antarctic and stuff like that, probably I will not use 5G, but you can still use Starlink. You can increase a delay. You can have multiple sources. So yeah, it’s totally a good replacement. And then what about a little, if you could talk a little bit about the quality of the video, any comments or thoughts on that? Yeah, it’s also something that a lot of people don’t understand about the bonding. A lot of people are thinking that you just send the stream on every modem and then you assemble it somehow with magic in the cloud. But here is a work of Zixi is really more technical because you are able to fix error to retransmit really frame by frame, etcetera. So we use the overall bandwidth is really, really, really small. It’s not like, it’s not because I was bonding over four modems that I had four times the data. So this only is already good because at the end of the day, it’s the data that is costing the most. So this is really cool. Also having this amount of data because I was swimming twenty megabits per second, two feet per car. So a total of forty megabits. It’s quite huge. Usually people don’t do that. And it was fucking stable. I was streaming for like one week from the morning to the end of the day. So, and it was really, really stable. Yeah. And customers and consumers were happy with the quality and the video. Yeah. It was really outstanding because again, the direction was easy to ref. What magic is this there? Because they never saw it because they are not used to see that in live event because they are more used to this kind of news backpack. So when you look at the news TV, yeah, you can stream anywhere at one megabits. Yes. But the quality is shit. Here, had a twenty megabits feed per camera and I was streaming multiple camera from different venue on the venue or moving across the city. So it’s really unique and they were really amazed like direction was, is it a ref on what kind of magic is this? Awesome. Anything else to add on the overall, anything that I missed, anything you want to cover about, you know, fashion week and the experience and the workflow? No, I think we cover it all. I think the solution was possible because of a mix of really awesome company like OBE for the encoding, webbing for the SIEMs, having good modems on Zixi for the infrastructure. It’s really fantastic to be able to install it on different computer because it’s just software. People are not used to that neither, but it’s just a software. You can install it on different appliance. So it gives you a lot of flexibility. So just on this show, was using some NUCs, big server from Supermicro. So I think this flexibility to install it on different appliances is really cool. And the pricing model is also really cool. Just in Amazon and you pay as you go, it’s fantastic. And that probably speaks to the kind of the interoperability and how important that is for, you know, multiple partners and vendors to come together to create one seamless workflow for you. Those probably Yeah, interoperability is really fantastic because here, indeed I use OBE, etcetera, but I could totally feed to something else, to a different platform. So this is also unique. You are not bonded to a closed solution. Once you are in AWS, you can do whatever you want. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Xavier. That was great. Really appreciate the time. Thank you.