Podcasts about vvc

Turbopuffer came out of a reading app.In 2022, Simon was helping his friends at Readwise scale their infra for a highly requested feature: article recommendations and semantic search. Readwise was paying ~$5k/month for their relational database and vector search would cost ~$20k/month making the feature too expensive to ship. In 2023 after mulling over the problem from Readwise, Simon decided he wanted to “build a search engine” which became Turbopuffer.We discuss:• Simon's path: Denmark → Shopify infra for nearly a decade → “angel engineering” across startups like Readwise, Replicate, and Causal → turbopuffer almost accidentally becoming a company • The Readwise origin story: building an early recommendation engine right after the ChatGPT moment, seeing it work, then realizing it would cost ~$30k/month for a company spending ~$5k/month total on infra and getting obsessed with fixing that cost structure • Why turbopuffer is “a search engine for unstructured data”: Simon's belief that models can learn to reason, but can't compress the world's knowledge into a few terabytes of weights, so they need to connect to systems that hold truth in full fidelity • The three ingredients for building a great database company: a new workload, a new storage architecture, and the ability to eventually support every query plan customers will want on their data • The architecture bet behind turbopuffer: going all in on object storage and NVMe, avoiding a traditional consensus layer, and building around the cloud primitives that only became possible in the last few years • Why Simon hated operating Elasticsearch at Shopify: years of painful on-call experience shaped his obsession with simplicity, performance, and eliminating state spread across multiple systems • The Cursor story: launching turbopuffer as a scrappy side project, getting an email from Cursor the next day, flying out after a 4am call, and helping cut Cursor's costs by 95% while fixing their per-user economics • The Notion story: buying dark fiber, tuning TCP windows, and eating cross-cloud costs because Simon refused to compromise on architecture just to close a deal faster • Why AI changes the build-vs-buy equation: it's less about whether a company can build search infra internally, and more about whether they have time especially if an external team can feel like an extension of their own • Why RAG isn't dead: coding companies still rely heavily on search, and Simon sees hybrid retrieval semantic, text, regex, SQL-style patterns becoming more important, not less • How agentic workloads are changing search: the old pattern was one retrieval call up front; the new pattern is one agent firing many parallel queries at once, turning search into a highly concurrent tool call • Why turbopuffer is reducing query pricing: agentic systems are dramatically increasing query volume, and Simon expects retrieval infra to adapt to huge bursts of concurrent search rather than a small number of carefully chosen calls • The philosophy of “playing with open cards”: Simon's habit of being radically honest with investors, including telling Lachy Groom he'd return the money if turbopuffer didn't hit PMF by year-end • The “P99 engineer”: Simon's framework for building a talent-dense company, rejecting by default unless someone on the team feels strongly enough to fight for the candidate —Simon Hørup Eskildsen• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sirupsen• X: https://x.com/Sirupsen• https://sirupsen.com/aboutturbopuffer• https://turbopuffer.com/Full Video PodTimestamps00:00:00 The PMF promise to Lachy Groom00:00:25 Intro and Simon's background00:02:19 What turbopuffer actually is00:06:26 Shopify, Elasticsearch, and the pain behind the company00:10:07 The Readwise experiment that sparked turbopuffer00:12:00 The insight Simon couldn't stop thinking about00:17:00 S3 consistency, NVMe, and the architecture bet00:20:12 The Notion story: latency, dark fiber, and conviction00:25:03 Build vs. buy in the age of AI00:26:00 The Cursor story: early launch to breakout customer00:29:00 Why code search still matters00:32:00 Search in the age of agents00:34:22 Pricing turbopuffer in the AI era00:38:17 Why Simon chose Lachy Groom00:41:28 Becoming a founder on purpose00:44:00 The “P99 engineer” philosophy00:49:30 Bending software to your will00:51:13 The future of turbopuffer00:57:05 Simon's tea obsession00:59:03 Tea kits, X Live, and P99 LiveTranscriptSimon Hørup Eskildsen: I don't think I've said this publicly before, but I just called Lockey and was like, local Lockie. Like if this doesn't have PMF by the end of the year, like we'll just like return all the money to you. But it's just like, I don't really, we, Justine and I don't wanna work on this unless it's really working.So we want to give it the best shot this year and like we're really gonna go for it. We're gonna hire a bunch of people. We're just gonna be honest with everyone. Like when I don't know how to play a game, I just play with open cards. Lockey was the only person that didn't, that didn't freak out. He was like, I've never heard anyone say that before.Alessio: Hey everyone, welcome to the Leading Space podcast. This is Celesio Pando, Colonel Laz, and I'm joined by Swix, editor of Leading Space.swyx: Hello. Hello, uh, we're still, uh, recording in the Ker studio for the first time. Very excited. And today we are joined by Simon Eski. Of Turbo Farer welcome.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Thank you so much for having me.swyx: Turbo Farer has like really gone on a huge tear, and I, I do have to mention that like you're one of, you're not my newest member of the Danish AHU Mafia, where like there's a lot of legendary programmers that have come out of it, like, uh, beyond Trotro, Rasmus, lado Berg and the V eight team and, and Google Maps team.Uh, you're mostly a Canadian now, but isn't that interesting? There's so many, so much like strong Danish presence.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah, I was writing a post, um, not that long ago about sort of the influences. So I grew up in Denmark, right? I left, I left when, when I was 18 to go to Canada to, to work at Shopify. Um, and so I, like, I've, I would still say that I feel more Danish than, than Canadian.This is also the weird accent. I can't say th because it, this is like, I don't, you know, my wife is also Canadian, um, and I think. I think like one of the things in, in Denmark is just like, there's just such a ruthless pragmatism and there's also a big focus on just aesthetics. Like, they're like very, people really care about like where, what things look like.Um, and like Canada has a lot of attributes, US has, has a lot of attributes, but I think there's been lots of the great things to carry. I don't know what's in the water in Ahu though. Um, and I don't know that I could be considered part of the Mafi mafia quite yet, uh, compared to the phenomenal individuals we just mentioned.Barra OV is also, uh, Danish Canadian. Okay. Yeah. I don't know where he lives now, but, and he's the PHP.swyx: Yeah. And obviously Toby German, but moved to Canada as well. Yes. Like this is like import that, uh, that, that is an interesting, um, talent move.Alessio: I think. I would love to get from you. Definition of Turbo puffer, because I think you could be a Vector db, which is maybe a bad word now in some circles, you could be a search engine.It's like, let, let's just start there and then we'll maybe run through the history of how you got to this point.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: For sure. Yeah. So Turbo Puffer is at this point in time, a search engine, right? We do full text search and we do vector search, and that's really what we're specialized in. If you're trying to do much more than that, like then this might not be the right place yet, but Turbo Buffer is all about search.The other way that I think about it is that we can take all of the world's knowledge, all of the exabytes and exabytes of data that there is, and we can use those tokens to train a model, but we can't compress all of that into a few terabytes of weights, right? Compress into a few terabytes of weights, how to reason with the world, how to make sense of the knowledge.But we have to somehow connect it to something externally that actually holds that like in full fidelity and truth. Um, and that's the thing that we intend to become. Right? That's like a very holier than now kind of phrasing, right? But being the search engine for unstructured, unstructured data is the focus of turbo puffer at this point in time.Alessio: And let's break down. So people might say, well, didn't Elasticsearch already do this? And then some other people might say, is this search on my data, is this like closer to rag than to like a xr, like a public search thing? Like how, how do you segment like the different types of search?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: The way that I generally think about this is like, there's a lot of database companies and I think if you wanna build a really big database company, sort of, you need a couple of ingredients to be in the air.We don't, which only happens roughly every 15 years. You need a new workload. You basically need the ambition that every single company on earth is gonna have data in your database. Multiple times you look at a company like Oracle, right? You will, like, I don't think you can find a company on earth with a digital presence that it not, doesn't somehow have some data in an Oracle database.Right? And I think at this point, that's also true for Snowflake and Databricks, right? 15 years later it's, or even more than that, there's not a company on earth that doesn't, in. Or directly is consuming Snowflake or, or Databricks or any of the big analytics databases. Um, and I think we're in that kind of moment now, right?I don't think you're gonna find a company over the next few years that doesn't directly or indirectly, um, have all their data available for, for search and connect it to ai. So you need that new workload, like you need something to be happening where there's a new workload that causes that to happen, and that new workload is connecting very large amounts of data to ai.The second thing you need. The second condition to build a big database company is that you need some new underlying change in the storage architecture that is not possible from the databases that have come before you. If you look at Snowflake and Databricks, right, commoditized, like massive fleet of HDDs, like that was not possible in it.It just wasn't in the air in the nineties, right? So you just didn't, we just didn't build these systems. S3 and and and so on was not around. And I think the architecture that is now possible that wasn't possible 15 years ago is to go all in on NVME SSDs. It requires a particular type of architecture for the database that.It's difficult to retrofit onto the databases that are already there, including the ones you just mentioned. The second thing is to go all in on OIC storage, more so than we could have done 15 years ago. Like we don't have a consensus layer, we don't really have anything. In fact, you could turn off all the servers that Turbo Buffer has, and we would not lose any data because we have all completely all in on OIC storage.And this means that our architecture is just so simple. So that's the second condition, right? First being a new workload. That means that every company on earth, either indirectly or directly, is using your database. Second being, there's some new storage architecture. That means that the, the companies that have come before you can do what you're doing.I think the third thing you need to do to build a big database company is that over time you have to implement more or less every Cory plan on the data. What that means is that you. You can't just get stuck in, like, this is the one thing that a database does. It has to be ever evolving because when someone has data in the database, they over time expect to be able to ask it more or less every question.So you have to do that to get the storage architecture to the limit of what, what it's capable of. Those are the three conditions.swyx: I just wanted to get a little bit of like the motivation, right? Like, so you left Shopify, you're like principal, engineer, infra guy. Um, you also head of kernel labs, uh, inside of Shopify, right?And then you consulted for read wise and that it kind of gave you that, that idea. I just wanted you to tell that story. Um, maybe I, you've told it before, but, uh, just introduce the, the. People to like the, the new workload, the sort of aha moment for turbo PufferSimon Hørup Eskildsen: For sure. So yeah, I spent almost a decade at Shopify.I was on the infrastructure team, um, from the fairly, fairly early days around 2013. Um, at the time it felt like it was growing so quickly and everything, all the metrics were, you know, doubling year on year compared to the, what companies are contending with today. It's very cute in growth. I feel like lot some companies are seeing that month over month.Um, of course. Shopify compound has been compounding for a very long time now, but I spent a decade doing that and the majority of that was just make sure the site is up today and make sure it's up a year from now. And a lot of that was really just the, um, you know, uh, the Kardashians would drive very, very large amounts of, of data to, to uh, to Shopify as they were rotating through all the merch and building out their businesses.And we just needed to make sure we could handle that. Right. And sometimes these were events, a million requests per second. And so, you know, we, we had our own data centers back in the day and we were moving to the cloud and there was so much sharding work and all of that that we were doing. So I spent a decade just scaling databases ‘cause that's fundamentally what's the most difficult thing to scale about these sites.The database that was the most difficult for me to scale during that time, and that was the most aggravating to be on call for, was elastic search. It was very, very difficult to deal with. And I saw a lot of projects that were just being held back in their ambition by using it.swyx: And I mean, self-hosted.Self-hosted. ‘causeSimon Hørup Eskildsen: it's, yeah, and it commercial, this is like 2015, right? So it's like a very particular vintage. Right. It's probably better at a lot of these things now. Um, it was difficult to contend with and I'm just like, I just think about it. It's an inverted index. It should be good at these kinds of queries and do all of this.And it was, we, we often couldn't get it to do exactly what we needed to do or basically get lucine to do, like expose lucine raw to, to, to what we needed to do. Um, so that was like. Just something that we did on the side and just panic scaled when we needed to, but not a particular focus of mine. So I left, and when I left, I, um, wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do.I mean, it spent like a decade inside of the same company. I'd like grown up there. I started working there when I was 18.swyx: You only do Rails?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah. I mean, yeah. Rails. And he's a Rails guy. Uh, love Rails. So good. Um,Alessio: we all wish we could still work in Rails.swyx: I know know. I know, but some, I tried learning Ruby.It's just too much, like too many options to do the same thing. It's, that's my, I I know there's a, there's a way to do it.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I love it. I don't know that I would use it now, like given cloud code and, and, and cursor and everything, but, um, um, but still it, like if I'm just sitting down and writing a teal code, that's how I think.But anyway, I left and I wasn't, I talked to a couple companies and I was like, I don't. I need to see a little bit more of the world here to know what I'm gonna like focus on next. Um, and so what I decided is like I was gonna, I called it like angel engineering, where I just hopped around in my friend's companies in three months increments and just helped them out with something.Right. And, and just vested a bit of equity and solved some interesting infrastructure problem. So I worked with a bunch of companies at the time, um, read Wise was one of them. Replicate was one of them. Um, causal, I dunno if you've tried this, it's like a, it's a spreadsheet engine Yeah. Where you can do distribution.They sold recently. Yeah. Um, we've been, we used that in fp and a at, um, at Turbo Puffer. Um, so a bunch of companies like this and it was super fun. And so we're the Chachi bt moment happened, I was with. With read Wise for a stint, we were preparing for the reader launch, right? Which is where you, you cue articles and read them later.And I was just getting their Postgres up to snuff, like, which basically boils down to tuning, auto vacuum. So I was doing that and then this happened and we were like, oh, maybe we should build a little recommendation engine and some features to try to hook in the lms. They were not that good yet, but it was clear there was something there.And so I built a small recommendation engine just, okay, let's take the articles that you've recently read, right? Like embed all the articles and then do recommendations. It was good enough that when I ran it on one of the co-founders of Rey's, like I found out that I got articles about, about having a child.I'm like, oh my God, I didn't, I, I didn't know that, that they were having a child. I wasn't sure what to do with that information, but the recommendation engine was good enough that it was suggesting articles, um, about that. And so there was, there was recommendations and uh, it actually worked really well.But this was a company that was spending maybe five grand a month in total on all their infrastructure and. When I did the napkin math on running the embeddings of all the articles, putting them into a vector index, putting it in prod, it's gonna be like 30 grand a month. That just wasn't tenable. Right?Like Read Wise is a proudly bootstrapped company and it's paying 30 grand for infrastructure for one feature versus five. It just wasn't tenable. So sort of in the bucket of this is useful, it's pretty good, but let us, let's return to it when the costs come down.swyx: Did you say it grows by feature? So for five to 30 is by the number of, like, what's the, what's the Scaling factor scale?It scales by the number of articles that you embed.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: It does, but what I meant by that is like five grand for like all of the other, like the Heroku, dinos, Postgres, like all the other, and this then storage is 30. Yeah. And then like 30 grand for one feature. Right. Which is like, what other articles are related to this one.Um, so it was just too much right to, to power everything. Their budget would've been maybe a few thousand dollars, which still would've been a lot. And so we put it in a bucket of, okay, we're gonna do that later. We'll wait, we will wait for the cost to come down. And that haunted me. I couldn't stop thinking about it.I was like, okay, there's clearly some latent demand here. If the cost had been a 10th, we would've shipped it and. This was really the only data point that I had. Right. I didn't, I, I didn't, I didn't go out and talk to anyone else. It was just so I started reading Right. I couldn't, I couldn't help myself.Like I didn't know what like a vector index is. I, I generally barely do about how to generate the vectors. There was a lot of hype about, this is a early 2023. There was a lot of hype about vector databases. There were raising a lot of money and it's like, I really didn't know anything about it. It's like, you know, trying these little models, fine tuning them.Like I was just trying to get sort of a lay of the land. So I just sat down. I have this. A GitHub repository called Napkin Math. And on napkin math, there's just, um, rows of like, oh, this is how much bandwidth. Like this is how many, you know, you can do 25 gigabytes per second on average to dram. You can do, you know, five gigabytes per second of rights to an SSD, blah blah.All of these numbers, right? And S3, how many you could do per, how much bandwidth can you drive per connection? I was just sitting down, I was like, why hasn't anyone build a database where you just put everything on O storage and then you puff it into NVME when you use the data and you puff it into dram if you're, if you're querying it alive, it's just like, this seems fairly obvious and you, the only real downside to that is that if you go all in on o storage, every right will take a couple hundred milliseconds of latency, but from there it's really all upside, right?You do the first go, it takes half a second. And it sort of occurred to me as like, well. The architecture is really good for that. It's really good for AB storage, it's really good for nvm ESSD. It's, well, you just couldn't have done that 10 years ago. Back to what we were talking about before. You really have to build a database where you have as few round trips as possible, right?This is how CPUs work today. It's how NVM E SSDs work. It's how as, um, as three works that you want to have a very large amount of outstanding requests, right? Like basically go to S3, do like that thousand requests to ask for data in one round trip. Wait for that. Get that, like, make a new decision. Do it again, and try to do that maybe a maximum of three times.But no databases were designed that way within NVME as is ds. You can drive like within, you know, within a very low multiple of DRAM bandwidth if you use it that way. And same with S3, right? You can fully max out the network card, which generally is not maxed out. You get very, like, very, very good bandwidth.And, but no one had built a database like that. So I was like, okay, well can't you just, you know, take all the vectors right? And plot them in the proverbial coordinate system. Get the clusters, put a file on S3 called clusters, do json, and then put another file for every cluster, you know, cluster one, do js O cluster two, do js ON you know that like it's two round trips, right?So you get the clusters, you find the closest clusters, and then you download the cluster files like the, the closest end. And you could do this in two round trips.swyx: You were nearest neighbors locally.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yes. Yes. And then, and you would build this, this file, right? It's just like ultra simplistic, but it's not a far shot from what the first version of Turbo Buffer was.Why hasn't anyone done thatAlessio: in that moment? From a workload perspective, you're thinking this is gonna be like a read heavy thing because they're doing recommend. Like is the fact that like writes are so expensive now? Oh, with ai you're actually not writing that much.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: At that point I hadn't really thought too much about, well no actually it was always clear to me that there was gonna be a lot of rights because at Shopify, the search clusters were doing, you know, I don't know, tens or hundreds of crew QPS, right?‘cause you just have to have a human sit and type in. But we did, you know, I don't know how many updates there were per second. I'm sure it was in the millions, right into the cluster. So I always knew there was like a 10 to 100 ratio on the read write. In the read wise use case. It's, um, even, even in the read wise use case, there'd probably be a lot fewer reads than writes, right?There's just a lot of churn on the amount of stuff that was going through versus the amount of queries. Um, I wasn't thinking too much about that. I was mostly just thinking about what's the fundamentally cheapest way to build a database in the cloud today using the primitives that you have available.And this is it, right? You just, now you have one machine and you know, let's say you have a terabyte of data in S3, you paid the $200 a month for that, and then maybe five to 10% of that data and needs to be an NV ME SSDs and less than that in dram. Well. You're paying very, very little to inflate the data.swyx: By the way, when you say no one else has done that, uh, would you consider Neon, uh, to be on a similar path in terms of being sort of S3 first and, uh, separating the compute and storage?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah, I think what I meant with that is, uh, just build a completely new database. I don't know if we were the first, like it was very much, it was, I mean, I, I hadn't, I just looked at the napkin math and was like, this seems really obvious.So I'm sure like a hundred people came up with it at the same time. Like the light bulb and every invention ever. Right. It was just in the air. I think Neon Neon was, was first to it. And they're trying, they're retrofitted onto Postgres, right? And then they built this whole architecture where you have, you have it in memory and then you sort of.You know, m map back to S3. And I think that was very novel at the time to do it for, for all LTP, but I hadn't seen a database that was truly all in, right. Not retrofitting it. The database felt built purely for this no consensus layer. Even using compare and swap on optic storage to do consensus. I hadn't seen anyone go that all in.And I, I mean, there, there, I'm sure there was someone that did that before us. I don't know. I was just looking at the napkin mathswyx: and, and when you say consensus layer, uh, are you strongly relying on S3 Strong consistency? You are. Okay.SoSimon Hørup Eskildsen: that is your consensus layer. It, it is the consistency layer. And I think also, like, this is something that most people don't realize, but S3 only became consistent in December of 2020.swyx: I remember this coming out during COVID and like people were like, oh, like, it was like, uh, it was just like a free upgrade.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah.swyx: They were just, they just announced it. We saw consistency guys and like, okay, cool.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: And I'm sure that they just, they probably had it in prod for a while and they're just like, it's done right.And people were like, okay, cool. But. That's a big moment, right? Like nv, ME SSDs, were also not in the cloud until around 2017, right? So you just sort of had like 2017 nv, ME SSDs, and people were like, okay, cool. There's like one skew that does this, whatever, right? Takes a few years. And then the second thing is like S3 becomes consistent in 2020.So now it means you don't have to have this like big foundation DB or like zookeeper or whatever sitting there contending with the keys, which is how. You know, that's what Snowflake and others have do so muchswyx: for goneSimon Hørup Eskildsen: Exactly. Just gone. Right? And so just push to the, you know, whatever, how many hundreds of people they have working on S3 solved and then compare and swap was not in S3 at this point in time,swyx: by the way.Uh, I don't know what that is, so maybe you wanna explain. Yes. Yeah.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yes. So, um, what Compare and swap is, is basically, you can imagine that if you have a database, it might be really nice to have a file called metadata json. And metadata JSON could say things like, Hey, these keys are here and this file means that, and there's lots of metadata that you have to operate in the database, right?But that's the simplest way to do it. So now you have might, you might have a lot of servers that wanna change the metadata. They might have written a file and want the metadata to contain that file. But you have a hundred nodes that are trying to contend with this metadata that JSON well, what compare and Swap allows you to do is basically just you download the file, you make the modifications, and then you write it only if it hasn't changed.While you did the modification and if not you retry. Right? Should just have this retry loops. Now you can imagine if you have a hundred nodes doing that, it's gonna be really slow, but it will converge over time. That primitive was not available in S3. It wasn't available in S3 until late 2024, but it was available in GCP.The real story of this is certainly not that I sat down and like bake brained it. I was like, okay, we're gonna start on GCS S3 is gonna get it later. Like it was really not that we started, we got really lucky, like we started on GCP and we started on GCP because tur um, Shopify ran on GCP. And so that was the platform I was most available with.Right. Um, and I knew the Canadian team there ‘cause I'd worked with them at Shopify and so it was natural for us to start there. And so when we started building the database, we're like, oh yeah, we have to build a, we really thought we had to build a consensus layer, like have a zookeeper or something to do this.But then we discovered the compare and swap. It's like, oh, we can kick the can. Like we'll just do metadata r json and just, it's fine. It's probably fine. Um, and we just kept kicking the can until we had very, very strong conviction in the idea. Um, and then we kind of just hinged the company on the fact that S3 probably was gonna get this, it started getting really painful in like mid 2024.‘cause we were closing deals with, um, um, notion actually that was running in AWS and we're like, trust us. You, you really want us to run this in GCP? And they're like, no, I don't know about that. Like, we're running everything in AWS and the latency across the cloud were so big and we had so much conviction that we bought like, you know, dark fiber between the AWS regions in, in Oregon, like in the InterExchange and GCP is like, we've never seen a startup like do like, what's going on here?And we're just like, no, we don't wanna do this. We were tuning like TCP windows, like everything to get the latency down ‘cause we had so high conviction in not doing like a, a metadata layer on S3. So those were the three conditions, right? Compare and swap. To do metadata, which wasn't in S3 until late 2024 S3 being consistent, which didn't happen until December, 2020.Uh, 2020. And then NVMe ssd, which didn't end in the cloud until 2017.swyx: I mean, in some ways, like a very big like cloud success story that like you were able to like, uh, put this all together, but also doing things like doing, uh, bind our favor. That that actually is something I've never heard.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I mean, it's very common when you're a big company, right?You're like connecting your own like data center or whatever. But it's like, it was uniquely just a pain with notion because the, um, the org, like most of the, like if you're buying in Ashburn, Virginia, right? Like US East, the Google, like the GCP and, and AWS data centers are like within a millisecond on, on each other, on the public exchanges.But in Oregon uniquely, the GCP data center sits like a couple hundred kilometers, like east of Portland and the AWS region sits in Portland, but the network exchange they go through is through Seattle. So it's like a full, like 14 milliseconds or something like that. And so anyway, yeah. It's, it's, so we were like, okay, we can't, we have to go through an exchange in Portland.Yeah. Andswyx: you'd rather do this than like run your zookeeper and likeSimon Hørup Eskildsen: Yes. Way rather. It doesn't have state, I don't want state and two systems. Um, and I think all that is just informed by Justine, my co-founder and I had just been on call for so long. And the worst outages are the ones where you have state in multiple places that's not syncing up.So it really came from, from a a, like just a, a very pure source of pain, of just imagining what we would be Okay. Being woken up at 3:00 AM about and having something in zookeeper was not one of them.swyx: You, you're talking to like a notion or something. Do they care or do they just, theySimon Hørup Eskildsen: just, they care about latency.swyx: They latency cost. That's it.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: They just cared about latency. Right. And we just absorbed the cost. We're just like, we have high conviction in this. At some point we can move them to AWS. Right. And so we just, we, we'll buy the fiber, it doesn't matter. Right. Um, and it's like $5,000. Usually when you buy fiber, you buy like multiple lines.And we're like, we can only afford one, but we will just test it that when it goes over the public internet, it's like super smooth. And so we did a lot of, anyway, it's, yeah, it was, that's cool.Alessio: You can imagine talking to the GCP rep and it's like, no, we're gonna buy, because we know we're gonna turn, we're gonna turn from you guys and go to AWS in like six months.But in the meantime we'll do this. It'sSimon Hørup Eskildsen: a, I mean, like they, you know, this workload still runs on GCP for what it's worth. Right? ‘cause it's so, it was just, it was so reliable. So it was never about moving off GCP, it was just about honesty. It was just about giving notion the latency that they deserved.Right. Um, and we didn't want ‘em to have to care about any of this. We also, they were like, oh, egress is gonna be bad. It was like, okay, screw it. Like we're just gonna like vvc, VPC peer with you and AWS we'll eat the cost. Yeah. Whatever needs to be done.Alessio: And what were the actual workloads? Because I think when you think about ai, it's like 14 milliseconds.It's like really doesn't really matter in the scheme of like a model generation.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah. We were told the latency, right. That we had to beat. Oh, right. So, so we're just looking at the traces. Right. And then sort of like hand draw, like, you know, kind of like looking at the trace and then thinking what are the other extensions of the trace?Right. And there's a lot more to it because it's also when you have, if you have 14 versus seven milliseconds, right. You can fit in another round trip. So we had to tune TCP to try to send as much data in every round trip, prewarm all the connections. And there was, there's a lot of things that compound from having these kinds of round trips, but in the grand scheme it was just like, well, we have to beat the latency of whatever we're up against.swyx: Which is like they, I mean, notion is a database company. They could have done this themselves. They, they do lots of database engineering themselves. How do you even get in the door? Like Yeah, just like talk through that kind of.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Last time I was in San Francisco, I was talking to one of the engineers actually, who, who was one of our champions, um, at, AT Notion.And they were, they were just trying to make sure that the, you know, per user cost matched the economics that they needed. You know, Uhhuh like, it's like the way I think about, it's like I have to earn a return on whatever the clouds charge me and then my customers have to earn a return on that. And it's like very simple, right?And so there has to be gross margin all the way up and that's how you build the product. And so then our customers have to make the right set of trade off the turbo Puffer makes, and if they're happy with that, that's great.swyx: Do you feel like you're competing with build internally versus buy or buy versus buy?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah, so, sorry, this was all to build up to your question. So one of the notion engineers told me that they'd sat and probably on a napkin, like drawn out like, why hasn't anyone built this? And then they saw terrible. It was like, well, it literally that. So, and I think AI has also changed the buy versus build equation in terms of, it's not really about can we build it, it's about do we have time to build it?I think they like, I think they felt like, okay, if this is a team that can do that and they, they feel enough like an extension of our team, well then we can go a lot faster, which would be very, very good for them. And I mean, they put us through the, through the test, right? Like we had some very, very long nights to to, to do that POC.And they were really our biggest, our second big customer off the cursor, which also was a lot of late nights. Right.swyx: Yeah. That, I mean, should we go into that story? The, the, the sort of Chris's story, like a lot, um, they credit you a lot for. Working very closely with them. So I just wanna hear, I've heard this, uh, story from Sole's point of view, but like, I'm curious what, what it looks like from your side.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I actually haven't heard it from Sole's point of view, so maybe you can now cross reference it. The way that I remember it was that, um, the day after we launched, which was just, you know, I'd worked the whole summer on, on the first version. Justine wasn't part of it yet. ‘cause I just, I didn't tell anyone that summer that I was working on this.I was just locked in on building it because it's very easy otherwise to confuse talking about something to actually doing it. And so I was just like, I'm not gonna do that. I'm just gonna do the thing. I launched it and at this point turbo puffer is like a rust binary running on a single eight core machine in a T Marks instance.And me deploying it was like looking at the request log and then like command seeing it or like control seeing it to just like, okay, there's no request. Let's upgrade the binary. Like it was like literally the, the, the, the scrappiest thing. You could imagine it was on purpose because just like at Shopify, we did that all the time.Like, we like move, like we ran things in tux all the time to begin with. Before something had like, at least the inkling of PMF, it was like, okay, is anyone gonna hear about this? Um, and one of the cursor co-founders Arvid reached out and he just, you know, the, the cursor team are like all I-O-I-I-M-O like, um, contenders, right?So they just speak in bullet points and, and facts. It was like this amazing email exchange just of, this is how many QPS we have, this is what we're paying, this is where we're going, blah, blah, blah. And so we're just conversing in bullet points. And I tried to get a call with them a few times, but they were, so, they were like really writing the PMF bowl here, just like late 2023.And one time Swally emails me at like five. What was it like 4:00 AM Pacific time saying like, Hey, are you open for a call now? And I'm on the East coast and I, it was like 7:00 AM I was like, yeah, great, sure, whatever. Um, and we just started talking and something. Then I didn't know anything about sales.It was something that just comp compelled me. I have to go see this team. Like, there's something here. So I, I went to San Francisco and I went to their office and the way that I remember it is that Postgres was down when I showed up at the office. Did SW tell you this? No. Okay. So Postgres was down and so it's like they were distracting with that.And I was trying my best to see if I could, if I could help in any way. Like I knew a little bit about databases back to tuning, auto vacuum. It was like, I think you have to tune out a vacuum. Um, and so we, we talked about that and then, um, that evening just talked about like what would it look like, what would it look like to work with us?And I just said. Look like we're all in, like we will just do what we'll do whatever, whatever you tell us, right? They migrated everything over the next like week or two, and we reduced their cost by 95%, which I think like kind of fixed their per user economics. Um, and it solved a lot of other things. And we were just, Justine, this is also when I asked Justine to come on as my co-founder, she was the best engineer, um, that I ever worked with at Shopify.She lived two blocks away and we were just, okay, we're just gonna get this done. Um, and we did, and so we helped them migrate and we just worked like hell over the next like month or two to make sure that we were never an issue. And that was, that was the cursor story. Yeah.swyx: And, and is code a different workload than normal text?I, I don't know. Is is it just text? Is it the same thing?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah, so cursor's workload is basically, they, um, they will embed the entire code base, right? So they, they will like chunk it up in whatever they would, they do. They have their own embedding model, um, which they've been public about. Um, and they find that on, on, on their evals.It. There's one of their evals where it's like a 25% improvement on a very particular workload. They have a bunch of blog posts about it. Um, I think it works best on larger code basis, but they've trained their own embedding model to do this. Um, and so you'll see it if you use the cursor agent, it will do searches.And they've also been public around, um, how they've, I think they post trained their model to be very good at semantic search as well. Um, and that's, that's how they use it. And so it's very good at, like, can you find me on the code that's similar to this, or code that does this? And just in, in this queries, they also use GR to supplement it.swyx: Yeah.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Um, of courseswyx: it's been a big topic of discussion like, is rag dead because gr you know,Simon Hørup Eskildsen: and I mean like, I just, we, we see lots of demand from the coding company to ethicsswyx: search in every part. Yes.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Uh, we, we, we see demand. And so, I mean, I'm. I like case studies. I don't like, like just doing like thought pieces on this is where it's going.And like trying to be all macroeconomic about ai, that's has turned out to be a giant waste of time because no one can really predict any of this. So I just collect case studies and I mean, cursor has done a great job talking about what they're doing and I hope some of the other coding labs that use Turbo Puffer will do the same.Um, but it does seem to make a difference for particular queries. Um, I mean we can also do text, we can also do RegX, but I should also say that cursors like security posture into Tur Puffer is exceptional, right? They have their own embedding model, which makes it very difficult to reverse engineer. They obfuscate the file paths.They like you. It's very difficult to learn anything about a code base by looking at it. And the other thing they do too is that for their customers, they encrypt it with their encryption keys in turbo puffer's bucket. Um, so it's, it's, it's really, really well designed.swyx: And so this is like extra stuff they did to work with you because you are not part of Cursor.Exactly like, and this is just best practice when working in any database, not just you guys. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I think for me, like the, the, the learning is kind of like you, like all workloads are hybrid. Like, you know, uh, like you, you want the semantic, you want the text, you want the RegX, you want sql.I dunno. Um, but like, it's silly to like be all in on like one particularly query pattern.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I think, like I really like the way that, um, um, that swally at cursor talks about it, which is, um, I'm gonna butcher it here. Um, and you know, I'm a, I'm a database scalability person. I'm not a, I, I dunno anything about training models other than, um, what the internet tells me and what.The way he describes is that this is just like cash compute, right? It's like you have a point in time where you're looking at some particular context and focused on some chunk and you say, this is the layer of the neural net at this point in time. That seems fundamentally really useful to do cash compute like that.And, um, how the value of that will change over time. I'm, I'm not sure, but there seems to be a lot of value in that.Alessio: Maybe talk a bit about the evolution of the workload, because even like search, like maybe two years ago it was like one search at the start of like an LLM query to build the context. Now you have a gentech search, however you wanna call it, where like the model is both writing and changing the code and it's searching it again later.Yeah. What are maybe some of the new types of workloads or like changes you've had to make to your architecture for it?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I think you're right. When I think of rag, I think of, Hey, there's an 8,000 token, uh, context window and you better make it count. Um, and search was a way to do that now. Everything is moving towards the, just let the agent do its thing.Right? And so back to the thing before, right? The LLM is very good at reasoning with the data, and so we're just the tool call, right? And that's increasingly what we see our customers doing. Um, what we're seeing more demand from, from our customers now is to do a lot of concurrency, right? Like Notion does a ridiculous amount of queries in every round trip just because they can't.And I'm also now, when I use the cursor agent, I also see them doing more concurrency than I've ever seen before. So a bit similar to how we designed a database to drive as much concurrency in every round trip as possible. That's also what the agents are doing. So that's new. It means just an enormous amount of queries all at once to the dataset while it's warm in as few turns as possible.swyx: Can I clarify one thing on that?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yes.swyx: Is it, are they batching multiple users or one user is driving multiple,Simon Hørup Eskildsen: one user driving multiple, one agent driving.swyx: It's parallel searching a bunch of things.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Exactly.swyx: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, the clinician also did, did this for the fast context thing, like eight parallel at once.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yes.swyx: And, and like an interesting problem is, well, how do you make sure you have enough diversity so you're not making the the same request eight times?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: And I think like that's probably also where the hybrid comes in, where. That's another way to diversify. It's a completely different way to, to do the search.That's a big change, right? So before it was really just like one call and then, you know, the LLM took however many seconds to return, but now we just see an enormous amount of queries. So the, um, we just see more queries. So we've like tried to reduce query, we've reduced query pricing. Um, this is probably the first time actually I'm saying that, but the query pricing is being reduced, like five x.Um, and we'll probably try to reduce it even more to accommodate some of these workloads of just doing very large amounts of queries. Um, that's one thing that's changed. I think the right, the right ratio is still very high, right? Like there's still a, an enormous amount of rights per read, but we're starting probably to see that change if people really lean into this pattern.Alessio: Can we talk a little bit about the pricing? I'm curious, uh, because traditionally a database would charge on storage, but now you have the token generation that is so expensive, where like the actual. Value of like a good search query is like much higher because they're like saving inference time down the line.How do you structure that as like, what are people receptive to on the other side too?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah. I, the, the turbo puffer pricing in the beginning was just very simple. The pricing on these on for search engines before Turbo Puffer was very server full, right? It was like, here's the vm, here's the per hour cost, right?Great. And I just sat down with like a piece of paper and said like, if Turbo Puffer was like really good, this is probably what it would cost with a little bit of margin. And that was the first pricing of Turbo Puffer. And I just like sat down and I was like, okay, like this is like probably the storage amp, but whenever on a piece of paper I, it was vibe pricing.It was very vibe price, and I got it wrong. Oh. Um, well I didn't get it wrong, but like Turbo Puffer wasn't at the first principle pricing, right? So when Cursor came on Turbo Puffer, it was like. Like, I didn't know any VCs. I didn't know, like I was just like, I don't know, I didn't know anything about raising money or anything like that.I just saw that my GCP bill was, was high, was a lot higher than the cursor bill. So Justine and I was just like, well, we have to optimize it. Um, and I mean, to the chagrin now of, of it, of, of the VCs, it now means that we're profitable because we've had so much pricing pressure in the beginning. Because it was running on my credit card and Justine and I had spent like, like tens of thousands of dollars on like compute bills and like spinning off the company and like very like, like bad Canadian lawyers and like things like to like get all of this done because we just like, we didn't know.Right. If you're like steeped in San Francisco, you're just like, you just know. Okay. Like you go out, raise a pre-seed round. I, I never heard a word pre-seed at this point in time.swyx: When you had Cursor, you had Notion you, you had no funding.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Um, with Cursor we had no funding. Yeah. Um, by the time we had Notion Locke was, Locke was here.Yeah. So it was really just, we vibe priced it 100% from first Principles, but it wasn't, it, it was not performing at first principles, so we just did everything we could to optimize it in the beginning for that, so that at least we could have like a 5% margin or something. So I wasn't freaking out because Cursor's bill was also going like this as they were growing.And so my liability and my credit limit was like actively like calling my bank. It was like, I need a bigger credit. Like it was, yeah. Anyway, that was the beginning. Yeah. But the pricing was, yeah, like storage rights and query. Right. And the, the pricing we have today is basically just that pricing with duct tape and spit to try to approach like, you know, like a, as a margin on the physical underlying hardware.And we're doing this year, you're gonna see more and more pricing changes from us. Yeah.swyx: And like is how much does stuff like VVC peering matter because you're working in AWS land where egress is charged and all that, you know.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: We probably don't like, we have like an enterprise plan that just has like a base fee because we haven't had time to figure out SKU pricing for all of this.Um, but I mean, yeah, you can run turbo puffer either in SaaS, right? That's what Cursor does. You can run it in a single tenant cluster. So it's just you. That's what Notion does. And then you can run it in, in, in BYOC where everything is inside the customer's VPC, that's what an for example, philanthropic does.swyx: What I'm hearing is that this is probably the best CRO job for somebody who can come in and,Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I mean,swyx: help you with this.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Um, like Turbo Puffer hired, like, I don't know what, what number this was, but we had a full-time CFO as like the 12th hire or something at Turbo Puffer, um, I think I hear are a lot of comp.I don't know how they do it. Like they have a hundred employees and not a CFO. It's like having a CFO is like a runningswyx: business man. Like, you know,Simon Hørup Eskildsen: it's so good. Yeah, like money Mike, like he just, you know, just handles the money and a lot of the business stuff and so he came in and just hopped with a lot of the operational side of the business.So like C-O-O-C-F-O, like somewhere in between.swyx: Just as quick mention of Lucky, just ‘cause I'm curious, I've met Lock and like, he's obviously a very good investor and now on physical intelligence, um, I call it generalist super angel, right? He invests in everything. Um, and I always wonder like, you know, is there something appealing about focusing on developer tooling, focusing on databases, going like, I've invested for 10 years in databases versus being like a lock where he can maybe like connect you to all the customers that you need.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: This is an excellent question. No, no one's asked me this. Um, why lockey? Because. There was a couple of people that we were talking to at the time and when we were raising, we were almost a little, we were like a bit distressed because one of our, one of our peers had just launched something that was very similar to Turbo Puffer.And someone just gave me the advice at the time of just choose the person where you just feel like you can just pick up the phone and not prepare anything. And just be completely honest, and I don't think I've said this publicly before, but I just called Lockey and was like local Lockie. Like if this doesn't have PMF by the end of the year, like we'll just like return all the money to you.But it's just like, I don't really, we, Justine and I don't wanna work on this unless it's really working. So we want to give it the best shot this year and like we're really gonna go for it. We're gonna hire a bunch of people and we're just gonna be honest with everyone. Like when I don't know how to play a game, I just play with open cards and.Lockey was the only person that didn't, that didn't freak out. He was like, I've never heard anyone say that before. As I said, I didn't even know what a seed or pre-seed round was like before, probably even at this time. So I was just like very honest with him. And I asked him like, Lockie, have you ever have, have you ever invested in database company?He was just like, no. And at the time I was like, am I dumb? Like, but I think there was something that just like really drew me to Lockie. He is so authentic, so honest, like, and there was something just like, I just felt like I could just play like, just say everything openly. And that was, that was, I think that that was like a perfect match at the time, and, and, and honestly still is.He was just like, okay, that's great. This is like the most honest, ridiculous thing I've ever heard anyone say to me. But like that, like that, whyswyx: is this ridiculous? Say competitor launch, this may not work out. It wasSimon Hørup Eskildsen: more just like. If this doesn't work out, I'm gonna close up shop by the end of the mo the year, right?Like it was, I don't know, maybe it's common. I, I don't know. He told me it was uncommon. I don't know. Um, that's why we chose him and he'd been phenomenal. The other people were talking at the, at the time were database experts. Like they, you know, knew a lot about databases and Locke didn't, this turned out to be a phenomenal asset.Right. I like Justine and I know a lot about databases. The people that we hire know a lot about databases. What we needed was just someone who didn't know a lot about databases, didn't pretend to know a lot about databases, and just wanted to help us with candidates and customers. And he did. Yeah. And I have a list, right, of the investors that I have a relationship with, and Lockey has just performed excellent in the number of sub bullets of what we can attribute back to him.Just absolutely incredible. And when people talk about like no ego and just the best thing for the founder, I like, I don't think that anyone, like even my lawyer is like, yeah, Lockey is like the most friendly person you will find.swyx: Okay. This is my most glow recommendation I've ever heard.Alessio: He deserves it.He's very special.swyx: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Amazing.Alessio: Since you mentioned candidates, maybe we can talk about team building, you know, like, especially in sf, it feels like it's just easier to start a company than to join a company. Uh, I'm curious your experience, especially not being n SF full-time and doing something that is maybe, you know, a very low level of detail and technical detail.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah. So joining versus starting, I never thought that I would be a founder. I would start with it, like Turbo Puffer started as a blog post, and then it became a project and then sort of almost accidentally became a company. And now it feels like it's, it's like becoming a bigger company. That was never the intention.The intentions were very pure. It's just like, why hasn't anyone done this? And it's like, I wanna be the, like, I wanna be the first person to do it. I think some founders have this, like, I could never work for anyone else. I, I really don't feel that way. Like, it's just like, I wanna see this happen. And I wanna see it happen with some people that I really enjoy working with and I wanna have fun doing it and this, this, this has all felt very natural on that, on that sense.So it was never a like join versus versus versus found. It was just dis found me at the right moment.Alessio: Well I think there's an argument for, you should have joined Cursor, right? So I'm curious like how you evaluate it. Okay, I should actually go raise money and make this a company versus like, this is like a company that is like growing like crazy.It's like an interesting technical problem. I should just build it within Cursor and then they don't have to encrypt all this stuff. They don't have to obfuscate things. Like was that on your mind at all orSimon Hørup Eskildsen: before taking the, the small check from Lockie, I did have like a hard like look at myself in the mirror of like, okay, do I really want to do this?And because if I take the money, I really have to do it right. And so the way I almost think about it's like you kind of need to ha like you kind of need to be like fucked up enough to want to go all the way. And that was the conversation where I was like, okay, this is gonna be part of my life's journey to build this company and do it in the best way that I possibly can't.Because if I ask people to join me, ask people to get on the cap table, then I have an ultimate responsibility to give it everything. And I don't, I think some people, it doesn't occur to me that everyone takes it that seriously. And maybe I take it too seriously, I don't know. But that was like a very intentional moment.And so then it was very clear like, okay, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna give it everything.Alessio: A lot of people don't take it this seriously. But,swyx: uh, let's talk about, you have this concept of the P 99 engineer. Uh, people are 10 x saying, everyone's saying, you know, uh, maybe engineers are out of a job. I don't know.But you definitely see a P 99 engineer, and I just want you to talk about it.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah, so the P 99 engineer was just a term that we started using internally to talk about candidates and talk about how we wanted to build the company. And you know, like everyone else is, like we want a talent dense company.And I think that's almost become trite at this point. What I credit the cursor founders a lot with is that they just arrived there from first principles of like, we just need a talent dense, um, talent dense team. And I think I've seen some teams that weren't talent dense and like seemed a counterfactual run, which if you've run in been in a large company, you will just see that like it's just logically will happen at a large company.Um, and so that was super important to me and Justine and it's very difficult to maintain. And so we just needed, we needed wording for it. And so I have a document called Traits of the P 99 Engineer, and it's a bullet point list. And I look at that list after every single interview that I do, and in every single recap that we do and every recap we end with.End with, um, some version of I'm gonna reject this candidate completely regardless of what the discourse was, because I wanna see people fight for this person because the default should not be, we're gonna hire this person. The default should be, we're definitely not hiring this person. And you know, if everyone was like, ah, maybe throw a punch, then this is not the right.swyx: Do, do you operate, like if there's one cha there must have at least one champion who's like, yes, I will put my career on, on, on the line for this. You know,Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I think career on the line,swyx: maybe a chair, butSimon Hørup Eskildsen: yeah. You know, like, um, I would say so someone needs to like, have both fists up and be like, I'd fight.Right? Yeah. Yeah. And if one person said, then, okay, let's do it. Right?swyx: Yeah.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Um. It doesn't have to be absolutely everyone. Right? And like the interviews are always the sign that you're checking for different attributes. And if someone is like knocking it outta the park in every single attribute, that's, that's fairly rare.Um, but that's really important. And so the traits of the P 99 engineer, there's lots of them. There's also the traits of the p like triple nine engineer and the quadruple nine engineer. This is like, it's a long list.swyx: Okay.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Um, I'll give you some samples, right. Of what we, what we look for. I think that the P 99 engineer has some history of having bent, like their trajectory or something to their will.Right? Some moment where it was just, they just, you know, made the computer do what it needed to do. There's something like that, and it will, it will occur to have them at some point in their career. And, uh. Hopefully multiple times. Right.swyx: Gimme an example of one of your engineers that like,Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I'll give an eng.Uh, so we, we, we launched this thing called A and NV three. Um, we could, we're also, we're working on V four and V five right now, but a and NV three can search a hundred billion vectors with a P 50 of around 40 milliseconds and a p 99 of 200 milliseconds. Um, maybe other people have done this, I'm sure Google and others have done this, but, uh, we haven't seen anyone, um, at least not in like a public consumable SaaS that can do this.And that was an engineer, the chief architect of Turbo Puffer, Nathan, um, who more or less just bent this, the software was not capable of this and he just made it capable for a very particular workload in like a, you know, six to eight week period with the help of a lot of the team. Right. It's been, been, there's numerous of examples of that, like at, at turbo puff, but that's like really bending the software and X 86 to your will.It was incredible to watch. Um. You wanna see some moments like that?swyx: Isn't that triple nine?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Um, I think Nathan, what's calledAlessio: group nine, that was only nine. I feel like this is too high forSimon Hørup Eskildsen: Nathan. Nathan is, uh, Nathan is like, yeah, there's a lot of nines. Okay. After that p So I think that's one trait. I think another trait is that, uh, the P 99 spends a lot of time looking at maps.Generally it's their preferred ux. They just love looking at maps. You ever seen someone who just like, sits on their phone and just like, scrolls around on a map? Or did you not look at maps A lot? You guys don't look atswyx: maps? I guess I'm not feeling there. I don't know, butSimon Hørup Eskildsen: you just dis What about trains?Do you like trains?swyx: Uh, I mean they, not enough. Okay. This is just like weapon nice. Autism is what I call it. Like, like,Simon Hørup Eskildsen: um, I love looking at maps, like, it's like my preferred UX and just like I, you know, I likeswyx: lotsAlessio: of, of like random places, soswyx: like,youswyx: know.Alessio: Yes. Okay. There you go. So instead of like random places, like how do you explore the maps?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: No, it's, it's just a joke.swyx: It's autism laugh. It's like you are just obsessed by something and you like studying a thing.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: The origin of this was that at some point I read an interview with some IOI gold medalistswyx: Uhhuh,Simon Hørup Eskildsen: and it's like, what do you do in your spare time? I was just like, I like looking at maps.I was like, I feel so seen. Like, I just like love, like swirling out. I was like, oh, Canada is so big. Where's Baffin Island? I don't know. I love it. Yeah. Um, anyway, so the traits of P 99, P 99 is obsessive, right? Like, there's just like, you'll, you'll find traits of that we do an interview at, at, at, at turbo puffer or like multiple interviews that just try to screen for some of these things.Um, so. There's lots of others, but these are the kinds of traits that we look for.swyx: I'll tell you, uh, some people listen for like some of my dere stuff. Uh, I do think about derel as maps. Um, you draw a map for people, uh, maps show you the, uh, what is commonly agreed to be the geographical features of what a boundary is.And it shows also shows you what is not doing. And I, I think a lot of like developer tools, companies try to tell you they can do everything, but like, let's, let's be real. Like you, your, your three landmarks are here, everyone comes here, then here, then here, and you draw a map and, and then you draw a journey through the map.And like that. To me, that's what developer relations looks like. So I do think about things that way.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I think the P 99 thinks in offs, right? The P 99 is very clear about, you know, hey, turbo puffer, you can't run a high transaction workload on turbo puffer, right? It's like the right latency is a hundred milliseconds.That's a clear trade off. I think the P 99 is very good at articulating the trade offs in every decision. Um. Which is exactly what the map is in your case, right?swyx: Uh, yeah, yeah. My, my, my world. My world.Alessio: How, how do you reconcile some of these things when you're saying you bend the will the computer versus like the trade

The Constitutional Court handed down a landmark judgment clarifying that a customary marriage is a single, continuous union that is not dissolved when a couple subsequently enters into a civil marriage. In handing down judgement, the Court ruled that any Antenuptial Contract signed after the customary marriage (even if before the civil ceremony), is invalid unless it follows the strict court-supervised process for changing a property regime. The matter stems from an opposed divorce between VVC and JRM who were married in community of property by way of customary law in 2011 and later entered into a civil marriage. For a look at what this means, Bongiwe Zwane spoke to Specialist Divorce Lawyer, Shando Theron

I think that this is an important time to pause and relook at Polyvagal Theory before continuing with Beyond Behaviors. Polyvagal Theory: Current Status, Clinical Applications, and Future Directions (Porges, S. 2025) "Social behavior and the capacity to manage challenge are dependent on the neural regulation of physiological state." S. Porges   When I dove into Stephen Porges's 2025 review of the Polyvagal Theory (PVT), I felt like I'd stepped into a crossroads where neurobiology, clinical practice, trauma science, and human experience collide. This paper isn't merely a summary of three decades of work (all of which I have read); it's a spirited defense of a paradigm that's been both celebrated (by me) and contested (by others). What follows is an honest appraisal of what the article teaches us, where it sparks real insight, and where it may fall short, especially through the lens of evidence-based medicine and developmental neurophysiology. (I also went deeper into his 2022 paper in Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience for the biophysiology of the ANS) At its heart, the article argues that the autonomic nervous system (ANS), through a set of hierarchically organized circuits centered on the vagus nerve, is not just a background player in stress and homeostasis, but a core regulator of social engagement, physiological flexibility, and behavior. Dr. Porges situates his theory as an alternative and expansion to classical views that treat sympathetic (fight/flight) and parasympathetic (rest/digest) branches as functional opposites. Instead, he proposes a three-component hierarchy: the ventral vagal complex (VVC) supporting social engagement, a mobilization circuit mediated by the sympathetic nervous system or fight or flight state, and a dorsal vagal circuit that facilitates shutdown or immobilization under extreme threat..... Enjoy, Dr. M

In dieser Folge geht es um einen Fehler, der wirklich Geld und Energie kostet. Lasse dich inspirieren von Veronikas Erfahrungen im Verkauf über viele Jahre. Es geht darum, was du verkaufst und warum einige Blockaden dich und dein Team aufhalten können und dies am Ende nicht nur Geld und Energie kostet, sondern du auch deiner Rolle und Verantwortung als Hörakustiker nicht gerecht werden kannst. Veronika zeigt auf welche bedeutende Aufgabe Hörakustiker auch für die Gesellschaft haben und wie du dieses immer wieder unterstreichen kannst. Sie gibt dir top Impulse und damit Orientierung und Stärkung für deine Tätigkeit und dein Verhalten jeden Tag. Darüberhinaus liefert sie auch wertvolle Impulse aus der Wissenschaft und aktuellen Studien. Hör aufmerksam zu und lies zusätzlich mein Buch "Verliebt in beide Ohren" https://buch.veronikavehr.com/ Weiterführende Infos und Überblick zum Leistungsspektrum von VVC hier https://www.veronikavehr.com/

VVC is second to BV in vaginitis type, here in the USA. data indicate that 75% of women have experienced at least one episode of genital candida throughout their lives . VVC is currently classified as uncomplicated (sporadic infection with mild-to-moderate clinical symptoms in non-immunocompromised women) or complicated (recurrent or clinically severe infection that eventually affects immunocompromised women or is caused by non-Albican species). What is the best course of action for these patients? Topical therapy or oral? Single or multiple dosages? In this episode, we will highlight a new publication from the AJOG which was just released ahead of print that looks at this issue. PLUS, we will revisit a 2001 multicenter study on single Diflucan vs sequential dosing every 3 days. As a little bonus, as the AJOG new publication is Italian, we will have sporadic interludes from ITALIA's best! Listen in for details.

Zero Candida Co-Founder and CEO Eli Ben-Haroosh joined Steve Darling from Proactive to announce that the company's common shares are now trading on the OTCQB Venture Market under the ticker "ZCTFF", alongside its existing listings on the TSX Venture Exchange and Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Ben-Haroosh emphasized that this milestone expands Zero Candida's market presence, enhances strategic partnerships, and broadens the company's investor base to support its AI-driven medical technology innovations. Zero Candida is pioneering a novel, non-drug treatment for Vulvo-Vaginal Candidiasis (VVC)—a condition affecting approximately 75% of women globally, with rising resistance to conventional antifungal treatments. The company is developing a tampon-like medical device that utilizes artificial intelligence and therapeutic blue light at a precise wavelength and intensity to eradicate Candida fungus. Early proof-of-concept (POC) studies have demonstrated an impressive 99.999% success rate in treating infections. With drug-resistant cases of recurrent VVC on the rise, Zero Candida's innovative approach offers a groundbreaking alternative to existing treatments. Zero Candida has completed its preclinical trials with what Haroosh said was “100% safety,” and is preparing for clinical trials by the end of 2025, with market entry targeted after 2026 following FDA approval. #proactiveinvestors #zerocandida #tsxv #zct #WomensHealth #CandidaTreatment #MedicalDevice #Telemedicine #AIinHealthcare #NonDrugTherapy #OTCQB #HealthcareInnovation #FungalInfection

Zero Candida Co-Founder and CEO Eli Ben-Haroosh joined Steve Darling from Proactive to mark a significant milestone as the company opened the market in celebration of its listing on the TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker symbol ZCT. The listing highlights the company's mission to revolutionize women's health with its groundbreaking technology. Zero Candida's patented innovation leverages controlled “Blue Light” technology to effectively destroy fungal infections at unprecedented speed and without side effects. Delivered via a tampon-like medical device, this novel treatment offers a comprehensive solution for eliminating vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC) and preventing its recurrence. VVC, commonly known as yeast infection, affects approximately 75% of women during their reproductive years. For 8-10% of women, these infections are recurrent, with four or more episodes annually. Globally, 138 million women face recurrent infections every year, a number expected to rise to 158 million by 2030. Key factors contributing to recurrent VVC include antibiotic use, hormonal changes, and sexual activity. Zero Candida's innovative approach seeks to meet the unmet needs of this growing demographic, offering a safer and more effective alternative to current treatments. According to Ben-Haroosh, Zero Candida's technology represents a major advancement in the FemTech sector, providing a transformative solution for women's health challenges. With its public listing, the company is well-positioned to accelerate its mission of improving outcomes for millions of women globally. #proactiveinvestors #zerocandida #tsxv #zct #invest #investing #investment #investor #stockmarket #stocks #stock #stockmarketnews

Send us a Text Message.In today's episode, I'm talking to Chloe Redmond, the visionary behind Vino Vaquera Consulting – the mindful digital marketing agency where she wears many hats - influencer, social media manager, luxury event designer, and intuitive consultant. After the amazing opportunity to work for Deepak Chopra's global wellness company in 2020 as a marketing coordinator, Chloe realized mindfulness and marketing can co-exist. Now at VVC, she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs reach their pure potential through intentional and intuitive marketing practices that she also calls Conscious Entrepreneurship. Chloe is also an intuitive healer, meditation instructor, and Ayurvedic practitioner certified by Chopra. Her mission is to teach others how to put their authentic self into play while targeting their niche and discovering creative partnerships and collaborations. Chloe's energy and enthusiasm are contagious! In our conversation, she shares her story and how her intuition has guided her life and helped her better serve her business. As one of her former clients, I'm grateful for all her help and guidance in finding different collaborations that gave more visibility to Mamma Terra's mission and my work. I also have the honor to call her my friend! Take a listen!CONNECT WITH CHLOE:Instagram - @vinovaqueraconsulting e-mail - thevinovaquera@yahoo.comEverything else is on her link tree!Good is What Makes You Feel Well is Mamma Terra's PodcastCONNECT WITH MAMMA TERRA HEALTH COACHING:Sign up for our free weekly newsletter: HEREWebsite: www.mammaterrahc.comInstagram: @mammaterrahcFacebook: MammaTerra.HCLinkedIn: Anna ResendeIf you have an experience or a story you think might inspire or help people listening to this podcast, use the link below to schedule an interview with me.Schedule your interview here!Music credits to Ricardo Ulpiano, Thiago Peixoto, Marcelo Luciano Menino, and Anderson Rodrigo de Oliveira.Podcast art credits to Caroline Kohls - Instagram @carol.kohls.fotography Thanks for tuning in!

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is known as a normal vaginal microbiota resulting in low lactobacilli; it affects one-quarter to one-third of reproductive-age women. The BV treatment landscape has not appreciably changed in decades: in the US, metronidazole and clindamycin are recommended as first-line treatments for symptomatic BV, and secnidazole and tinidazole are used as alternatives. Although these treatments are effective in the short term, up to 60% of women experience BV recurrence within 1 year of treatment. Some have more frequent recurrences. Suppressive vaginal metronidazole fails for 25% of patients and leads to secondary vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC) in up to 40%, and many patients have BV recurrence after stopping suppressive therapy. But now a “new” therapeutic option has been in print and is attracting a lot of attention. DQC has been available in other parts of the world for decades, and recently published results from a new European clinical investigation (May 2024) adds more reassuring date. This has led many in the United States to call for trials in this country to begin FDA approval. Listen in for details.

Varmvattencirkulation är standard. Men det finns alternativ till VVC. Vi reder ut.

Es geht Schlag auf Schlag. Wir begrüßen euch im Jahr 2024 also dem Jahr des Linux Desktops - wie jedes Jahr. Wir blicken zurück auf den Congress und wagen Aussagen für 2024. Mit Felix, Felix, Markus und Ingo. Toter der Woche After ten years, it’s time to stop making videos. Ultralativ (vielleicht?) auch Niklaus Wirth Bäume, getötet von der Bundesverwaltung - laut gutefrage.net Nutzer kalleschwansen 100.000 Blatt aus einer kleinen Fichte –> 7500 tote Bäume Autozulassung via iKFZ 37C3: Kopierschutz AACS2 für Ultra HD Blu-ray Untoter der Woche Deutschlandticket in Stendal AI der Woche The I in LLM stands for intelligence Gartner hype cycle Superconductors Batterietechnologien Quantencomputer Interdisziplinäre Kommunikation Industrie 5.0 Augmented Reality Lego App News std::print in C++23 ZDF veröffentlicht zentrale Teile des Quellcodes seines Empfehlungssystems A Sneak Peek: SIMD-Enhanced String Functions for AMD64 CppCast: SIMD Gentoo liefert Binärpakete aus Amazon Prime bald mit Werbung VVC decoder in FFmpeg h.266 Interview with an ffmpeg enthusiast(video) CitrixBleed After 34 Years, Someone Finally Beat Tetris (video) Themen 37c3 aftermath more interesting talks netzpolitische Neujahrsansprache FNord Gesundheitssystem/ePA Writing secure software YOU'VE JUST BEEN FUCKED BY PSYOPS Adventures in Reverse Engineering Broadcom NIC Firmware Breaking “DRM” in Polish trains 2023 wrapped metadata spec im feed feedparser fix stats speak percentage welches Datum wird benutzt (das richtige ist im file name) Mimimi der Woche mein Rack bzw. Supermicro Rackschiene OpenZFS entweder Swap oder mehr Kernel Parameter Lesefoo Cold-blooded software Mark Smith - Stupid Things I’ve Done With Python (video) Making my own Bed Sensor Picks FrameOS - operating system for single function smart frames PGPainless Pulling MikroTik into the Limelight A gamedev realized Linux users were just 5.8% of their sales, but represented 38% of bug reports. Spec-Ops: The Line uBlacklist JShelter Did you know that malicious web sites can identify you through fingerprinting or use other tactics for tracking your activity? #JShelter aims to improve the privacy and security of your Web browsing. #FreeJS

Recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis (RVCC) is a highly burdensome, long-lasting medical condition that heavily compromises the activities of women and their quality of life. Recently, the prevalence of RVVC has increased, partly due to a rise in VVC caused by non-albicans species. Here's a real-world clinical dilemma (from a real case): What would you offer a patient who is allergic to fluconazole and terconazole, has taken 3 doses of Brexafemme, has used boric acid, and even tried vaginal probiotics? Oh- and vaginal Gent Violet is not available (in this case). In this episode, we are going to review 3 alternative vaginal therapies that could be very helpful in cases where that darn yeast will not go away.

In this podcast I cover the latest research that links imbalance in the ventral vagus nerve (innervation of the head and neck) with chronic inflammation throughout the body. We know that most disease has inflammation at its core - anxiety, depression, arthritis, heart disease, and even auto-immunity are all linked to the imbalance of this important nerve of the autonomic (vegetative) nervous system.Find out what you can do to rebalance your vagus and why this may be a vital non-drug tool in future medical treatment.Check out the original article I mention here https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/aug/23/the-key-to-depression-obesity-alcoholism-and-more-why-the-vagus-nerve-is-so-exciting-to-scientistsCheck out the Singing athlete on youTube for more info on manual vagal toninghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6xwxfGTOhcFor more info on devices check out this article https://healthnews.com/longevity/biohacking/best-vagus-nerve-stimulation-device/Note it doesn't mention the DENAS because this isn't just a vagal stimulator but an all round medical device. See https://denas-neurodens.com/0:00 Intro and definitions02:00 Vagal tone is usually low due to stressful lives03:05 New research - mind body connection is at last proven04:00 Non-drug treatment for epilepsy works for depression too!05:50 Systemic effects because the vagus goes everywhere07:00 Dorsal vagus goes to internal organs changing neurotransmitter balance08:00 Vagal stimulation via electrical devices09:00 Nerve dysfunction may relate to past experience10:37 Manual techniques to rebalance - tapping, ear wiggling, humming, etc12:40 Dive reflex - not vagal toning *If you're suffering from Chronic pain, fatigue or anxiety, I CAN HELP*CONTACT ME: https://www.alchemytherapies.co.uk/Alchemy Therapies & Emotional MasterclassOTHER USEFUL RESOURCESGroup Healing Program: http://myemotionalaudit.comAuthor/Book site: https//patriciaworby.comPodcast: https://www.alchemytherapies.co.uk/po...121 and group therapy and training for stress related conditions like anxiety, fatigue and pain: https://alchemytherapies.co.ukSee in particular: Thrive! - an introductory mindbody connection program and The Emotional Audit for more intensive training.COMING SOON:Intensive Training Program: https://emotionalmasterclass.com

Décryptage des codecs vidéo: comment la compression d'images fonctionne, et pourquoi elle doit diviser les débits par 100 à 1000 pour rendre le streaming possible. Avec Jean-Baptiste Kempf (VideoLAN/VLC), on explore la bataille industrielle et juridique entre HEVC/H.265, VVC, VP9 et surtout AV1/AVIF, des patent pools aux licences qui ont freiné l'adoption de certains formats. On parle aussi d'implémentations réelles (dav1d, prise en charge navigateur et matériel), du rôle d'Apple, Google, Netflix et Samsung, et de ce que cela change pour la qualité, les coûts et votre batterie.En plateau Michaël de Marliave — animateur Matthieu Lambda — chroniqueur Jean-Baptiste Kempf — invité (VideoLAN) Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes Derren Burrell, Founder & Managing Partner at Veteran Ventures Capital. Located in Knoxville, TN, USA, Veteran Ventures Capital (VVC) is a veteran-owned growth-equity investment fund & firm focused on veteran businesses. VVC interacts exclusively with companies that have military veteran leadership, recognizing the value of military experience, training, and character in business operations. VVC's team is comprised of distinguished former military officers and seasoned financial experts from across the country. Their value proposition lies in their granular understanding of the military culture, significant connections within the federal government & defense industry, and working knowledge of the government procurement process. Derren is a retired Lieutenant Colonel with over 28 years as a professional financial manager in both the public and private sectors. He is the Founder & President of Veteran Ventures Capital, an investment and consulting firm focused on scaling veteran-owned businesses. In this capacity, he oversees all aspects of the company operations and fund management of the Veteran Fund, which invests in early stage/growth companies. He is a graduate of the Citadel and past recipient of several awards including the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Air Force Commendation Medals, Joint Service Achievement Medal, Air Force Budget Officer of the Year twice, Air Force Financial Management Officer of the Year, Comptroller of the Year, and USAFE James E. Short Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mentorship and Career Development. Derren shares his experiences working both in the public and private sectors and his passion for helping veteran-owned businesses. Visit Veteran Ventures Capital at , , and on .  Reach out to Derren at , , and on .  _______________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at:    Check out our other podcasts here:   For Investors check out:   For Startups check out:   For eGuides check out:   For upcoming Events, check out    For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group    Please , share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of .

Summary  In this episode, Dr. Peter reviews the limitations of current Catholic resources on anger, and then reviews secular resources, including interpersonal neurobiology and the structural theory of dissociation.  We examine the role of the body in anger responses, and discuss more wholistic ways of working constructive with parts that experience anger, rather than trying to dismiss anger, suppress it or distract from it.   Lead-in William Blake, A Poison Tree: I was angry with my friends; I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.  We've all experienced anger and we've all experienced angry people  We know it's a problem.  And global data suggest that it's getting worse.   Gallup world poll from 2021: 140 countries  Did you experience the following feelings during a lot of the day yesterday? How about anger?  17% of US respondents agreed 26% of women worldwide up from 20% from 10 years ago  20% of men -- flat from 10 years ago.   Harm can come from anger Mark Twain “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”  CCC 2302  By recalling the commandment, "You shall not kill," our Lord asked for peace of heart and denounced murderous anger and hatred as immoral. Anger is a desire for revenge. "To desire vengeance in order to do evil to someone who should be punished is illicit," but it is praiseworthy to impose restitution "to correct vices and maintain justice." If anger reaches the point of a deliberate desire to kill or seriously wound a neighbor, it is gravely against charity; it is a mortal sin. The Lord says, "Everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment."   "Everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment."  And who hasn't been angry -- including Jesus himself?.  We have got to unpack this There is so much misunderstanding about anger in the Catholic world, so much of the way that Catholics have approached anger has been limited, misinformed, and misguided When I think about why the Catholic Church in the US, in Canada, in Europe and Australia, in the entire Western World, there are many factors.   Brandon Vogt  New Stats on Why Young People Leave the Church  based on his book Return:  How to Draw Your Child Back to the Church One critical factor is that cradle Catholics, especially young Catholics do not believe that the Church can help them with their problems.  Diocese of Springfield Exit Surveys (2014)  68% – Spiritual needs not met67% – Lost interest over time Only 7% of Millennials raised Catholic still actively practice their faith today (weekly Mass, pray a few times each week, say their faith is “extremely” or “very” important) 6.5 people leave the Catholic Church for every one that joins 66% of “nones” agree that “religion causes more problems than it solves” That's why so many fall away from the Faith.  The Church doesn't seem relevant to them because she doesn't seem like she has the answers to the real issues they face. 10% of American adults are former Catholics Nearly half of those who fall away from the Church become "nones"  And another quarter become Evangelical Christians.   79% of former Catholics leave the Church before age 23.   50% of Millennials raised Catholic no longer identify as Catholic today  And it's about topics like anger -- we are not doing a good job meeting the needs that Catholics have today, human formation needs.   Intro I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, a.k.a. Dr. Peter, clinical psychologist, trauma therapist, podcaster, blogger, cofounder and president of Souls and Hearts -- but most of all I am a beloved little son of God, a passionate Catholic who wants to help you to taste and see the height and depth and breadth and warmth and the light of the love of God, especially God the Father and  Mary our Mother, our spiritual parents, our primary parents.  To really absorb your identity as a little child of God and Mary.   I want you to enter much more deeply into an intimate, personal, loving relationship with the three Persons of the Trinity and with our Lady. That is what this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast is all about, that is what Souls and Hearts is all about – all about shoring up the natural foundation for the spiritual life of intimacy with God, all about overcoming the natural human formation deficits and obstacles to contemplative union with God our Father and our Lady, our Mother  We are on an adventure of love together. And one thing, one major, big, huge thing that gets in the way of being loved by God and Mary and loving in return is anger.  Anger.   This is Episode 103 of Interior Integration for Catholics.  Interior Integration for Catholics is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach, check us out at soulsandhearts.com.   Anger: one of the seven deadly sins, one the lethal vices that can kill your soul.  Anger.   So much confusion about anger.  The Burden of Anger:  June 10, 2021 Catholic-daily-reflections.com The first level of sin is simply to be “angry” interiorly. The sin of anger is an interior attitude of disgust toward another. Jesus says that the consequence of having anger toward another is that you will be “liable to judgment.” Humility.  I could be wrong.    The offerings from Five Catholic writers on anger are a case in point.   The most popular book Fr. T.G. Morrow, Overcoming Sinful Anger  303 Amazon Review, mostly positive, #16  on the list of bestsellers in Catholic Theology, put out by Sophia Press in 2015 And it's not very good.  I can't recommend it.   First off, Fr. Morrow admits that he doesn't understand why people get angry We've all encountered people who explode when they feel angry. It baffles me how often the sort of anger rears its ugly head in marriages – even in allegedly Christian marriages. (p. 9).   I am often surprised to discover Christians who pray ardently, receive the sacraments regularly, we've and attend Mass daily, and yet have an anger problem. (p. 10) Presumes a homogeneous, single personality.   Easy to explain with part.   Why do people explode in anger? There are many reasons, but I think the top three are power and control, a refusal to take responsibility, and habit. (p. 13). Very simplistic view of psychology, and no consideration of neurology, traumatology,  Confusion about the causal chain in anger.  Where anger fits in a sequence of events  Little genuine interest in anger.  Anger is something to essentially get rid of.   Not much consideration of the unconscious and unconscious anger.  Acknowledges that suppressing anger is problematic, but there still is an assumption that if I'm not feeling anger, it's not there.  Disconnect.   "Irrational anger"   Very focused on the will and will training -- naïve assumptions about sympathetic arousal. Nike Spirituality -- Just do it.   Romans 7:15:  I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.   Spiritual Bypassing  Definitions John Welwood: American clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, teacher, and author, known for integrating psychological and spiritual concepts  Using “spiritual ideas, words and practices to sidestep or avoid personal, emotional ‘unfinished business,' to shore up a shaky sense of self, or to belittle basic needs, feelings, psychological wounds and developmental tasks.”  Blogger Rose Hahn:  Spiritual Bypassing: What It Is & How To Avoid It  Bypassing occurs when spiritual ideals get elevated to the realm of absolute truth in such a way that our real, lived experience is somehow denied. Rather than doing the work of healing deep wounds, we may use these ideals to deny, devalue, or avoid meeting our more human needs – such as emotional bonding, love, and esteem. In other words, rather than risk opening ourselves to real human connection, and possibly get hurt, we adopt a more enlightened, spiritual way of relating to the world that doesn't rely on human relationship.  Not a lot from a specifically Catholic perspective, but this is from Katharina, who styles herself "The Bohemian Catholic" We are supposed to uplift each other, and treat each other with love and respect - like icons of Christ, as God's creation… BUT if you find yourself trying to tell someone that their faith should keep them "happy" all the time, then you aren't helping them.  Using spiritual words, spiritual means, spiritual concepts -- all to whitewash or put a Band-Aid on significant psychological or emotional problems in the natural realm  Bypassing the natural realm and going to the spiritual realm.   Essentially saying -- You should not feel this way.  Which is what Fr. Morrow is saying.  He promises to "I will offer some ideas, which I consider quite novel, on how to avoid angry explosions." (p.4) Tips So, as a first step in overcoming passive-aggressive anger keep reminding yourself that you want to be a Christian, and therefore you can't take revenge anymore. (p. 9).  First, take the time to calm down and figure out why you're angry…. One of the tactics often recommended is to count to ten before deciding what to do. (p. 20).  Better still, say a short prayer before acting. The next step is to ask yourself if your angry feeling is been caused by something significant. Most angry fights in marriage are caused by trifling things. (p. 20).  Or perhaps use humor to make your point.(p. 20).  Offering your angry feeling as a sacrifice is not suppressing it but doing something with it. It is making a bad situation into a beneficial one. That is what it means to embrace the cross. (p. 23-24).  If we can forgive others, we can pull the rug out from beneath our anger most of the time. Unforgiveness is the main culprit behind anger. (p. 25).  … Refocus your thoughts away from the things that made you angry to some very positive thoughts. For example, thank God for the beautiful weather for the ability to read or buy things you need. (p. 30).  I often encourage people with an anger problem to daily for humility. It works. (p. 36).  Chapter 7: Thanking God, praising God  Consider your future. One key way to change her behaviors to work on in your mind just what your life will be like if you don't change your angry behavior. (pp. 72-73)  If you struggle with an anger problem write on an index card all the negatives of continuing your anger and read that list several times a day. (p. 74).   Fr. Joseph Esper, Saintly Solutions to Life's Common Problems  99 reviews on amazon.  #138 in Roman Catholicism.  2001 Book -- First Chapter is on anger.   St. Thomas of Villanova: "Dismiss all anger and look into yourself a little." (p. 7) "St. Francis de Sales advises that, to avoid the sin of anger, you must quickly ask God to give peace to your heart when you're angered and then turn your thoughts to something else. Don't discuss the matter at hand or make decisions or correct other person while you're angry. When a person angers you, St. Francis advises, consider the person's good qualities rather than the words or actions you find objectionable." (p. 7) When we have to speak to someone with whom we are angry, we should first pray for the Lord's guidance and help. It's often more effective to speak in terms of asking favors, rather than making demands or giving orders…" (p. 5-6) ...rehearse possible responses and evaluate which ones which might help you. (p. 7) Tommy Tighe St. Dymphna's Playbook: A Catholic Guide to Finding Mental and Emotional Well-Being 2021 book,  #57 in Christian Pastoral Counseling, 66 reviews, mostly positive.   Doesn't discuss anger.  Discusses irritability as a symptom of depression and resentment as a problem in relationships "However, the more I have experienced depression in my own life and in my work as a clinician, the more I have seen the symptoms of irritability and anger is predominant features of depression." (p. 13).  That's one way, not the only way.   So often depression results from  Recommendations "…go for a walk, take some time to meditate, watch or read something that lightens our mood. (p. 13)  "Keeping a diary of our emotions and reactions to those emotions is a great place to start… Look back on a situation, slow it down, and examine what exactly happened….We might ask ourselves: What is it that has led to my irritability? Is it because I'm depressed and trying to stuff that feeling down rather than address it? What am I thinking in that situation? (p. 15).  "We draw this all out on paper, examine what was really behind our emotional response, and then explore ways of thinking that will restructure our reactions and response. And we write these down! Simply thinking about these things isn't going to help. The whole point is to get them out of our head and onto paper so that we can work them out. Consider it an emotional "show your work" kind of exercise." (p. 15).  Then, after a really brief introspective process, we can catch that the real reason for our irritability is our depressed mood, and we can interject coping skills for depression to stave off our irritability. (p. 16).  Changing the focus of our thinking is key when we try to battle against depression and irritability that inevitably rears its ugly head. You've probably heard people suggest keeping a gratitude list to help you feel more positive, much along the same lines as St. Paul's advice. It works. (p. 18).   Steps in the process Visualize yourself from the perspective of compassionate observer.  Notice from the outside whole feelings xare upsetting you and how they are reflected in your appearance.  Try to let the warm feeling of compassion and desire to help arise within you.  Say to yourself: "It is understandable that you feel that way. You are experiencing a natural response to depressing thoughts. But I'm going to help you."  Visualize putting your hand on your shoulder or hugging yourself to soothe and comfort yourself. Give yourself a friendly smile.  Think about if there are other things you want to tell yourself that would energize and encourage you to cheer up.  Taking time to say those things. When you feel it is appropriate, begin saying goodbye to yourself and remind yourself that you come back anytime you want. (p. 16-17). For resentment: Active listening  Tommy Tighe: to fend off resentment, we have to communicate with things are important to us and why. We can't expect our partner to read her mind. We have to tell them the things we value, what things we have grown to expect in relationships because of our past experiences and we have to tell them why. (p 113)   Rhonda Chevrin Taming the Lion Within: 5 Steps from Anger to Peace 2017  16 ratings  is a Catholic author, international speaker and Professor of Philosophy. She is the author of over 60 books concerning the matters of Catholic thought, practice and spirituality,  Take a secure thought -- use your imagination to think of ways out of annoying or enraging situations   Avoid exceptionality.  Accept the averageMove your musclesHumor is your best friendF.I.S.T.  Feelings, Impulses, Sensations, Thoughts:  What it signifies is that we can control our immediate impulses and sensations when hurt or frustrated, but if we control our thoughts we can control her impulses.Put your mental health firstPeace over power:  Many times you can't win, and it doesn't matter if you lose.  It's not worth the effort to put up a fight.  They are not doing it to you; they're just doing it! – Much is not done on purposeNot a 911  Not everything is an emergency,.Be Group minded Anger at GodForgiveness  Fr. Spitzer Angry with God? Here's Fr. Spitzer's Advice on How to Overcome Anger God understands your anger.  Don't dwell on it.  Don't go there.   Choose instead to: Three step process in the YouTube clip Angry with God:   Stop comparing to the way you once were.   Stop comparing yourself to others.   Stop having expectations for your suffering.   Offer it up.  Stop the questioning.   Saints' behaviors  Meg Hunter-Kilmer - published on 09/28/17Aleteia September 28, 2017, What We Probably Don't Know about St. Jerome Is Just What We Need to Know St. Jerome was known to carry around a stone that he would hit himself with every time he lost his temper.     If these are helpful to you, great.  I don't want to put up roadblocks.  Might be helpful to many people.   As a Catholic psychologist, I am not comfortable recommending any of these Catholic sources Very simplistic view of psychology, and no consideration of neurology, traumatology,  Confusion about the causal chain in anger.  Where anger fits in a sequence of events  Little genuine interest in anger.  Anger is something to essentially get rid of.   Very focused on the will and will training -- naïve assumptions about sympathetic arousal.  And they don't get that anger has a protective function -- to protect us against shame.  Not one of those sources connects anger to shame.  And that's the primary connection we need to understand if we want to resolve anger, not just try to shoo it away.   What are we talking about when we discuss anger -- let's get into definitions of Anger Focused on vengeance secondary to a desire -- more than an emotion.   Written discussions of anger in the western canon go back as far as fourth-century BC in Greece when the philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) argued that anger is a rational and natural reaction to being offended and thus is closely associated with reason. In the Rhetoric (1991, p. 1380) he defined anger as “a belief that we, or our friends, have been unfairly slighted, which causes in us both painful feelings and a desire or impulse for revenge.” 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia:  Anger:  The desire of vengeance. Its ethical rating depends upon the quality of the vengeance and the quantity of the passion. When these are in conformity with the prescriptions of balanced reason, anger is not a sin. It is rather a praiseworthy thing and justifiable with a proper zeal. It becomes sinful when it is sought to wreak vengeance upon one who has not deserved it, or to a greater extent than it has been deserved, or in conflict with the dispositions of law, or from an improper motive. The sin is then in a general sense mortal as being opposed to justice and charity. It may, however, be venial because the punishment aimed at is but a trifling one or because of lack of full deliberation.  Likewise, anger is sinful when there is an undue vehemence in the passion itself, whether inwardly or outwardly. Ordinarily it is then accounted a venial sin unless the excess be so great as to go counter seriously to the love of God or of one's neighbor.   CCC 2302  By recalling the commandment, "You shall not kill," our Lord asked for peace of heart and denounced murderous anger and hatred as immoral. Anger is a desire for revenge. "To desire vengeance in order to do evil to someone who should be punished is illicit," but it is praiseworthy to impose restitution "to correct vices and maintain justice." If anger reaches the point of a deliberate desire to kill or seriously wound a neighbor, it is gravely against charity; it is a mortal sin. The Lord says, "Everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment."  Contradiction that aggression (or vengeance) and anger have to go together  Lot of research to tease about anger and aggression: Ephesians 4:26:  Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger   APA Dictionary of Psychology: an emotion characterized by tension and hostility arising from frustration, real or imagined injury by another, or perceived injustice. It can manifest itself in behaviors designed to remove the object of the anger (e.g., determined action) or behaviors designed merely to express the emotion (e.g., swearing). Anger is distinct from, but a significant activator of, aggression, which is behavior intended to harm someone or something. Despite their mutually influential relationship, anger is neither necessary nor sufficient for aggression to occur.  Psychologist Paul Ekman. (1999). Basic emotions. In T. Dalgleish & M. J. Power (Eds.), Handbook of cognition and emotion (pp. 45–60). John Wiley & Sons Ltd  Due to its distinct and widely recognizable pattern of face expression, anger has always been included in the repertoire of basic emotions.   Benefits of Anger  Farzaneh Pahlavan Multiple Facets of Anger: Getting Mad or Restoring Justice?  Chapter 3:  The Neurobiology of RAGE and Anger & Psychiatric Implications with a Focus on Depression Daniel J. Guerra1, Valentina Colonnello and Jaak Panksepp As a basic emotion, anger emerges early in life and has a unique adaptive function in motivating, organizing, and regulating behavior. No other emotion can match the consistency and vigor of anger in mobilizing high-level energy and sustaining goal-directed activity. Anger serves a variety of regulatory functions in physiological and psychological processes related to self-defense as well as to interpersonal and societal behaviors. Through socialization processes, it plays an important role in the development of personality and individual differences in responding to environmental challenges, which can be more or less adaptive.  (p. v).   Aristotle:  Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics: It is easy to fly into a passion – anybody can do that – but to be angry with the right person into the right extent and at the right time and with the right object in the right way – that is not easy, and it is not everyone who can do it  In themselves passions are neither good nor evil. They are morally qualified only to the extent that they effectively engage reason and will….It belongs to the perfection of the moral or human good that the passions be governed by reason. CCC 1767  CCMMP: Catholic-Christian Meta-Model of the Person  DMU Paul Vitz, William Nordling, Paul Craig Titus.    p. (294)  to remain in the virtuous middle ground requires being disposed to a righteous anger that will stand up to injustice, and use a good measure of anger in ways that are corrective of the evil, preventive of further injustice, and indicative of a balance to mean between extremes. Emotions are good when, as reactions antecedent to reasoning, they make us conscious of reality and prepare us for a more complete reaction and moral action. Emotion and choice then serve moral flourishing (e.g., when we have an appropriate spontaneous reaction of anger at injustice). Second, emotions are good as felt reactions that also follow the intellectual evaluation of the situation. Emotions can be expressive of rational decisions. Emotions can thus participate in our life of reason and will (Gondreau, 2013). For example, when we choose to rectify and injustice, a balanced expression of anger can help us to act decisively will being restrained enough that we do not overreact. Through a righteous or just expression of anger, we entered rectify injustice, will finding a just and rational mean between excessively weak or exceedingly strong emotional displays. (p. 650). Emotions are viewed as informing people about their cares and concerns. To prepare the body for action, directing our thoughts to ways that will appropriately address the issues at hand. They can signal and manipulate other people in ways that suit the person's emotional needs (Parrott, 2001). Being disconnected from emotional experience, therefore, means being cut off from adaptive information (Pos et al., 2003). (pp. 650-651). Digression into justification of secular sources Question may arise, "OK, Dr. Peter, as you already noted, anger has been recognized for a long time, going all the way back to Aristotle and way before that in Sacred Scripture.  You emphasize that you are a Catholic psychologist, so why are you even looking at these secular sources like the American Psychological Association? There is a lot about anger in Scripture, in the Church Fathers and the saints about anger in the spiritual life.   Discalced Carmelite Abbott Marc Foley in his excellent book The Context of Holiness: Psychological and Spiritual Reflections on the Life of St. Therese of Lisieux "One…misconception is that the spiritual life is an encapsulated sphere, cloistered from the realities of daily living….we have only one life composed of various dimensions.  Our emotional life, intellectual life, social life, work life, sex life, spiritual life are simple ways of speaking of the different facets of our one life.  (p. 1).  We have one life.  One life.  We don't have a spiritual life that is separate from our emotional life.  We have one life.  If we are angry, that affects our whole life.   The Church herself encourages us to look to all branches of knowledge and glean what is best from them in order to live our one life better.  From the CCC, paragraph 159  "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth." "Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are." And from the Vatican II document, the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, paragraph 62 reads:  In pastoral care, sufficient use must be made not only of theological principles, but also of the findings of the secular sciences, especially of psychology and sociology, so that the faithful may be brought to a more adequate and mature life of faith. Remember that we are embodied beings -- we are composites of a soul and a body. The 17th Century Philosopher Rene Descartes' popularized what is called mind-body dualism.  Mind-body dualism is the idea that the body and the mind operate in separate spheres, and neither can be assimilated into the other.  And that is false.  Demonstrably false in a lot of ways, be we so often assume it to be true.  We have one life.   In the last several years we are realizing just how much of our mental life and our psychological well-being is linked in various ways to our neurobiology -- the ways that our nervous systems function.  And the relationship between our embodied brain and our minds is reciprocal -- each affects the other in complex ways that we are just beginning to understand.  In other words, brain chemistry affects our emotional states.  And our emotional states and our behaviors affect brain chemistry.  It's not just our minds and it's not just our bodies and it's not just our souls -- it's all of those, all of what makes me who I am, body, mind, soul, spirit, all of it.   And since Scripture, the Early Church Fathers, the Catechism and so on are silent on neurobiology, neurochemistry, neurophysiology and so many other areas that impact our minds and our well-being, as a Catholic psychologist I am going to look elsewhere, I'm going to look into secular sources.  I just don't think it's reasonable to expect the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops or the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican to be experts in these areas -- it's not their calling, it's not their expertise.  St. John of the Cross in his  Prologue of Ascent of Mt. Carmel: "I will not rely on experience or science…[but] I will not neglect whatever possible use I can make of them.  Fr. Marc Foley, OCD : The Context of Holiness:  As St. Thomas wrote of St. Augustine's use of Platonic philosophy in the Summa: "whenever Augustine, who was imbued with the doctrines of the Platonists, found in their teaching anything consistent with the faith, he adopted it and those things which he found contrary to the faith he amended." (ST I, q. 84,a. 5) p.4 And St. Thomas himself drew on so much of Aristotle's thought in his writings, bringing it into his body of work.   Abbot Marc Foley.  In short, we should never swallow the school of thought whole; we should sift the wheat from the chaff, separate truth from falsehood. p.4 We want the best from all sources.   Emphasis on biological processes:   From Heidi Crockett Anger Management with Interpersonal Neurobiology  Discussed Interpersonal Neurobiology at length in  Episode 92 of this podcast Understanding and Healing your Mind through IPNB In interpersonal neurobiology, anger as an emotion is viewed from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience. And cognitive neuroscience states that cognition and emotion are dynamically combined with physical arousal. When anger is induced as an emotion in humans, it can unconsciously affect physiological and neural resources. Affective states of anger are subsequently expressed in the brain as well as the body, and these neural and physiological changes can influence the cognitive processes. Many studies and resources have been expended on studying the emotions of happiness, sadness, and fear, which align with psychopathological states of hypomania, depression, and anxiety. Kathy Steele, Suzette Boon, Onno van der Hart:  Treating Trauma-Related Dissociation: A Practical, Integrative Approach:  Anger is an affect to derived from activation of the sympathetic nervous system, geared to energize the body for maximum effort to fend off perceived danger. Psychologically, it protects from awareness of vulnerability and lack of control, and therefore from shame. And fight mode, we are all primed to perceive cues of danger rather than cues of safety and relational connection. In such a heightened state of arousal, it is easy to misunderstand the intentions of others. (p.332). Polyvagal theory and anger  A critical period for experience-dependent development of the feelings of safety during early infancy: A polyvagal perspective on anger and psychometric tools to assess perceived safety  Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience July 2022 article   Andrea Poli, Angelo Gemignani, Carlo Chiorri and Mario Miccoli Brief primer here on some neurology.  Don't worry.  I will keep it simple.   Neurons are specialized cells that receive and send signals to other cells through fragile and thin cellular extensions called axons. Myelination:   a membrane or a sheath around the axons on neurons.   Myelinated axons often have a larger diameter Myelinated axons are insulated Myelination allows for much faster transmission of electric impulses Presence of safety during the critical period (first year of life).   Decreased unmyelinated/myelinated cardioinhibitory fibers ratio in adulthood Ventral Vagal complex is able to have a greater impact on reducing the Sympathetic Nervous System arousal -- decreasing anger  VVC is able to have a greater impact on reducing Dorsal Vagal Complex fear and shutdown responses -- the freeze response.   Greater capacity for self-regulation.   Absence of safety during the critical period  Increased unmyelinated/myelinated cardioinhibitory fibers ratio in adulthood Ventral Vagal complex has a lesser impact on reducing the Sympathetic Nervous System arousal -- less able to decrease sympathetic arousal, including anger  VVC has a lesser impact on reducing Dorsal Vagal Complex fear and shutdown responses -- less able to reduce the freeze response.   Less capacity for self-regulation.   Dampened VVC activity reduces the capacity of adaptive inhibition of SNS and DVC (Dorsal Vagal Complex), and emotional self-regulation. Hence, environmental detection of unsafety cues may preferentially trigger SNS-mediated anger in order to avoid DVC-mediated immobilization with fear. Young children exposed to five or more significant adverse experiences in the first three years of childhood face a 76% likelihood of having one or more delays in their language, emotional or brain development. (6) As the number of traumatic events experienced during childhood increases, the risk for the following health problems in adulthood increases: depression; alcoholism; drug abuse; suicide attempts; heart and liver diseases; pregnancy problems; high stress; uncontrollable anger; and family, financial, and job problems. (6) 7 ways childhood adversity changes a child's brain Donna Jackson Nakazawa Acestoohigh.com website September 8, 2016 Epigenetic Shifts  gene methylation, in which small chemical markers, or methyl groups, adhere to the genes involved in regulating our stress response, and prevent these genes from doing their jobs.  Size and Shape of the Brain stress releases a hormone that actually shrinks the size of the hippocampus, an area of our brain responsible for processing emotion and memory and managing stress.  Chronic neuroinflammation can lead to changes that reset the tone of the brain for life   Brain connectivity:  Dr. Ryan Herringa, neuropsychiatrist and assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, found that children and teens who'd experienced chronic childhood adversity showed weaker neural connections between the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus. Girls also displayed weaker connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. The prefrontal-cortex-amygdala relationship plays an essential role in determining how emotionally reactive we're likely to be to the things that happen to us in our day-to-day life, and how likely we are to perceive these events as stressful or dangerous. Including anger.   Wiring of the brain and nervous system matter -- they matter a lot Brain activation in anger  Distinct Brain Areas involved in Anger versus Punishment during Social Interactions  Olga M. Klimecki, David Sander & Patrik Vuilleumier Scientific Reports 2018. 25 men fMRI study anger induced in an in inequality game designed to be unfair.   In the present study, we found that the intensity of experienced anger when seeing the face of the unfair other was parametrically related to activations in amygdala, STS (superior temporal sulcus), and fusiform gyrus (related to facial recognition). The STS has been shown to produce strong responses when subjects perceive stimuli in research areas that facial recognition   Farzaneh Pahlavan Multiple Facets of Anger: Getting Mad or Restoring Justice?  Chapter 3:  The Neurobiology of RAGE and Anger & Psychiatric Implications with a Focus on Depression Daniel J. Guerra1, Valentina Colonnello and Jaak Panksepp Rage emerges when specific environmental stimuli arouse the neural circuitry of the RAGE system. Even if the anger-thoughts and the related expression are modulated and regulated by higher cortico-cognitive areas, the human basic circuitry of anger is still subcortical. Since the early description of rage in decorticated cats (Dusser De Barenne, 1920) and dogs (Rothmann, 1923) and their responses to inoffensive stimuli, it was clear that the rage expression is i) dependent on subcortical areas, i.e. the ancient regions play a crucial role more than the higher neocortical regions; ii) independent of an intact cortex. p. 11  Among the higher limbic regions of this network, the medial nucleus, the basal complex, and central and lateral nuclei of the amygdala play a key role in the modulation of RAGE.  p. 1   All this happens far away from the frontal cortex in the limbic system of your brain.   Kathy Steele, Suzette Boon, Onno van der Hart:  Treating Trauma-Related Dissociation: A Practical, Integrative Approach   Why of Chronic anger.   Anger is the primary emotion of the "fight" defense.  When (parts of) the patient become stuck in this defense, anger becomes chronic.  Thus, the first intervention is safety.  332 As long as a fight reaction remains unresolved, anger will remain chronic. (p.332).  Almost no one seems to understands that anger is a defense against fear and shame.  It's a way of trying to protect oneself.   There are several reasons that anger and hostility become chronic in dissociative patients. First, patients typically have been severely invalidated, ignored, heard, betrayed, and sometimes even tortured over extended periods of time, while helpless to stop it. In itself, this is enough to generate enormous rage in anyone as part of the naturally occurring fight defense. Second, as children, patients often had little to no help in learning how to regulate and appropriately express normal anger, much less how to cope with it. Often it was unacceptable for many patients to express any kind of anger as children, while the adults around them were uncontained and highly destructive with their anger. Others had no limit set on their angry behaviors. (p. 330). Angry dissociative parts are feared and avoided internally by most other parts, particularly those that function in daily life. After all, angry behaviors toward self and others may interfere with functioning in a variety of personal and social ways. An ongoing vicious cycle of rage and shame ensues internally: the more patients avoid their angry and destructive dissociative parts, the angry these parts become, and the more they shame other parts and are shamed by them. (p. 331). … Angry parts have a deep shame and are highly defended against the strong belief that they are very bad. Their defense is reinforced by the shame of patients that such parts of themselves even exist. These parts of the patient are terrified of attachment to the therapist and you the relationship is dangerous, mainly because they are afraid that the therapist will never accept them. (p. 331-332). Whether the anger is part of a fight response or not, it is often a secondary emotion that protects the patient from feelings of sadness, extreme powerlessness, shame, guilt, and loss. (p. 333).  (add grief) Parts of the patient that developed  controlling-punitive strategies will be angry with others to get what they need,  while those that have controlling-caregiving strategies will punish themselves for being angry or having needs. (p. 333).  This is often the case in hostile parts such as those of self-injure or encourage other parts to self-harm, prostitute themselves, abuse drugs or alcohol, or engage in other self-destructive behaviors. They are often stuck in destructive and harmful behaviors that are an "attack self" defense against shame. (p.333). Finally, the rage of the perpetrator is often an embodied experience from which patients cannot yet escape without sufficient realization and further integration. Some dissociative parts imitate perpetrators internally, repeating the family dynamics from the past with other parts in a rather literal way. (p.333). "Getting the anger out" is not really useful, as the problem is that the patient needs to learn how to effectively express anger verbally rather than physically, and in socially appropriate and contained ways, so the patient can be heard by others. It is less the fact that patients express anger, but how they do so and whether that expression allows him to remain grounded in the present, to retain important relationships, and to avoid being self-destructive. (p. 334). Expression of anger is not necessarily therapeutic in itself. It is how (parts of) the patient experience and express it that is important; whether it is within a window of tolerancex in a socially appropriate and safe. Therapist must learn when expression of anger is therapeutic and when containment of anger is more helpful. (p. 334). Working with anger an angry parts (p.335). Take the time to educate the patient as a whole about the functions of anger and angry parts. Although they may seem like "troublemakers," they can be understood as attempting to solve problems with ineffective or insufficient tools.  Encourage all parts of the patient understand, accept, and listen to angry parts, instead of avoiding them.  Make efforts to understand what provokes angry parts. There are many potential triggers.   Not direct quotes Do all parts feel the same way as the angry part?  If not, can those parts listen to and accept angry parts perspective?  Would the angry part be willing to listen to the other internal perspectives?  Invite other parts to watch and listen if possible.  Can set limits with the angry part  the angry part and all parts need to learn that healthy relationships do not include punishment, humiliation, or force  Use titration, helping the person experienced as a small amount of anger will remain grounded in the present   Parts and imitate a perpetrator often literally experience themselves in our experienced by other parts as the actual perpetrator. Thus they understandably induce fear and shame within a patient as a whole, and sometimes fearing the therapist. (p. 345). The functions of perpetrator-imitating parts are (1) protect the patient against threats of the perpetrator, which continue to be experienced as real in the present; (2) defend the patient against unbearable realizations of being helpless and powerless as a child, (3) re-enact traumatic memories from the perspective of the perpetrator, as mentalize by the child; (4) serve as a defense against shame through attacking the patient and avoiding inner experiences of shame; (5) provide an outlet for the patient's disowned sadistic and punitive tendencies; and (6) hold unbearable traumatic memories. (p. 346). Suzette Boon, Kathy Steele, Onno van der Hart 2011 book  Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists Destructive expressions of anger include persistent revenge fantasies or actions, hurting self or others, "taking it out" on innocent people (or animals), or destruction of property. (p. 265).  Dissociative parts of a person that are stuck in anger may experience this feeling as vehement and overwhelming, often without words. They may have irresistible urges to act aggressively and have great difficulty thinking and reflecting on their feelings before acting. Angry parts have not learned how to experience or express anger and helpful ways. There are two types of anger dissociative parts. The first are parts that are stuck in a defensive fight mode, ready to protect you. Their anger at original injustices may be legitimate and naturally accompanies a tendency to strike out and fight, which is an essential survival strategy. However, such parts have become stuck in anger, unable to experience much else. They rigidly perceived threat and ill-will everywhere and they react with anger and aggression as their only option of response. Although these parts of you may not yet realize it, anger is often a protection against vulnerable feelings of shame, fear, hurt, despair, powerlessness, and loss. The second type of angry part may seem very much like the original perpetrator. They imitate those who hurt them in the past, and they can be experienced internally as the actual perpetrator. This experience can be particularly frightening, disorienting, and shameful. But be assured this is a very common way of dealing with being traumatized. In fact, although these parts may have some similarities to those who hurt you, they also significant differences: they are parts of you as a whole person, who is trying to cope with unresolved traumatic experiences. (p. 267)   Tips for coping with anger (p, 269 to 271) recognize how to make distinctions among the many gradations of anger, from mild irritation to rage, so that you can intervene more rapidly.  Understand your tells around anger, which may include a tight or tense feeling in your body, clenched jaw's or fists, feeling flushed or shaky, breathing heavily, heart racing, a feeling of heat, a surge of energy.  Empathize with her angry parts, recognizing they have very limited coping skills, and very limited vision. They've been shunned by other parts, left alone with their hurt, fear, shame, in isolation. This does not mean you have to accept their impulses toward inappropriate behavior  Once you start feeling some compassion toward these parts you can begin to communicate with them, listening with an intention, with curiosity to understand what lies underneath the anger  Angry parts have a strength, that they could transferred to use and more positive ways  Become more curious about why anger is happening.  Try creative and healthy nonverbal ways of expressing your anger, such as writing, drawing, painting, making a collage  Physical exercise may help as an outlet for the physical energy generated by the physiology of anger  Work on understanding your anger, by reflecting on it, rather than just experiencing it, being immersed in it. You might imagine observing yourself from a distance, and getting curious about why you feel the way you do.  Give yourself a time-out, that is, walk away from the situation if you're getting too angry. Counseling to 10, or even 200 before you say or do something you might regret later.  Calm breathing may help  Listen to each part of you, about what might help that part with anger. You can have in her conversations with parts of yourself about anger and how to express it. Small and safe ways to express anger can be negotiated that are agreeable to all parts of you  Watch safe people in your life and seal they handle their own anger. Do they accept being angry? Are they are respectful and appropriate with her anger? Are there particular strategies that they use that you could practice for yourself?  Healthy anger can get positive strength and energy. It can help you be appropriately assertive, set clear boundaries, and confront wrongs in the world. Anger can pave the way to other emotions, leading to the resolution relational conflicts.  We learn the most common triggers of your anger. Once you learn these triggers, you can be more aware when they occur and more able to prevent an automatic reaction of anger. Establish intercommunication among parts of yourself to recognize triggers and negotiate possible helpful strategies to cope with them rather than just reacting.  You can try allowing yourself to experience just a small amount of anger from another part of yourself: a drop, a teaspoon, 1% or 2%. In exchange you can share with angry parts feelings of calm and safety.  Inner safe spaces can be very helpful for childlike parts that feel terrified   My parts Feisty Part-- defends against shame -- Melancholio.   Good Boy  Challenger  Creative-distracting me.   Closing Mark your calendars.  Next Live Experience of the IIC podcast will be on Friday, January 13, 2023 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM Eastern time on Zoom (repeat) -- All about Anger -- dealing with your anger.  Going beyond what books can do.  Experiential exercise.  Links to register have gone out in our emailed Wednesday Reflections.  Can get the link on the IIC landing page as well, SoulsandHearts.com/iic  December 28, 2022  Reflection at soulsandhearts.com/blog  From Rejecting to Embracing Aging Reach out to me Crisis@soulsandhearts.com  Conversation hours:  cell is 317.567.9594 conversation hours 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern Time Every Tuesday and Thursday.   Resilient Catholic Community -- you do not have to be alone.   Why a deep intimate personal relationship with God our Father, Mary our Mother -- spiritual parents   By claiming our identity as beloved daughters and sons of God the Father and Mary our Mother. Identity is freely given.   How By dealing with the natural level issues we have, the human formation issues we have that have spiritual consequences.  Grace perfects nature  So many spiritual problems have their roots in the natural realm, in human formation.   If this kind of exercise is helpful to you, we have nearly 100 of them in the Resilient Catholics Community.   120 Catholics like you already on board, already on the pilgrimage -- just had 47 apply for the December 2022 cohort, excited to get to know our new applicants.   Closed December 31 -- wait list should be up soon for the June 2023 Cohort.   Get to know your own parts Get to love your own parts If interested, contact me.   Crisis@soulsandhearts.com 317.567.9594 conversation hours 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern Time Every Tuesday and Thursday.    

CME credits: 0.50 Valid until: 12-12-2023 Claim your CME credit at https://reachmd.com/programs/cme/spanning-the-spectrum-of-vvc-diagnosing-and-managing-acute-and-recurrent-disease/14660/ For affected women, acute vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC) brings with it a significant health burden, and the substantial morbidity and poor quality of life associated with recurrent disease (RVVC) requires improved diagnosis, management, and quality of care. Join Dr. Michael Krychman as he dissects the barriers to managing VVC and RVVC and provides insights on diagnosis and management based on guidelines, plus an overview of innovative therapeutic agents. The unique qualities of the current and emerging therapeutic interventions may well represent a significant step forward in how you manage these challenging infections.

The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der KolkVan der Kolk's interview on the Ezra Klein podcast. 

https://youtu.be/pvE24YBbbXQRon Wheeler guest for the Paycheck course. Ron can promote the webcast for 4:30 PM as he touches on what the course is all about.  www.vectorvest.com/opregister Market OverviewThis week has a nice rebound in the market, but is it time to get ready to buy? Keep in mind the market news: High Inflation, Hawkish Fed, Higher Oil prices, War in Ukraine. Nothing goes down or up forever but you have to stay focused! VVC, SPY Special GuestDo you want to book a monthly income? How about 3% per month or 36% a year? If the answer is yes, join us today with a special guest who will show you how to do it! Rising IndustriesThere is a difference between high-flying industries and industries which are not only moving but shaking their way up the list. If you want to find out how we do it, join us today and invite your friends! I promise you won't want to miss this!!!

Ramzi Khsib  LinkedIn profileAWS Elemental website---------------------------------------------------Join our LinkedIn Group so that you can get the latest video insider news and participate in the discussion.Email thevideoinsiders@beamr.com to be a guest on the show.Learn more about Beamr

https://youtu.be/n3DyJQmRnq4Trending Thursday is all about stocks making news! Does the news make them worthy to buy or are you just getting caught up in the Hype? The VectorVest software can easily put things into perspective and help you make better decisions about what to do!Market OverviewSaying that the market is experiencing volatility, is an understatement! “Blood in the streets” is also an understatement! The power of the VectorVest System has never been needed as much as it is needed now! VVC, SPYRetail Stocks BustRetail got hit hard this week and weighed heavy on the market. Are these stocks still worth buying? Should we just walk away? Let us help you answer that question! LOW, HD, WMT, TGTNuclear EnergyGas prices are the highest they have ever been! People are making decisions in regards to what to do next. Electric Vehicles, Hydrogen Motors, Nuclear Energy? Let's take a look! UUUU, LTBR, BHP, DNNContra ETFsBesides energy (which I still like) Contrarian ETFs may be a play to keep your money. FAZ, SDOW, DXD, DOGUse this link for a FREE Stock Analysis Report ➥➥➥ http://bit.ly/2KsZlqzVectorVest mobile app ➥➥➥ http://bit.ly/2UjF6y6 ➥➥➥ SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE VIDEOSNever miss a daily video about making money online⇢ https://www.youtube.com/user/VectorVestMB/?sub_confirmation=1

Review of Veterans Health Administration's Virtual Primary Care Response to the COVID-19 PandemicThe VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted a review to assess Veterans Health Administration's (VHA) virtual primary care response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the use of virtual care by primary care providers and their perceptions of VA Video Connect (VVC) between February 7 and June 16, 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic presented significant challenges to health care delivery worldwide. One strategy initiated by VHA, in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation to social distance, included expanding the delivery of primary care via virtual care. In VHA, virtual care has had a long-standing presence as a modality of care. Virtual care options during the pandemic included video conferencing through VVC and third-party applications, such as Skype and FaceTime, as well as telephone appointments. The OIG found face-to-face primary care encounters decreased by 75 percent and virtual encounters increased, with contact by telephone representing 81 percent of all primary care encounters during the review period. Additionally, primary care providers reported via questionnaire that VVC training and support were lacking for veterans, as was technology equipment and internet connectivity. Providers also identified challenging scheduling processes related to virtual appointment scheduling as a concern. The OIG made two recommendations to the Under Secretary for Health related to access, equipment, and VVC application training and support.

In this episode, Ayesha discussed the FDA approval of Mycovia Pharmaceuticals' Vivjoa (oteseconazole) as the first approved treatment for recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis (RVVC) or chronic yeast infection. The drug is indicated for women who permanently lack reproductive potential or are postmenopausal. The editorial team discussed the significant unmet need for this condition and how although many women's health issues are now given greater spotlight, there still need to be more conversations around them. The episode marked World Maternal Mental Health Day and was sponsored by Elligo Health Research.The editorial team also talked about the latest results of Eli Lilly's investigational obesity drug tirzepatide, which demonstrated it could reduce body weight by an average of 20 percent in individuals without diabetes. Tirzepatide is a GLP-1 receptor agonist, a class of drugs designed to treat diabetes but at higher doses, can help with weight loss. Hear more about the drug and the obesity drug market, which is projected to grow to $5.42 billion in 2025.Read the full articles here: Oteseconazole (Vivjoa) Becomes First FDA-Approved Drug for Recurrent Yeast InfectionTirzepatide Obesity Drug Shown to Reduce Body Weight by 20 Percent in Eli Lilly TrialFor more life science and medical device content, visit the Xtalks Vitals homepage.Follow Us on Social MediaTwitter: @Xtalks Instagram: @Xtalks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Xtalks.Webinars/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/xtalks-webconferences YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/XtalksWebinars/featured

M&E Industry Getting Serious About Sustainability M&E Industry Getting Serious About Sustainability M&E Industry Getting Serious About . OTTAWA—Tech companies in the media and entertainment (M&E) industry are making their business and production practices more sustainable by reducing their impact on the environment and contributions to climate change. “The video industry is taking the ‘green initiative' seriously,” said Thierry Fautier, vice president of strategy for Harmonic. “It has set a target and is now working toward achieving its goals. We have seen operators targeting zero carbon emission by 2040. There is also a new industry forum called ‘Greening of Streaming' that is addressing greener video delivery.” This last sustainability effort is particularly important, as “video traffic represented an estimated 84% of all consumer IP traffic in 2021 (up from 79% in 2016) according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index,” said Alain Nochimowski, CTO at the OTT/TV platform solutions company Viaccess-Orca. “Fortunately, the industry is starting to understand that it will need to take proactive steps toward being greener.” Real Companies, Tangible Actions Across the M&E industry, specific companies and organizations are taking tangible steps to make themselves and the industry as a whole more sustainable. They include video delivery provider Ateme, live video contribution tech provider Aviwest, SDVI and IBC, among many others. Given the billions of daily viewers of streaming services, reducing its environmental impact is a gigantic task. “The largest source of power consumption for video services is the device, followed by the network and then the data center,” Fautier said. “Some work has already been done on the device side with smart power management schemes deployed and regulations looking at limiting the display consumption. On the network side, the move to 5G is aimed at drastically reducing the watt-per-bit cost; reports show that cloud infrastructure is more power-efficient than a classical on-premises infrastructure approach.” Harmonic is enhancing its video compression algorithms to reduce traffic levels on IP networks, thus cutting the amount of electricity needed to deliver video content. “We are doing this by using AI-based encoding techniques such as content-aware encoding [CAE], dynamic frame-rate encoding [DFE] and dynamic resolution encoding [DRE] to improve legacy codecs; also AVC mostly but also HEVC,” said Fautier. The company is also promoting new, more efficient codecs such as AV1 and VVC, plus the LCEVC (low complexity enhancement video encoding) “intermediate solution” that combines legacy equipment and new approaches “to enable a significant savings in bandwidth and processing power,” he said. Use of the cloud is critical to meeting such goals. “Harmonic is 100% committed to cloud,” added Fautier. The company is also asking OTT content providers to consider using power-efficient multicasting in place of unicasting, bearing in mind that doing so would reduce delivery flexibility for consumers. One Stream for a Million Requests Content delivery solutions provider Broadpeak says its multicast adaptive bitrate (MABR) distribution product is a practical way to address unicasting's (one-to-one) high network usage. “Without multicast ABR, if a million people are streaming the same content at the same time, there are one million active connections requiring ad-hoc capacity throughout the network and consuming power accordingly,” said Yann Begassat, Broadpeak's business development manager. “With multicast ABR, there is only one stream to address the million requests, dramatically reducing capacity needs and energy consumption.” SDVI's Rally media supply chain management platform is helping users such as A&E Networks, Comcast, Discovery, Sky, ViacomCBS, and WarnerMedia manage their end-to-end video assets in a more efficient (and thus more sustainable) manner. “For our part, we have committed to a new sustaina...

Paul is Senior Vice President at Access Advance LLC where he is responsible for business development.  He has been involved in multiple patent pools and licensing program during his 25+ years as an intellectual property attorney, including for MPEG 2, MPEG 4 Part 2, AVC, HDDVD, BluRay, HEAAC, HEVC and now VVC. Paul started his career to work for General Electric's licensing department. He went on to work for General Instrument, first as the IP Portfolio Law Director, and then as the Broadband Sector IP Law Director (for Motorola after it purchased GI) managing the IP law department and IP related matters.  After that Paul worked for Microsoft as a Business Division Patent Counsel to then work for Acacia Research Group identifying, valuing, and purchasing patent portfolios. Since 2015, Paul has worked for Access Advance, first as Senior VP of Licensing building their HEVC Advance licensing program, and now as Senior VP of Business Development developing, launching and now building their VVC Advance licensing program. Paul believes that patent pools are important to facilitate standardized technologies such as HEVC or VVC. Paten pools reduce the transaction costs for all implementers. Havening more than just one patent pool (HEVC is subject to 3 patent pools, VVC currently has 2 patent pools set up), also will in his view not hamper standards adoption. Also, two or three patent pools still reduce the number of licensors. There has been criticism that HEVC was not as successful as AVC, where Paul argues that there is a lot of data tell a different story and that provides evidence of the success and wide adoption of HEVC. In his view the HEVC patent pool situation supported that success. Also, the recent litigation between Access Advance and Vestel was no setback for Access Advance, Paul argues. Here media did not tell the whole story. What is true due to a substantial number of overlapping patents in the HEVC Advance Patent Pool and MPEG LA's HEVC patent pool to which Vestel was licensed to, the German court In Düsseldorf found the Access Advanced HEVC license not FRAND. Access Advanced in March 2022 therefore revised its policy responding to the Düsseldorf District Court's December 21, 2021 ruling. Importantly, the court once again did not express concerns with any other facet of the HEVC Advance Patent Pool, including its royalty rates.One reason why more than just one patent pool was formed for VVC is that not only the licensing rates and licensing models differ across the pool programs, but also the internal revenue sharing policies can be very different. At Access Advance Paul states that the pool considers the internal royalty sharing counting patents on a patent family basis so that there are no incentives for patent pool licensors to file e.g. multiple divisional patent applications that cover very minor inventions just to increase their share in the patent pool. The different rules and licensing rates therefore attract different SEP licensors to either join Access Advance or MPEG LA's VVC patent pool.

https://youtu.be/aF_r0SfM1HoTrending Thursday is all about stocks making news! Does the news make them worthy to buy or are you just getting caught up in the Hype? The VectorVest software can easily put things into perspective and help you make better decisions in what to do!Market OverviewSo, it has finally happened, the Fed has raised interest rates for the first time since 2018! Gas prices and Inflation are still big issues. Well, it was needed. I think the market took the raise right In stride! The fed raised interest rates by a ¼ basis point and their goal is to have inflation down to 2% by the end of the year! That is quite a big undertaking! VVC, SPYEnergy Clean StocksThis Industry is up over 16% in the last two weeks but is the 41st Industry out of 221, and EVs have played a big role in the move, but there are other stocks besides EVs that make up this space and they should be considerations for your portfolio! BLNK, PLUG, REGI, ORADrug StocksThe big uptick of issues in China has these companies on the rise again! This sector is up over 16% in the last 2 weeks. PFE, MRNA, EIGR, TCBPElectronic StocksA lot of different companies make up this sector and it is definitely on the move. This sector is up over 13% in the last 2 weeks. Could this be the time to buy low in these companies? ACLS, AOSL, HIMX, AEHRChemical StocksFertilizer is also on the rise right now and some of these stocks are poised to make big runs in the market! This sector is up over 12% in the last 2 weeks but is garnering some attention! MOS, CF, ADES, CRKNStocks of InterestThis week I have a few stocks that have made some great upside moves and need your attention! WBX, LEN, STLD, RMBLInflation, Gas Prices, FED and... -Trending Thursday LIVE Stock Analysis! | VectorVestUse this link for a FREE Stock Analysis Report ➥➥➥ http://bit.ly/2KsZlqzTry VectorVest Risk-Free for 30 Days ➥➥➥ https://www.vectorvest.com/YTVectorVest mobile app ➥➥➥ http://bit.ly/2UjF6y6 ➥➥➥ SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE VIDEOSNever miss a daily video about making money online⇢ https://www.youtube.com/user/VectorVestMB/?sub_confirmation=1

https://youtu.be/aYDVOFUwcWUMarket OverviewWow!!!!! You need to have a strong stomach to handle this market right now! Up nicely one day, down big the next day, war, oil, inflation fears, and interest rates! It's enough to make any investor lose their mind! Slow down and focus! Focus on the information you need to help you make money. Don't let the news keep your head on a swivel! VVC, SPYMining StocksThis sector is up over 23% over the last 2 weeks! These companies are just not gold and precious metals, these companies mine for all kinds of ore that are needed in many products that are short in supply. These companies are doing more and finding more materials that are needed! VALE, AMR, MAG, CLF, RIOPollution Control StocksIn a time where we are looking at greener energy and protecting the planet, Pollution control makes sense that it is currently on the rise! People are becoming more environmentally cognizant. This sector is up over 20% over the last 2 weeks! HDSN, WM, FTEK, WCNSteel StocksSteel on the rise again? Steel is and will be needed to build more things. Steel has been a hot industry and is up over 14% in the last 2 weeks. We have talked about steel stocks many times on our channel. NUE, STLD, TMST, TXPetroleum StocksThe interesting thing about this sector, it's on fire and does not look like it will slow down, but is it? The sector is overbought with what is going on in Ukraine at this time. There is an embargo of oil coming out of Russia and the EU is doing the same. That will cause oil to run higher and we are seeing it at the gas pump right now! It is hard to fight the move of the sector. It is up over 10% over the last 2 weeks but looks like it is slowing down, for right now! If prices increase, so will this sector! OXY, HAL, HUSA, INDOStocks of InterestI always have my eyes on stocks you need to keep your eyes on! GME, AMZN, ZIM, JCI, PLTR

https://youtu.be/7JXILngq3qYTrending Thursday is all about stocks making news! Does the news make them worthy to buy or are you just getting caught up in the Hype? The VectorVest software can easily put things into perspective and help you make better decisions in what to do!Market OverviewThis has definitely been a wild ride in the market. The market got beaten up, looked for a bottom, found one, rebounded, and now…….. We are rising again, the Fed takes the stage and we are waiting to see if they will become more hawkish and how they will handle the inflation issue. Jobs are in the picture as well. Let us help you focus on what will be your best path to help you make money in the market! VVC, SPYSoftware stocksSo, as the market has begun to move, several sectors are on fire! The software sector has moved over 50% in the last 2 weeks alone!!! Wow! Where can you place your trades to increase your portfolio? MSFT, ATVI, APPS, FTNTInternet StocksThis sector has moved over 50% over the last 2 weeks as well! Big names in this space have been making big news and big moves! Lets talk about which stocks you should stay away from and which may be surprisingly interesting! FB, GOOGL, AMZN, SOHU, TRIP, TRVGHealth Care StocksDifferent variants are still affecting society in an adverse way! We are working our way through all of this and many companies may be a good place to place your trades! This sector is up over 47% over the last 2 weeks! LLY, ABBV, VRTX, HZNP, PFEEnergy StocksWow have you seen the price of oil lately? Looks like these prices will stay around for a while! Sigh! The energy sector is up over 42% over the last 2 weeks! Oil is not the only play in this space! Lets take a look at other plays for you to make money in! ASRCH, DQ, IEA, ALTOStocks of InterestEvery week I have some stocks that hit my radar that I want you to be aware of! AAPLE, Metaverse, ATXS, PYPL, BCRX, TLRY, CGCUse this link for a FREE Stock Analysis Report ➥➥➥ http://bit.ly/2KsZlqzTry VectorVest Risk-Free for 30 Days ➥➥➥ https://www.vectorvest.com/YTVectorVest mobile app ➥➥➥ http://bit.ly/2UjF6y6 ➥➥➥ SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE VIDEOSNever miss a daily video about making money online⇢ https://www.youtube.com/user/VectorVestMB/?sub_confirmation=1

Derren Burrell is the Founder & President of VVC, and also serves as Managing Partner. Before this role he served as the Chief Operating Officer for TAG Resources, LLC, a fiduciary outsourcing company with over $2 billion in assets under management. He is an Accredited Investment Fiduciary, Certified Defense Financial Manager, and Level 3 Certified in the Secretary of Defense Financial Management Program. Prior to his retirement from the Air Force, Derren was the Resource Director of the White House Communication Agency. He worked directly with senior White House staff, Congressional, comptroller, United States Secret Service, Department of State, and Defense Information Systems Agency staff in all aspects of financial and contract management in support of the President, managing nearly $350 million. While in this position he was selected for the rank of Colonel but decided to retire and move to Knoxville and into the private sector. Highlights of his 21-year military career include being deployed to Iraq as the Deputy Comptroller, United States Forces and in Afghanistan as the Resource Director, NATO Air Training Command. In this joint capacity he managed over $20 billion in U.S. appropriated funding in support of U.S. operations within the Iraq and Afghanistan Joint Operations Areas. He also served at the Pentagon as the flying operations analyst for the Air Force, where he was responsible for the largest Operations & Maintenance budget account in the Air Force, over $15 billion. He has been a squadron commander for both finance and wing staff agencies, and was a deployed Comptroller on the front line in Operations SEA SIGNAL, SOUTHERN WATCH, ALLIED FORCE, NEW DAWN, and ENDURING FREEDOM. Derren graduated from The Citadel with a BS in Business Administration, holds a MS in Cost Analysis from the Air Force Institute of Technology, and a 2nd MS in Human Resources from Central Michigan University. Connect w/ Derren: Web: www.veteranventures.us/ LI: www.linkedin.com/in/derrenburrell Connect w/ Jovica Djurdjevic: Web: www.workwithjov.com Email: info@workwithjov.com LI: http://linkedin.com/in/jdjurdjevic

NESTED 5G project brings together innovative French companies Orange, Viaccess-Orca, ENENSYS Technologies and IETR to develop solution for greener . NESTED 5G project brings together innovative French companies Orange, Viaccess-Orca, ENENSYS Technologies and IETR to develop solution for greener delivery PARIS, 23 NOVEMBER, 2021 – ATEME, the leader in video delivery solutions for broadcast, cable TV, DTH, IPTV and OTT, today announced that it is leading NESTED (New vidEo STandards for Enhanced Delivery), a consortium aimed at developing a high quality-of-experience (QoE) and sustainable video-streaming solution over 5G. The innovative NESTED 5G project is headed by ATEME in collaboration with Orange, which tests the efficiency and sustainability of the NESTED streaming solution in real use cases over 5G. The project brings together leading French companies Viaccess-Orca, contributing its secure video player, QoE analytics enabler suite and targeted advertising solution, and ENENSYS Technologies with its MediaCast Mobile and its CubeAgent Mobile. Renowned French institution IETR (Institut d'Electronique et des Technologies du numéRique), the research unit at French engineering school INSA Rennes, also participates by providing a VVC decoder. In addition to leading the project, ATEME plays a vital role in bringing the new solution to life with its latest compression technology, its Just-in-time packager and its CDN. The consortium will leverage the latest advances in video compression and delivery technologies, and their expected benefits in terms of reduced environmental impacts, among which: CMAF chunk sharing to reduce the traffic burden on the CDN The latest VVC video encoding with its promise of halving bitrates Multicast/unicast convergence enabling peak audience reach In addition, this collaboration will highlight the benefits of an e2e pre-integrated, best of breed multicast ABR solution, notably in terms of QoE and personalized viewing experience. Ultimately, it will therefore enable multicast for 5G, allowing operators to take a greener approach to streaming. Driven by Orange's goal to distribute video and manage bandwidth efficiency and delivery over 5G, the solution looks to increase the sustainability of streaming over 5G and to reduce broadcasting infrastructure costs for service providers while delivering the best quality of experience to viewers. The two-year project, supported by France's Brittany region (Région Bretagne), is due to end in 2023, by which time the consortium is confident it will be able to demonstrate the benefits of its solution when it comes to offering sustainable streaming over 5G and reducing the environmental impact of delivering video. Mickaël Raulet, Chief Technology Officer, commented: “We are proud that Orange has turned to us to help them achieve their sustainability goals. There is an ongoing debate about the environmental impact of streaming over 5G and this project will help to lessen that. It also highlights the innovation taking place within the French market and once completed, we look forward to helping other organizations around the world leverage that innovation through our new streaming solution.” Julien Lemotheux, TV&Video Senior Standardization Manager, Orange, said: “The impact our actions have on the environment is front of mind for everyone within our organization. By working with the NESTED 5G taskforce, we hope to make streaming more sustainable, reducing our energy footprint and allowing our customers to enjoy high-quality content.” “The reduction in environmental impact, together with the management of QoE and the provision of more personalized viewing experiences, are the determining factors for a sustainable future in video streaming; as an innovation leader, Viaccess-Orca is glad to contribute its unique expertise and technology enablers to help Orange and the other consortium partners explore innovative routes for video streaming.” said Alain Nochimowski, CTO a...

CME credits: 0.50 Valid until: 02-11-2022 Claim your CME credit at https://reachmd.com/programs/cme/managing-vulvovaginal-candidiasisriding-wave-therapeutic-change/13040/ The global burden of acute vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC) and the substantial morbidity and poor quality of life associated with recurrent disease (RVVC) requires improved solutions and quality of care for affected women. Join Dr. Paul Nyirjesy as he dissects the barriers to managing VVC and RVVC in your clinical practice and provides both diagnostic and therapeutic guidance inclusive of newly emerging and novel agents. These agents have unique qualities that may well represent a significant step forward in how you manage this challenging infection.

CME credits: 0.50 Valid until: 02-11-2022 Claim your CME credit at https://reachmd.com/programs/cme/managing-vulvovaginal-candidiasisriding-wave-therapeutic-change/13040/ The global burden of acute vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC) and the substantial morbidity and poor quality of life associated with recurrent disease (RVVC) requires improved solutions and quality of care for affected women. Join Dr. Paul Nyirjesy as he dissects the barriers to managing VVC and RVVC in your clinical practice and provides both diagnostic and therapeutic guidance inclusive of newly emerging and novel agents. These agents have unique qualities that may well represent a significant step forward in how you manage this challenging infection.

Todd Erdley LinkedIn Profile---------------------------------------------------Join our LinkedIn Group so that you can get the latest video insider news and participate in the discussion.Email thevideoinsiders@beamr.com to be a guest on the show.Learn more about Beamr

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After 10 months, Pastor Tim is back with the Bible Discovery Bible study at VVC. Join him as he talks about spiritual blindness with the Bible Discovery group. What is spiritual blindness? Why can some understand and others not? How can we talk with those who cannot see what we see? This podcast has been edited for personal content. Join us!Support the show (https://tithe.ly/give?c=1312124)

Market OverviewChange in administration, what is the market going to do? Well, the Fed is very accommodative due to Covid, there is a heightened enthusiasm over further stimulus, and more roll out of coronavirus vaccine. The market is still toppy so what should you do? Let us navigate you through what is happening now! VVC, SPY

If you're seeing this for the first time it means you're not a member of the Patreon Pit Crew which means you're just not doing life right. But because we're good blokes we don't want to add to the punishment you're enduring for your poor life choices so we present part two of our Captain's Folly Tour podcast. Three glorious days of motorcycle riding broken up by two hours of brilliant entertainment and insight from a couple of great blokes in the Cudlin bothers at the Black Duck Brewery in Port Macquarie was a hell of a first up effort. There will be more tours in future and they'll only get better from here so stop doing things wrong and sign up to the Patreon Pit Crew (https://www.patreon.com/MotoPG) to make sure you have a chance to be part of it. Now we might be proving ourselves gifted Tour Operators but it's not a get rich quick scheme so big thanks to our great sponsors Velocity Vehicle Care (who still want Billy Van Eerde to be Australia's next Mick Doohan) and Held Austalia. To get VVC's magic 'make bike shiny' spray, call 1300 990 074 and tell them we sent you. And remember, all proceeds from these sales go direct to Billy Van Eerde. Meanwhile, what's the point of a beautifully presented bike if the rider looks like shit? Don't be that person. Buy the best race suits and gloves going around from Held Australia and pay less then the schmucks who don't listen to us. How much less? To get the special price you have to ring or email and mention Moto PG. The phone number is 1300 916 916 or email info@mig.bike. To see the full range head to the Held Australia website (https://heldaustralia.com.au/shop/). And while you're listening to Boris Tugg and Freido, visit the MOTO PG website (https://motopgco.wordpress.com) where you can help make the team richer by buying something in the shop (https://www.motopg.theprintbar.com). Even better, make a regular contribution by signing up to the Patreon Pit Crew (https://www.patreon.com/MotoPG) and getting access to bonus content and a bunch of other great stuff. What are you waiting for? Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

"I have just returned from The Captains Folly Tour led by Boris, Tugs and eventually Freido showed up too....and let me tell you all that if you’re thinking of doing a tour with the PG crew do it ....... if you’re not, seriously think of doing the next and the next and .... you get the picture..." That's a direct and unpaid customer review of our first 'On The Road Recording' effort and Jimmy has it right, it was beaut. But like fine wine, we will only get better with age so if you thought the first ride was good just wait till the next. In the meantime enjoy the boys being joined by the Cudlin brothers and a select group of loyal listeners in Part 1 of our special two part recording at the Black Duck Brewery. Now we might have proved ourselves gifted Tour Operators but it's not a get rich quick scheme so big thanks to our geat sponsors Velocity Vehicle Care (who still want Billy Van Eerde to be Australia's next Mick Doohan) and Held Austalia. To get VVC's magic 'make bike shiny' spray, call 1300 990 074 and tell them we sent you. And remember, all proceeds from these sales go direct to Billy Van Eerde. Meanwhile, what's the point of a beautifully presented bike if the rider looks like shit? Don't be that person. Buy the best race suits and gloves going around from Held Australia and pay less then the schmucks who don't listen to us. How much less? To get the special price you have to ring or email and mention Moto PG. The phone number is 1300 916 916 or email info@mig.bike. To see the full range head to the Held Australia website (https://heldaustralia.com.au/shop/). And while you're listening to Boris Tugg and Freido, visit the MOTO PG website (https://motopgco.wordpress.com) where you can help make the team richer by buying something in the shop (https://www.motopg.theprintbar.com). Even better, make a regular contribution by signing up to the Patreon Pit Crew (https://www.patreon.com/MotoPG) and getting access to bonus content and a bunch of other great stuff. What are you waiting for? Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

CME credits: 0.50 Valid until: 01-12-2021 Claim your CME credit at https://reachmd.com/programs/cme/riding-the-wave-of-change-in-managing-vulvovaginal-candidiasisadapting-to-a-new-era/11990/ Managing complicated, recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis (RVVC) can be, well, complicated. Join Dr. Jack Sobel for his seminal presentation on the challenges of VVC and RVVC, the role of fluconazole, and what makes RVVC so complicated. He’ll also discuss new therapies on the horizon that may finally provide the answer to achieving greater recurrence-free rates for millions of women.

Host: Jack David Sobel, MD Managing complicated, recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis (RVVC) can be, well, complicated. Join Dr. Jack Sobel for his seminal presentation on the challenges of VVC and RVVC, the role of fluconazole, and what makes RVVC so complicated. He’ll also discuss new therapies on the horizon that may finally provide the answer to achieving greater recurrence-free rates for millions of women.

CME credits: 0.50 Valid until: 01-12-2021 Claim your CME credit at https://reachmd.com/programs/cme/riding-the-wave-of-change-in-managing-vulvovaginal-candidiasisadapting-to-a-new-era/11990/ Managing complicated, recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis (RVVC) can be, well, complicated. Join Dr. Jack Sobel for his seminal presentation on the challenges of VVC and RVVC, the role of fluconazole, and what makes RVVC so complicated. He’ll also discuss new therapies on the horizon that may finally provide the answer to achieving greater recurrence-free rates for millions of women.

The season's over but we're not. Freido, Tugg and Boris put a bow on the craziest Moto GP year ever but don't despair - the boys aren't done for the year. In fact, in many ways they're just getting started. As Boris likes to say: "The season is over when we say it's over!"  In episode 27 there's news about Velocity Vehicle Care (who still want Billy Van Eerde to be Australia's next Mick Doohan) with several shops coming on board to stock the product in individual cans. And there's news about Billy, too, so listen out for that. Remember, every dollar VVC raise goes to helping Billy chase his Moto GP dream and all you have to do is buy some of their magic bike cleaning stuff (by calling 1300 990 074) and tell them we sent you. If you can't afford a whole case of cleaner (the only way to get it at the moment) join our campaign to get it into as many shops as possible by heading to our Facebook Page and following the instructions there. Meanwhile, what's the point of a beautifully presented bike if the rider looks like shit? Don't be that person. Buy the best race suits and gloves going around from Held Australia and pay less then the schmucks who don't listen to us. How much less? To get the special price you have to ring or email and mention Moto PG. The phone number is 1300 916 916 or email info@mig.bike. To see the full range head to the Held Australia website. And while you're listening to Boris Tugg and Freido, visit the MOTO PG website where you can help make the team richer by buying something in the shop. Even better, make a regular contribution by signing up to the Patreon Pit Crew and getting access to bonus content and a bunch of other great stuff. What are you waiting for? Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Vaginal yeast infections are very common in women. It is estimated that almost 2.5 million are affected by recurrent vaginal candidiasis and that recurrent VVC is the second most frequent fungal infection in women, as 75% of all women will have at least one in her lifetime, and 40%-45% will have multiple cases. More than 6% of women suffer recurrent episodes. UTI’s - The prevalence in women over 65 years of age is approximately 20%, compared with approximately 11% in the overall population. Between 50% and 60% of adult women will have at least one UTI in their life, and close to 10% of postmenopausal women indicate that they had a UTI in the previous year. I am joined again by CHI graduate and medicine woman Marisa Reyes,  an L.A. native with Mexican roots, is a lifelong learner, teacher, and world traveler whose curiosity to experience different cultures and adventure has taken her around the globe. She has attained her B.A. in Liberal Studies and a Master's of Library and Information Science, which has allowed her to be a school, academic, and public librarian since 2010. In 2013, she traveled to Chiang Mai, Thailand to study Thai massage and become a Chi Nei Tsang Abdominal Massage practitioner. To bring balance to the mind body connection, she trained to become a Kundalini Yoga Instructor at the Awareness Center in Pasadena and Hatha/Yoga Nidra instructor at the Himalayan Academy of Yoga in Rishikesh, India. In addition, she is also a California-certified massage therapist from the Massage School of Pasadena, To help support women’s health, she studied with Keli Garza in her Vaginal Steam Facilitator Training. You can even find Marisa steaming Ellen Degeneres’ producer, Lauren Pommerantz on Ellentube.com. In May of 2019, she trained with Dee Dussault, author of Ganja Yoga, to become a certified Ganja Yoga instructor. In her weekly Ganja Yoga LA ritual, you can experience the incredible blend of her training combined. Missed out on WHICH herbs should be used in your yoni steaming? Join The Warrior Cleanse TODAY for the rest of this great interview! For now, GET $150 OFF Marisa and Michael’s Empowering Menstrual Health and Womb Wisdom Program using this link. (normal price $399, get it for $249)  In this Episode: How to steam your yoni to release pain, stored emotions, and anxiety RELIEVE yourself of discomfort with menstruation OR menopause The RESEARCH about yoni steaming- what works best? WHICH yoni herbs can treat your ailments- all through The Warrior Cleanse! PHYSICAL BENEFITS: Reduction in pain, bloating and exhaustion associated with menstruation Decreases heavy menstrual flow Regulation of irregular or absent menstrual cycles More rapid healing and a toning of the reproductive system after giving birth Eases discomfort of uterine fibroids, ovarian cysts, uterine weakness, uterine prolapse & endometriosis Promotes healing of vaginal tear, episiotomy, or C-section scar Helps to restore bacterial and ph balance to aid in prevention of infections, bacterial vaginosis and odors Relief for symptoms of menopause including dryness or pain Can tighten the vaginal canal Detoxification of the womb and body Emotional & Spiritual Benefits Allows modern day women the opportunity to reconnect to the ancestral wisdom of the womb Release of stored emotions & anxiety Access to the feminine energy that gives rise to our vibrant radiance and creative potential as women Relieves tension and creates a state of bliss Helps with insomnia Can help aid in healing from sexual trauma   LINKS: How to Steam your Yoni! Follow Diane on Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter | YouTube  Join the Cleanse, Heal, Ignite Facebook Community Watch our MasterClass & Get to the Root of Hormone, Auto-Immune and Breast Implant Illness Symptoms Join my Warrior Cleanse! Take my Neurotoxic quiz. Check out my brand new Cleanse, Heal, Ignite supplement line!   QUOTES: “I had been married for three years at that point, and was having low libido and chronic infections… It was around that time where I discovered yoni steaming with my mentor, Kelly Garza, and it tied in so beautifully to what you were sharing. For me, it created a huge shift.” [09:19] “Most of the women that have come to me is because of menstrual pains: cramping, bloating, tender breasts, and acne, all from hormonal imbalance.” [22:39] “Really, this is a practice of forgiveness, just letting the steam be this nurturing, self-care practice. We get to be at peace with where we’re at in that moment.” [36:07]   RESOURCES: Uterine fibroids: current perspectives An introduction to the epidemiology and burden of urinary tract infections Prevalence of vulvovaginal candidiasis in gynecological practices in Germany: A retrospective study of 954,186 patients Endometriosis: Epidemiology, Diagnosis and Clinical Management

Thierry Fautier LinkedIn profile Harmonic websiteBen Mesander LinkedIn profile Wowza websiteWalid Hamri LinkedIn profile SeaChange websiteWade Wan LinkedIn profile Broadcom websiteOur previous panel on extending the life of H.264 is here---------------------------------------------------Join our LinkedIn Group so that you can get the latest video insider news and participate in the discussion.Email thevideoinsiders@beamr.com to be a guest on the show.Learn more about Beamr

Listen as we talk to Dr. Taglietti about SCYNEXIS and their drug Ibrexafungerp The press release below talks about their successful meeting with the NDA- https://ir.scynexis.com/press-releases/detail/216/scynexis-reports-successful-completion-of-pre-nda-meetings recently for Ibrexafungerp for the treatment of VVC, the common fungal infection affecting millions of women each year in the U.S.  To view a presentation go here            

Click to watch SPIE Future Video Codec Panel DiscussionRelated episode with Gary Sullivan at Microsoft: VVC, HEVC & other MPEG codec standardsInterview with MPEG Chairman Leonardo Charliogne: MPEG Through the Eyes of it's ChairmanLearn about FastDVO herePankaj Topiwala LinkedIn profile--------------------------------------The Video Insiders LinkedIn Group is where thousands of your peers are discussing the latest video technology news and sharing best practices. Click here to joinWould you like to be a guest on the show? Email: thevideoinsiders@beamr.comLearn more about Beamr--------------------------------------TRANSCRIPT:Pankaj Topiwala: 00:00 With H.264 H.265 HEVC in 2013, we were now able to do up to 300 to one to up to 500 to one compression on a, let's say a 4K video. And with VVC we have truly entered a new realm where we can do up to 1000 to one compression, which is three full orders of magnitude reduction of the original size. If the original size is say 10 gigabits, we can bring that down to 10 megabits. And that's unbelievable. And so video compression truly is a remarkable technology and you know, it's a, it's a marval to look at Announcer: 00:39 The Video Insiders is the show that makes sense of all that is happening in the world of online video as seen through the eyes of a second generation codec nerd and a marketing guy who knows what I-frames and macro blocks are. And here are your hosts, Mark Donnigan and Dror Gill. Speaker 3: 00:39 Dror Gill: 01:11 Today we're going to talk with one of the key figures in the development of a video codecs and a true video insider Pankaj Topiwala. Hello Pankaj and welcome to The Video Insiders podcast. Pankaj Topiwala: 01:24 Gentlemen. hello, and thank you very much for this invite. It looks like it's going to be a lot of fun. Mark Donnigan: 01:31 It is. Thank you for joining Pankaj. Dror Gill: 01:33 Yeah, it sure will be a lot of fun. So can you start by telling us a little bit about your experience in codec development? Pankaj Topiwala: 01:41 Sure, so, I should say that unlike a number of the other people that you have interviewed or may interview my background is fair bit different. I really came into this field really by a back door and almost by chance my degree PhD degree is actually in mathematical physics from 1985. And I actually have no engineering, computer science or even management experience. So naturally I run a small research company working in video compression and analytics, and that makes sense, but that's just the way things go in the modern world. But that the effect for me was a, and the entry point was that even though I was working in very, very abstract mathematics I decided to leave. I worked in academia for a few years and then I decided to join industry. And at that point they were putting me into applied mathematical research. Pankaj Topiwala: 02:44 And the topic at that time that was really hot in applied mathematics was a topic of wavelets. And I ended up writing and edited a book called wavelet image and video compression in 1998. Which was a lot of fun along with quite a few other co authors on that book. But, wavelets had its biggest contribution in the compression of image and video. And so that led me finally to enter into, and I noticed that video compression was a far larger field than image compression. I mean, by many orders, by orders of magnitude. It is probably a hundred times bigger in terms of market size than, than image compression. And as a result I said, okay, if the sexiest application of this new fangled mathematics could be in video compression I entered that field roughly with the the book that I mentioned in 1998. Mark Donnigan: 03:47 So one thing that I noticed Pankaj cause it's really interesting is your, your initial writing and you know, research was around wavelet compression and yet you have been very active in ISO MPEG, all block-based codecs. So, so tell us about that? Pankaj Topiwala: 04:08 Okay. Well obviously you know when you make the transition from working on the wavelets and our initial starting point was in doing wavelet based video compression. When I started first founded my company fastVDO in 1998, 1999 period we were working on wavelet based video compression and we, we pushed that about as much as we could. And at that, at one point we had what we felt was the world's best a video compression using wavelets in fact, but best overall. And it had the feature that you know, one thing that we should, we should tell your view or reader listeners is that the, the value of wavelets in particular in image coding is that not only can you do state of the art image coding, but you can make the bitstream what is called embedded, meaning you can chop it off at anywhere you like, and it's still a decodable stream. Pankaj Topiwala: 05:11 And in fact it is the best quality you can get for that bit rate. And that is a powerful, powerful thing you can do in image coding. Now in video, there is actually no way to do that. Video is just so much more complicated, but we did the best we could to make it not embedded, but at least scalable. And we, we built a scalable wavelet based video codec, which at that time was beating at the current implementations of MPEG4. So we were very excited that we could launch a company based on a proprietary codec that was based on this new fangled mathematics called wavelets. And lead us to a state of the art codec. The facts of the ground though is that just within the first couple of years of running our company, we found that in fact the block-based transformed codecs that everybody else was using, including the implementers of MPEG4. Pankaj Topiwala: 06:17 And then later AVC, those quickly surpassed anything we could build with with wavelets in terms of both quality and stability. The wavelet based codecs were not as powerful or as stable. And I can say quite a bit more about why that's true. If you want? Dror Gill: 06:38 So when you talk about stability, what exactly are you referring to in, in a video codec? Pankaj Topiwala: 06:42 Right. So let's let's take our listeners back a bit to compare image coding and video coding. Image coding is basically, you're given a set of pixels in a rectangular array and we normally divide that into blocks of sub blocks of that image. And then do transforms and then quantization and than entropy coding, that's how we typically do image coding. With the wavelet transform, we have a global transform. It's a, it's ideally done on the entire image. Pankaj Topiwala: 07:17 And then you could do it multiple times, what are called multiple scales of the wavelet transform. So you could take various sub sub blocks that you create by doing the wavelet transfer and the low pass high pass. Ancs do that again to the low low pass for multiple scales, typically about four or five scales that are used in popular image codecs that use wavelets. But now in video, the novelty is that you don't have one frame. You have many, many frames, hundreds or thousands or more. And you have motion. Now, motion is something where you have pieces of the image that float around from one frame to another and they float randomly. That is, it's not as if all of the motion is in one direction. Some things move one way, some things move other ways, some things actually change orientations. Pankaj Topiwala: 08:12 And they really move, of course, in three dimensional space, not in our two dimensional space that we capture. That complicates video compression enormously over image compression. And it particularly complicates all the wavelet methods to do video compression. So, wavelet methods that try to deal with motion were not very successful. The best we tried to do was using motion compensated video you know, transformed. So doing wavelet transforms in the time domain as well as the spatial domain along the paths of motion vectors. But that was not very successful. And what I mean by stability is that as soon as you increase the motion, the codec breaks, whereas in video coding using block-based transforms and block-based motion estimation and compensation it doesn't break. It just degrades much more gracefully. Wavelet based codecs do not degrade gracefully in that regard. Pankaj Topiwala: 09:16 And so we of course, as a company we decided, well, if those are the facts on the ground. We're going to go with whichever way video coding is going and drop our initial entry point, namely wavelets, and go with the DCT. Now one important thing we found was that even in the DCT- ideas we learned in wavelets can be applied right to the DCT. And I don't know if you're familiar with this part of the story, but a wavelet transform can be decomposed using bits shifts and ads only using something called the lifting transform, at least a important wavelet transforms can. Now, it turns out that the DCT can also be decomposed using lifting transforms using only bit shifts and ads. And that is something that my company developed way back back in 1998 actually. Pankaj Topiwala: 10:18 And we showed that not only for DCT, but a large class of transforms called lab transforms, which included the block transforms, but in particular included more powerful transforms the importance of that in the story of video coding. Is that up until H.264, all the video codec. So H.261, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, all these video codecs used a floating point implementation of the discrete cosign transform and without requiring anybody to implement you know a full floating point transform to a very large number of decimal places. What they required then was a minimum accuracy to the DCT and that became something that all codecs had to do. Instead. If you had an implementation of the DCT, it had to be accurate to the true floating point DCT up to a certain decimal point in, in the transform accuracy. Pankaj Topiwala: 11:27 With the advent of H.264, with H.264, we decided right away that we were not going to do a flooding point transform. We were going to do an integer transform. That decision was made even before I joined, my company joined, the development base, H.264, AVC, But they were using 32 point transforms. We found that we could introduce 16 point transforms, half the complexity. And half the complexity only in the linear dimension when you, when you think of it as a spatial dimension. So two spatial dimensions, it's a, it's actually grows more. And so the reduction in complexity is not a factor of two, but at least a factor of four and much more than that. In fact, it's a little closer to exponential. The reality is that we were able to bring the H.264 codec. Pankaj Topiwala: 12:20 So in fact, the transform was the most complicated part of the entire codec. So if you had a 32 point transform, the entire codec was at 32 point technology and it needed 32 points, 32 bits at every sample to process in hardware or software. By changing the transform to 16 bits, we were able to bring the entire codec to a 16 bit implementation, which dramatically improved the hardware implementability of this transfer of this entire codec without at all effecting the quality. So that was an important development that happened with AVC. And since then, we've been working with only integer transforms. Mark Donnigan: 13:03 This technical history is a really amazing to hear. I, I didn't actually know that Dror or you, you probably knew that, but I didn't. Dror Gill: 13:13 Yeah, I mean, I knew about the transform and shifting from fixed point, from a floating point to integer transform. But you know, I didn't know that's an incredible contribution Pankaj. Pankaj Topiwala: 13:27 We like to say that we've saved the world billions of dollars in hardware implementations. And we've taken a small a small you know, a donation as a result of that to survive as a small company. Dror Gill: 13:40 Yeah, that's great. And then from AVC you moved on and you continued your involvement in, in the other standards, right? That's followed. Pankaj Topiwala: 13:47 in fact, we've been involved in standardization efforts now for almost 20 years. My first meeting was a, I recall in may of 2000, I went to a an MPEG meeting in Geneva. And then shortly after that in July I went to an ITU VCEG meeting. VCEG is the video coding experts group of the ITU. And MPEG is the moving picture experts group of ISO. These two organizations were separately pursuing their own codecs at that time. Pankaj Topiwala: 14:21 ISO MPEG was working on MPEG-4 and ITU VCEG was working on H.263, and 263 plus and 263 plus plus. And then finally they started a project called 263 L for longterm. And eventually it became clear to these two organizations that look, it's silly to work on, on separate codecs. They had worked once before in MPEG-2 develop a joint standard and they decided to, to form a joint team at that time called the joint video team, JVT to develop the H.264 AVC video codec, which was finally done in 2003. We participate participated you know fully in that making many contributions of course in the transform but also in motion estimation and other aspects. So, for example, it might not be known that we also contributed the fast motion estimation that's now widely used in probably nearly all implementations of 264, but in 265 HEVC as well. Pankaj Topiwala: 15:38 And we participated in VVC. But one of the important things that we can discuss is these technologies, although they all have the same overall structure, they have become much more complicated in terms of the processing that they do. And we can discuss that to some extent if you want? Dror Gill: 15:59 The compression factors, just keep increasing from generation to generation and you know, we're wondering what's the limit of that? Pankaj Topiwala: 16:07 That's of course a very good question and let me try to answer some of that. And in fact that discussion I don't think came up in the discussion you had with Gary Sullivan, which certainly could have but I don't recall it in that conversation. So let me try to give for your listeners who did not catch that or are not familiar with it. A little bit of the story. Pankaj Topiwala: 16:28 The first international standard was the ITU. H.261 standard dating roughly to 1988 and it was designed to do only about 15 to one to 20 to one compression. And it was used mainly for video conferencing. And at that time you'd be surprised from our point of view today, the size of the video being used was actually incredibly tiny about QCIP or 176 by 144 pixels. Video of that quality that was the best we could conceive. And we thought we were doing great. And doing 20 to one compression, wow! Recall by the way, that if you try to do a lossless compression of any natural signal, whether it's speech or audio or images or video you can't do better than about two to one or at most about two and a half to one. Pankaj Topiwala: 17:25 You cannot do, typically you cannot even do three to one and you definitely cannot do 10 to one. So a video codec that could do 20 to one compression was 10 times better than what you could do lossless, I'm sorry. So this is definitely lossy, but lossy with still a good quality so that you can use it. And so we thought we were really good. When MPEG-1 came along in, in roughly 1992 we were aiming for 25 to one compression and the application was the video compact disc, the VCD. With H.262 or MPEG-2 roughly 1994, we were looking to do about 35 to one compression, 30 to 35. And the main application was then DVD or also broadcast television. At that point, broadcast television was ready to use at least in some, some segments. Pankaj Topiwala: 18:21 Try digital broadcasting. In the United States, that took a while. But in any case it could be used for broadcast television. And then from that point H.264 AVC In 2003, we jumped right away to more than 100 to one compression. This technology at least on large format video can be used to shrink the original size of a video by more than two orders of magnitude, which was absolutely stunning. You know no other natural signal, not speech, not broadband, audio, not images could be compressed that much and still give you high quality subjective quality. But video can because it's it is so redundant. And because we don't understand fully yet how to appreciate video. Subjectively. We've been trying things you know, ad hoc. And so the entire development of video coding has been really by ad hoc methods to see what quality we can get. Pankaj Topiwala: 19:27 And by quality we been using two two metrics. One is simply a mean square error based metric called peak signal to noise ratio or PSNR. And that has been the industry standard for the last 35 years. But the other method is simply to have people look at the video, what we call subjective rating of the video. Now it's hard to get a subjective rating. That's reliable. You have to do a lot of standardization get a lot of different people and take mean opinion scores and things like that. That's expensive. Whereas PSNR is something you can calculate on a computer. And so people have mostly in the development of video coding for 35 years relied on one objective quality metric called PSNR. And it is good but not great. And it's been known right from the beginning that it was not perfect, not perfectly correlated to video quality, and yet we didn't have anything better anyway. Pankaj Topiwala: 20:32 To finish the story of the video codecs with H.265 HEVC in 2013, we were now able to do up to 300 to one to up to 500 to one compression on let's say a 4K. And with VVC we have truly entered a new realm where we can do up to 1000 to one compression, which is three full orders of magnitude reduction of the original size. If the original size is say, 10 gigabits, we can bring that down to 10 megabits. And that's unbelievable. And so video compression truly is a remarkable technology. And you know, it's a, it's a marvel to look at. Of course it does not, it's not magic. It comes with an awful lot of processing and an awful lot of smarts have gone into it. That's right. Mark Donnigan: 21:24 You know Pankaj, that, is an amazing overview and to hear that that VVC is going to be a thousand to one. You know, compression benefit. Wow. That's incredible! Pankaj Topiwala: 21:37 I think we should of course we should of course temper that with you know, what people will use in applications. Correct. They may not use the full power of a VVC and may not crank it to that level. Sure, sure. I can certainly tell you that that we and many other companies have created bitstreams with 1000 to one or more compression and seeing video quality that we thought was usable. Mark Donnigan: 22:07 One of the topics that has come to light recently and been talked about quite a bit. And it was initially raised by Dave Ronca who used to lead encoding at Netflix for like 10 years. In fact you know, I think he really built that department, the encoding team there and is now at Facebook. And he wrote a LinkedIn article post that was really fascinating. And what he was pointing out in this post was, was that with compression efficiency and as each generation of codec is getting more efficient as you just explained and gave us an overview. There's a, there's a problem that's coming with that in that each generation of codec is also getting even more complex and you know, in some settings and, and I suppose you know, Netflix is maybe an example where you know, it's probably not accurate to say they have unlimited compute, but their application is obviously very different in terms of how they can operate their, their encoding function compared to someone who's doing live, live streaming for example, or live broadcast. Maybe you can share with us as well. You know, through the generation generational growth of these codecs, how has the, how has the compute requirements also grown and has it grown in sort of a linear way along with the compression efficiency? Or are you seeing, you know, some issues with you know, yes, we can get a thousand to one, but our compute efficiency is getting to the, where we could be hitting a wall. Pankaj Topiwala: 23:46 You asked a good question. Has the complexity only scaled linearly with the compression ratio? And the answer is no. Not at all. Complexity has outpaced the compression ratio. Even though the compression ratio is, is a tremendous, the complexity is much, much higher. And has always been at every step. First of all there's a big difference in doing the research, the research phase in development of the, of a technology like VVC where we were using a standardized reference model that the committee develops along the way, which is not at all optimized. But that's what we all use because we share a common code base. And make any new proposals based on modifying that code base. Now that code base is always along the entire development chain has always been very, very slow. Pankaj Topiwala: 24:42 And true implementations are anywhere from 100 to 500 times more efficient in complexity than the reference software. So right away you can have the reference software for say VVC and somebody developing a, an implementation that's a real product. It can be at least 100 times more efficient than what the reference software, maybe even more. So there's a big difference. You know, when we're developing a technology, it is very hard to predict what implementers will actually come up with later. Of course, the only way they can do that is that companies actually invest the time and energy right away as they're developing the standard to build prototype both software and hardware and have a good idea that when they finish this, you know, what is it going to really cost? So just to give you a, an idea, between, H.264 and Pankaj Topiwala: 25:38 H.265, H.264, only had two transforms of size, four by four and eight by eight. And these were integer transforms, which are only bit shifts and adds, took no multiplies and no divides. The division in fact got incorporated into the quantizer and as a result, it was very, very fast. Moreover, if you had to do, make decisions such as inter versus intra mode, the intra modes there were only about eight or 10 intra modes in H.264. By contrast in H.265. We have not two transforms eight, four by four and eight by, but in fact sizes of four, eight, 16 and 32. So we have much larger sized transforms and instead of a eight or 10 intra modes, we jumped up to 35 intra modes. Pankaj Topiwala: 26:36 And then with a VVC we jumped up to 67 intro modes and we just, it just became so much more complex. The compression ratio between HEVC and VVC is not quite two to one, but let's say, you know, 40% better. But the the complexity is not 40% more. On the ground and nobody has yet, to my knowledge, built a a, a, a fully compliant and powerful either software or hardware video codec for VVC yet because it's not even finished yet. It's going to be finished in July 2020. When it, when, the dust finally settles maybe four or five years from now, it will be, it will prove to be at least three or four times more complex than HEVC encoder the decoder, not that much. The decoder, luckily we're able to build decoders that are much more linear than the encoder. Pankaj Topiwala: 27:37 So I guess I should qualify as discussion saying the complexity growth is all mostly been in the encoder. The decoder has been a much more reasonable. Remember, we are always relying on this principle of ever-increasing compute capability. You know, a factor of two every 18 months. We've long heard about all of this, you know, and it is true, Moore's law. If we did not have that, none of this could have happened. None of this high complexity codecs, whatever had been developed because nobody would ever be able to implement them. But because of Moore's law we can confidently say that even if we put out this very highly complex VVC standard, someday and in the not too distant future, people will be able to implement this in hardware. Now you also asked a very good question earlier, is there a limit to how much we can compress? Pankaj Topiwala: 28:34 And also one can ask relatively in this issue, is there a limit to a Moore's law? And we've heard a lot about that. That may be finally after decades of the success of Moore's law and actually being realized, maybe we are now finally coming to quantum mechanical limits to you know how much we can miniaturize in electronics before we actually have to go to quantum computing, which is a totally different you know approach to doing computing because trying to go smaller die size. Well, we'll make it a unstable quantum mechanically. Now the, it appears that we may be hitting a wall eventually we haven't hit it yet, but we may be close to a, a physical limit in die size. And in the observations that I've been making at least it seems possible to me that we are also reaching a limit to how much we can compress video even without a complexity limit, how much we can compress video and still obtain reasonable or rather high quality. Pankaj Topiwala: 29:46 But we don't know the answer to that. And in fact there are many many aspects of this that we simply don't know. For example, the only real arbiter of video quality is subjective testing. Nobody has come up with an objective video quality metric that we can rely on. PSNR is not it. When, when push comes to shove, nobody in this industry actually relies on PSNR. They actually do subjective testing well. So in that scenario, we don't know what the limits of visual quality because we don't understand human vision, you know, we try, but human vision is so complicated. Nobody can understand the impact of that on video quality to any very significant extent. Now in fact, the first baby steps to try to understand, not explicitly but implicitly capture subjective human video quality assessment into a neural model. Those steps are just now being taken in the last couple of years. In fact, we've been involved, my company has been involved in, in getting into that because I think that's a very exciting area. Dror Gill: 30:57 I tend to agree that modeling human perception with a neural network seems more natural than, you know, just regular formulas and algorithms which are which are linear. Now I, I wanted to ask you about this process of, of creating the codecs. It's, it's very important to have standards. So you encode a video once and then you can play it anywhere and anytime and on any device. And for this, the encoder and decoder need to agree on exactly the format of the video. And traditionally you know, as you pointed out with all the history of, of development. Video codecs have been developed by standardization bodies, MPEG and ITU first separately. And then they joined forces to develop the newest video standards. But recently we're seeing another approach to develop codecs, which is by open sourcing them. Dror Gill: 31:58 Google started with an open source code, they called VP9 which they first developed internally. Then they open sourced it and and they use it widely across their services, especially in, YouTube. And then they joined forces with the, I think the largest companies in the world, not just in video but in general. You know those large internet giants such as Amazon and Facebook and and Netflix and even Microsoft, Apple, Intel have joined together with the Alliance of Open Media to jointly create another open codec called AV1. And this is a completely parallel process to the MPEG codec development process. And the question is, do you think that this was kind of a one time effort to, to to try and find a, or develop a royalty free codec, or is this something that will continue? And how do you think the adoption of the open source codecs versus the committee defined codecs, how would that adoption play out in the market? Pankaj Topiwala: 33:17 That's of course a large topic on its own. And I should mention that there have been a number of discussions about that topic. In particular at the SPIE conference last summer in San Diego, we had a panel discussion of experts in video compression to discuss exactly that. And one of the things we should provide to your listeners is a link to that captured video of the panel discussion where that topic is discussed to some significant extent. And it's on YouTube so we can provide a link to that. My answer. And of course none of us knows the future. Right. But we're going to take our best guesses. I believe that this trend will continue and is a new factor in the landscape of video compression development. Pankaj Topiwala: 34:10 But we should also point out that the domain of preponderance use preponderant use of these codecs is going to be different than in our traditional codecs. Our traditional codecs such as H.264 265, were initially developed for primarily for the broadcast market or for DVD and Blu-ray. Whereas these new codecs from AOM are primarily being developed for the streaming media industry. So the likes of Netflix and Amazon and for YouTube where they put up billions of user generated videos. So, for the streaming application, the decoder is almost always a software decoder. That means they can update that decoder anytime they do a software update. So they're not limited by a hardware development cycle. Of course, hardware companies are also building AV1. Pankaj Topiwala: 35:13 And the point of that would be to try to put it into handheld devices like laptops, tablets, and especially smartphones. But to try to get AV1 not only as a decoder but also as an encoder in a smartphone is going to be quite complicated. And the first few codecs that come out in hardware will be of much lower quality, for example, comparable to AVC and not even the quality of HEVC when they first start out. So that's... the hardware implementations of AV1 that work in real time are not going to be, it's going to take a while for them to catch up to the quality that AV1 can offer. But for streaming we, we can decode these streams reasonably well in software or in firmware. And the net result is that, or in GPU for example, and the net result is that these companies can already start streaming. Pankaj Topiwala: 36:14 So in fact Google is already streaming some test streams maybe one now. And it's cloud-based YouTube application and companies like Cisco are testing it already, even for for their WebEx video communication platform. Although the quality will not be then anything like the full capability of AV1, it'll be at a much reduced level, but it'll be this open source and notionally, you know, royalty free video codec. Dror Gill: 36:50 Notionally. Yeah. Because they always tried to do this, this dance and every algorithm that they try to put into the standard is being scrutinized and, and, and they check if there are any patents around it so they can try and keep this notion of of royalty-free around the codec because definitely the codec is open source and royalty free. Dror Gill: 37:14 I think that is, is, is a big question. So much IP has gone into the development of the different MPEG standards and we know it has caused issues. Went pretty smoothly with AVC, with MPEG-LA that had kind of a single point of contact for licensing all the essential patents and with HEVC, that hasn't gone very well in the beginning. But still there is a lot of IP there. So the question is, is it even possible to have a truly royalty free codec that can be competitive in, in compression efficiency and performance with the codec developed by the standards committee? Pankaj Topiwala: 37:50 I'll give you a two part answer. One because of the landscape of patents in the field of video compression which I would describe as being, you know very, very spaghetti like and patents date back to other patents. Pankaj Topiwala: 38:09 And they cover most of the, the topics and the most of the, the tools used in video compression. And by the way we've looked at the AV1 and AV1 is not that different from all the other standards that we have. H.265 or VVC. There are some things that are different. By and large, it resembles the existing standards. So can it be that this animal is totally patent free? No, it cannot be that it is patent free. But patent free is not the same as royalty free. There's no question that AV1 has many, many patents, probably hundreds of patents that reach into it. The question is whether the people developing and practicing AV1 own all of those patents. That is of course, a much larger question. Pankaj Topiwala: 39:07 And in fact, there has been a recent challenge to that, a group has even stood up to proclaim that they have a central IP in AV1. The net reaction from the AOM has been to develop a legal defense fund so that they're not going to budge in terms of their royalty free model. If they do. It would kill the whole project because their main thesis is that this is a world do free thing, use it and go ahead. Now, the legal defense fund then protects the members of that Alliance, jointly. Now, it's not as if the Alliance is going to indemnify you against any possible attack on IP. They can't do that because nobody can predict, you know, where somebody's IP is. The world is so large, so many patents in that we're talking not, not even hundreds and thousands, but tens of thousands of patents at least. Pankaj Topiwala: 40:08 So nobody in the world has ever reviewed all of those patent. It's not possible. And the net result is that nobody can know for sure what technology might have been patented by third parties. But the point is that because such a large number of powerful companies that are also the main users of this technology, you know, people, companies like Google and Apple and Microsoft and, and Netflix and Amazon and Facebook and whatnot. These companies are so powerful. And Samsung by the way, has joined the Alliance. These companies are so powerful that you know, it would be hard to challenge them. And so in practice, the point is they can project a royalty-free technology because it would be hard for anybody to challenge it. And so that's the reality on the ground. Pankaj Topiwala: 41:03 So at the moment it is succeeding as a royalty free project. I should also point out that if you want to use this, not join the Alliance, but just want to be a user. Even just to use it, you already have to offer any IP you have in this technology it to the Alliance. So all users around the world, so if tens of thousands and eventually millions of you know, users around the world, including tens of thousands of companies around the world start to use this technology, they will all have automatically yielded any IP they have in AV1, to the Alliance. Dror Gill: 41:44 Wow. That's really fascinating. I mean, first the distinction you made between royalty free and patent free. So the AOM can keep this technology royalty free, even if it's not patent free because they don't charge royalties and they can help with the legal defense fund against patent claim and still keep it royalty free. And, and second is the fact that when you use this technology, you are giving up any IP claims against the creators of the technology, which means that if any, any party who wants to have any IP claims against the AV1 encoder cannot use it in any form or shape. Pankaj Topiwala: 42:25 That's at least my understanding. And I've tried to look at of course I'm not a lawyer. And you have to take that as just the opinion of a video coding expert rather than a lawyer dissecting the legalities of this. But be that as it may, my understanding is that any user would have to yield any IP they have in the standard to the Alliance. And the net result will be if this technology truly does get widely used more IP than just from the Alliance members will have been folded into into it so that eventually it would be hard for anybody to challenge this. Mark Donnigan: 43:09 Pankaj, what does this mean for the development of so much of the technology has been in has been enabled by the financial incentive of small groups of people, you know, or medium sized groups of people forming together. You know, building a company, usually. Hiring other experts and being able to derive some economic benefit from the research and the work and the, you know, the effort that's put in. If all of this sort of consolidates to a handful or a couple of handfuls of, you know, very, very large companies, you know, does that, I guess I'm, I'm asking from your view, will, will video and coding technology development and advancements proliferate? Will it sort of stay static? Because basically all these companies will hire or acquire, you know, all the experts and you know, it's just now everybody works for Google and Facebook and Netflix and you know... Or, or do you think it will ultimately decline? Because that's something that that comes to mind here is, you know, if the economic incentives sort of go away, well, you know, people aren't going to work for free! Pankaj Topiwala: 44:29 So that's of course a, another question and a one relevant. In fact to many of us working in video compression right now, including my company. And I faced this directly back in the days of MPEG-2. There was a two and a half dollar ($2.50) per unit license fee for using MPEG-2. That created billions of dollars in licensing in fact, the patent pool, MPEG-LA itself made billions of dollars, even though they took only 10% of the proceeds, they already made billions of dollars, you know, huge amounts of money. With the advent of H.264 AVC, the patent license went not to from two and a half dollars to 25 cents a unit. And now with HEVC, it's a little bit less than that per unit. Of course the number of units has grown exponentially, but then the big companies don't continue to pay per unit anymore. Pankaj Topiwala: 45:29 They just pay a yearly cap. For example, 5 million or 10 million, which to these big companies is is peanuts. So there's a yearly cap for the big companies that have, you know, hundreds of millions of units. You know imagine the number of Microsoft windows that are out there or the number of you know, Google Chrome browsers. And if you have a, a codec embedded in the browser there are hundreds of millions of them, if not billions of them. And so they just pay a cap and they're done with it. But even then, there was up till now an incentive for smart engineers to develop exciting new ideas in a future video coding. But, and that has been up the story up till now. But when, if it happens that this AOM model with AV1 and then AV2, really becomes a dominant codec and takes over the market, then there will be no incentive for researchers to devote any time and energy. Pankaj Topiwala: 46:32 Certainly my company for example, can't afford to you know, just twiddle thumbs, create technologies for which there is absolutely no possibility of a royalty stream. So we, we cannot be in the business of developing video coding when video coding doesn't pay. So the only thing that makes money, is Applications, for example, a streaming application or some other such thing. And so Netflix and, and Google and Amazon will be streaming video and they'll charge you per stream but not on the codec. So that that's an interesting thing and it certainly affects the future development of video. It's clear to me it's a negative impact on the research that we got going in. I can't expect that Google and Amazon and Microsoft are going to continue to devote the same energy to develop future compression technologies in their royalty free environment that companies have in the open standards development technology environment. Pankaj Topiwala: 47:34 It's hard for me to believe that they will devote that much energy. They'll devote energy, but it will not be the the same level. For example, in developing a video standards such as HEVC, it took up to 10 years of development by on the order of 500 to 600 experts, well, let's say four to 500 experts from around the world meeting four times a year for 10 years. Mark Donnigan: 48:03 That is so critical. I want you to repeat that again. Pankaj Topiwala: 48:07 Well, I mean so very clearly we've been putting out a video codec roughly on the schedule of once every 10 years. MPEG-2 was 1994. AVC was 2003 and also 2004. And then HEVC in 2013. Those were roughly 10 years apart. But VVC we've accelerated the schedule to put one out in seven years instead of 10 years. But even then you should realize that we had been working right since HEVC was done. Pankaj Topiwala: 48:39 We've been working all this time to develop VVC and so on the order of 500 experts from around the world have met four times a year at all international locations, spending on the order of $100 million per meeting. You know so billions of dollars have been spent by industry to create these standards, many billions and it can't happen, you know without that. It's hard for me to believe that companies like Microsoft, Google, and whatnot, are going to devote billions to develop their next incremental, you know, AV1and AV2 AV3's. But maybe they will it just, that there's no royalty stream coming from the codec itself, only the application. Then the incentive, suppose they start dominating to create even better technology will not be there. So there really is a, a financial issue in this and that's at play right now. Dror Gill: 49:36 Yeah, I, I find it really fascinating. And of course, Mark and I are not lawyers, but all this you know, royalty free versus committee developed open source versus a standard those large companies who some people fear, you know, their dominance and not only in video codec development, but in many other areas. You know, versus you know, dozens of companies and hundreds of engineers working for seven or 10 years in a codec. So you know, it's really different approaches different methods of development eventually to approach the exact same problem of video compression. And, and how this turns out. I mean we, we cannot forecast for sure, but it will be very interesting, especially next year in 2020 when VVC is ratified. And at around the same time, EVC is ratified another codec from the MPEG committee. Dror Gill: 50:43 And then AV1, and once you know, AV1 starts hitting the market. We'll hear all the discussions of AV2. So it's gonna be really interesting and fascinating to follow. And we, we promise to to bring you all the updates here on The Video Insiders. So Pankaj I really want to thank you. This has been a fascinating discussion with very interesting insights into the world of codec development and compression and, and wavelets and DCT and and all of those topics and, and the history and the future. So thank you very much for joining us today on the video insiders. Pankaj Topiwala: 51:25 It's been my pleasure, Mark and Dror. And I look forward to interacting in the future. Hope this is a useful for your audience. If I can give you a one parting thought, let me give this... Pankaj Topiwala: 51:40 H.264 AVC was developed in 2003 and also 2004. That is you know, some 17 years or 16 years ago, it is close to being now nearly royalty-free itself. And if you look at the market share of video codecs currently being used in the market, for example, even in streaming AVC dominates that market completely. Even though VP8 and VP9 and VP10 were introduced and now AV1, none of those have any sizeable market share. AVC currently dominates from 70 to 80% of that marketplace right now. And it fully dominates broadcast where those other codecs are not even in play. And so they're 17, 16, 17 years later, it is now still the dominant codec even much over HEVC, which by the way is also taking an uptick in the last several years. So the standardized codecs developed by ITU and MPEG are not dead. They may just take a little longer to emerge as dominant forces. Mark Donnigan: 52:51 That's a great parting thought. Thanks for sharing that. What an engaging episode Dror. Yeah. Yeah. Really interesting. I learned so much. I got a DCT primer. I mean, that in and of itself was a amazing, Dror Gill: 53:08 Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Mark Donnigan: 53:11 Yeah, amazing Pankaj. Okay, well good. Well thanks again for listening to the video insiders, and as always, if you would like to come on this show, we would love to have you just send us an email. The email address is thevideoinsiders@beamr.com, and Dror or myself will follow up with you and we'd love to hear what you're doing. We're always interested in talking to video experts who are involved in really every area of video distribution. So it's not only encoding and not only codecs, whatever you're doing, tell us about it. And until next time what do we say Dror? Happy encoding! Thanks everyone. 

Learn about Unified Patents hereCheck out Unified Patents Objective PAtent Landscape OPAL toolRead the Independent economic study for HEVC royaltiesShawn Ambwani LinkedIn profileRelated episode: VVC, HEVC & other MPEG codec standardsThe Video Insiders LinkedIn Group is where thousands of your peers are discussing the latest video technology news and sharing best practices. Click here to join --------------------------------------Would you like to be a guest on the show? Email: thevideoinsiders@beamr.comLearn more about Beamr-------------------------------------- TRANSCRIPT (edited slightly for readability)Narrator: 00:00 The Video Insiders is the show that makes sense of all that is happening in the world of online video as seen through the eyes of a second generation codec nerd and a marketing guy who knows what I-frames and macro blocks are. Here are your hosts, Mark Donnigan and Dror Gill. Mark Donnigan: 00:19 Well, welcome back to The Video Insiders. Dror, how you doing today? I'm doing great. How are you Mark? I am doing awesome. As always. I am super pleased to welcome Shawn Ambwani who is co-founder of Unified Patents and Shawn is gonna tell us all about what Unified Patents does and we're going to dive into, you know, just a really tremendous discussion. But Shawn, Welcome to the podcast! Shawn Ambwani: 00:46 Hey guys. Thanks Mark. Thanks for, for allowing me to participate on your wonderful podcast. I look at this as similar to 'All Things Considered' and 'How I built this', two of my favorite podcasts. Mark Donnigan: 01:01 Those are awesome podcasts by the way. What an honor? Yeah. Wow. The level that I expect you guys to be at in traffic very shortly. That's right. Well, we hope so to. Well, why don't you introduce yourself you know, and give us a quick snapshot of your background and then let's let's hear about what Unified Patents is doing. Shawn Ambwani: 01:23 It's kind of a, I have an interesting I mean some might say not so interesting, but I think it's interesting background related to this area since, you know, the first startup that I did and the second one were all related to MPEG4. So I co-founded a company called Envivio, which way back when was actually one of the original MPEG4 companies when they just had simple profile actually out there doing encoders and decoders. And then I went to a Korean company called NexStreaming, which actually still exists, which is doing encoders as well, but more for the mobile space and decoders. So it's an area I'm quite familiar with. I wasn't really being an attorney back then. Now I'm kind of more of an attorney than I was back then, but I tried to avoid being an attorney as much as possible in general. Shawn Ambwani: 02:16 And basically I helped co-found a company called Unified Patents. And what unified patents does is it gets contributions from member companies as well as it allows small companies to join for free and they participate in joining what we call zones. And these different zones are intended to protect against what we consider unsubstantiated or invalid patent assertions. And the goal of these zones is to deter those from occurring in the first place. So if you imagine the kind of a technology area, let it be content or let it be video codec in this case or other things as having a bunch of companies that have a common interest in maintaining, you know, patents and ensuring patents that are asserted in that space are valid, which means that no one invented the idea beforehand. And also that it's fairly priced and you know, people are explaining the rationale behind what they're doing and they're not basically just attempting to get people to settle out, not because the assertions are valid or good, but simply because the cost of litigation is so high when it comes to patents. Shawn Ambwani: 03:35 And we want to deter that type of activity because there's been a lot of investment in that activity so far. In fact, most litigation's are by NPE's and so Unified started by doing those zones and, and, and we've have a bunch of them now. We just launched an open source zone in fact, but with you know, Linux foundation and OIN and IBM and others and the video codec zone was something that we were thinking about for a long time. It's something that I'm very familiar with from my past dealings with MPEG LA and other pools. And it was a big issue I think. And it has been a constant issue, which is how do you deal with multiple pools or multiple people asking for money in a standard? How do you deal with the pricing of it? Especially if you're smaller entities and you don't have the information that may be larger companies might have. Shawn Ambwani: 04:26 How do you deal with that and how do you deal with all the invalid assertions that are being done or declarations that occur in this area? How do you figure out who you have to pay? And how much you have to pay. All these add a level of complexity to deploying these standards, which makes adoption harder and creates the uncertainty that causes people to go to proprietary solutions, which I think is a negative in the end. So that's why Unified Patents really created this area and created the video codec zone. And basically we've been pretty, I think, successful so far now actually going through and doing each one of the things we said we were going to do. Dror Gill: 05:06 So what, what are those things basically when you set up a zone and, and want to start finding those patterns that may be invalid how do you go about doing that? What is the process? Shawn Ambwani: 05:18 Yeah, so I mean there's two major things in the SEP zones that it's not, it's not just about finding invalid patents, although I can tell you it's relatively easy to find invalid patents in any of these zones. That's not a difficulty. The hard part is figuring out which ones to go to or which ones are going to be the most interesting to go after. And that takes a lot of art. Essentially identifying them, finding out good prior art that we feel comfortable with, hiring good counsel. There's all kinds of weighing mechanisms that go into it, who the entity is, how it came about, how old the patents are, where it came from. All of these variables go into that kind of equation of when we decide. What's kind of unique about the way we work is we work independently of our members, so our members are funding these activities and some join for free. Shawn Ambwani: 06:11 So we have a number of members of the video codecs and we use all this money and information in our activities to basically go back and decide what to do, with the objective of deterring you know, what we consider bad assertions in this space. And then that's one part of it. The other part of it is that SEP's are all about, you know, an area called FRAND, fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory. And part of all of that involves negotiation. And so what we provide are tools to allow companies to negotiate we think in a fair and more transparent way to licensors as to pricing. But also explaining why the pricing is the way it is. Because one of the problems that we've had in the big picture is that a lot of these licensors have been asking for money, whether their own pools, whether outside of pools, whatever. Shawn Ambwani: 07:12 But no one can really explain why the price is what it is. And I think that leads to a lot of people to just stop paying or stop wanting to get into licensing discussions. And that's not beneficial for the market. And so by explaining how the price comes out the way it is and providing a very, we consider, solid methodology for it, it allows our members but also licensors to better understand who owns what and how much value is in the standard. So what they should reasonably expect to get for that technology and how much licensees reasonably should expect to pay in order to deploy the technology. Mark Donnigan: 07:55 Now my question, you know, Shawn is when you are getting into these conversations with the parties or party that, you know, owns this IP and I'm speaking more around sort of the pricing and the model and that sort of thing. Are you then...is that information available to your members or is it more that you're sort of helping facilitate, helping bring some rationality, you know, so that then that body can turn around and make public: "Hey, great news!" We've decided that all digitally distributed content doesn't carry, you know, a royalty cost. What exactly, I guess what my question is, what exactly is, is your role then in informing the market? Shawn Ambwani: 08:40 I think that, well, I mean there's a number of things to talk about, but what's I think most important is that we, you know, we don't know necessarily what the right price is. We hired an outside economist to look into that and he came back with a pricing range in you know, a report that we gave the highlights too and there was some press over and it's on our website but you can also look at it through a number of particles and basically he came back with a price of between 8 cents and 28 cents I believe if I'm accurate. Is what he believed the estimate to be for the value of the technology including everything. And it ranged based on I think the device and like other factors and stuff like that. Now that high level information we provided publicly and in fact we provided the information on who made the report when it was created and what it was based on. Shawn Ambwani: 09:38 And we even provided kind of the overall methodology of how it was done, which is basically being used at a very high level. They used MPEG LA's AVC license as the starting point or the foundation for deciding what HEVC in this case, which is what he was looking at, pricing should be based on his expert analysis. And then he modified that based on switching costs based on the cost of bandwidth, the cost of storage and quality and other factors basically that are valuable. So, that's where we went. Now, what's important to understand is that we published that information so anyone could take a look at the, at the high level. And the methodology pretty much tells you the roadmap of where we started and how we ended up where we are. The other part is how do you decide who you have to pay and how much each person gets. Even assuming that you figure out that, let's say it's 25 cents, that you think the royalty rate should be for it. And I'm not saying that's the number, but everyone can decide on whatever number they feel comfortable. Our expert created this report and we published it. Other people can create other reports and I'm sure they have their own kind of versions. But what's important for us is that, you know, people should explain why they came out with their pricing. And unfortunately in pools and licensing organizations in general, that just doesn't happen. Dror Gill: 11:05 So basically you're finding economical reason behind a certain price for for this technology. In this case, HEVC. And now companies who want to use HEVC, how do they use this number? Because they have your number, which is the total, and then they have royalty rates that are asked that, you know, certain patent pools are asking and they add up to a different number that could be a higher number. So do they just you know, divide the number that they think is the right one among the different patent pools and pay them the amount they think they should pay or do they just use it as a negotiating tool when they talk to them and, and you know, and negotiate the actual world, the rates that they will have to pay? Shawn Ambwani: 11:52 By providing a lot of this information. Some of it publicly like economic report in some format. The hope is that smaller entities instead of rolling over when licensing people come by and say, Hey, take it or leave it, they really have an ability to make a fair response, a good faith response with information that allows them to then basically justify why they came up with a price and really push back and say, listen, you know, this is what my methodology came out to. Now. It could be right, could be wrong. You know, in the end in FRAND negotiations, I have to make a good faith offer. That's really the intent. So that's an important aspect of pushing back on this kind of, we think less information that is occurring in the marketplace and more fragmentation. And I think they're all interrelated because of the less information you have more fragmentation. Cause if everyone could agree on a price and everyone agreed that this is the fair value for the technology, there really wouldn't be multiple pools in my opinion or multiple licensors, because everyone would know what the number is. And so why would you separate? Dror Gill: 13:07 But basically you're saying that even if a patent pool set, the royalty rates and those royalty rates in some cases are public, at least for some of the patent pools, this is not what a licensor would pay. This is just kind of a starting point for a negotiation and you're providing tools for this type of negotiation. Shawn Ambwani: 13:23 We also think that validity is a big issue because none of these entities look at validity when they're incorporating patents into their pools or into their licensing. It's really up to the licensees or the people who are potentially taking the license to have the responsibility to go out and figure that out, which can be very, very costly. Dror Gill: 13:44 You assume they're valid, right? If they're licensing patents to you, you assume that they're licensing valid patents. Right? These are kind of, you know, respectable patent holders and patent pools. Why would they license something that's not valid? Shawn Ambwani: 13:57 I mean, it's a great point. I mean, the argument would be that they want to license patents. Mark Donnigan: 14:03 That's their business at the end of the day. Yeah. Shawn Ambwani: 14:08 Right. So, you know, if you had a car and you're trying to sell a car, you're going to accentuate the good things about the car. Not that it's a rebuilt or something like that or you know, like it's, it's been, you know, it's been in a crash or accident like, yeah. Like you're going to show what you want to show. Right. And that's natural in any of these cases. The unfortunate fact is that it's very costly to figure out that stuff and there's no really organization you'd think a licensing organization like MPEG LA or others. And I'm not saying MPEG LA is doing a bad job necessarily, I'm just pointing them out as an example, would do a better job of vetting to some degree on that type of activity. But they don't, and I think there's a number of reasons Mark Donnigan: 14:53 Why do they want to do that? I almost liken this to the 500 channel cable bundle of which there's about 15 high quality channels and there's 485 that are anywhere from just a, you know, not, not relevant, not interesting to, you know, to even lower quality than that, but, but you know, but Hey, I got a 500 channel bundle, right? So I feel like, wow, it must be worth $100 a month, you know, or whatever. Shawn Ambwani: 15:23 The idea that that licensing organizations like MPEG LA or (HEVC) Advance or other ones like that aren't doing it to the benefit of their licensors. It just seems ridiculous to me. I mean the people on their, on their management and the people who are actually owning that organization, typically it's managed and owned and administrative fees are paid to licensors. And traditionally the money flows one way from licensees to licensors. It's for the benefit of the licensors. And the rules that they put in are essentially to make sure that those guys are protected. They have no incentive in general of saying people's patents are invalid. And, and that's just a bad fact pattern for them. If basically they get back and say, Hey, listen this patent... Yeah, no, it's bad. Mark Donnigan: 16:16 Exactly. So, so in that context then it completely makes sense that they don't vet you know, at the level that you are and why, you know, Unified Patents needs to exist, you know, is because we need this sort of independent third party. I guess. I, I, you know, that's, that's out there doing this work. Now, Shawn, one of the things that I noticed is you're acting both against NPE's, so, non-practicing entities, and against SEP's. So standard essential patents. What are the issues with SEP's? Shawn Ambwani: 16:51 Well, I mean the general assumption has been, and I don't know where this assumption came from, was that standard essential patents or people who declare their patents to be standard essential are more likely to be valid than other patents. And in the real world where there's litigation and there's challenges and things get checked out or vetted essentially, adversarially, the reality is that standard essential patents in all the studies that have been done fair, far worse, than normal patents do on average. And you know, it's not shocking actually when you think about it. Obviously there's a lot of self selection here, but part of the reason why is, you know, when you're submitting into pools or in when you're getting these patents, when part of a standardization body or doing other activities, there's a lot of other people involved and it's usually built on other ideas that people have had in the past. Shawn Ambwani: 17:59 And it's not surprising that a lot of these patents have underlying ideas that had been done in the past or other people had brought up previously. Sometimes they weren't accepted, sometimes they were or sometimes they were put on hold. Who knows? But there's a lot of prior art oftentimes in these areas. These aren't open fields, these aren't brand new innovations that typically come up. And so that's not surprising. Now, you know, there's also a general belief that standard essential patterns are more valuable. And I think, you know, that's a pretty, I would say, you know, I dunno if it's absolutely valid, but it's not unreasonable to believe that if you declare a patent, as standardized, if you look at the average patent and compared to that patent, it's probably your, it's probably more valuable, at that point. Because you basically said it's part of a standard that people are probably going to adopt at that point versus a patent in general, which you never know most of the time, whether anyone's going to use that patent. Shawn Ambwani: 19:02 I mean the vast majority of patents are never actually used in any way whatsoever. They're not enforceable because they're just ideas that people have most of the time, and these patents are arguable more likely than not to be in a standard and that standard might or might not actually get used in the end. Inherently you get - they're more valuable. The problem is there's tons of over declaration that occurs in this area. There's very little incentive. I mean some places there's more of an incentive than others, but the way MPEG works specifically is that you can do blanket declarations and so you don't have to declare specific patents. And, other standards, you have to basically declare each individual patent that you have. So, I mean, there's all kinds of trade offs, and all these different things, but the reality is that no one really knows exactly how many patents need to be licensed. And that just creates a lot of uncertainty. And you know, a lot of companies who are trying to make money, not off products but off of doing licensing thrive on uncertainty because that's where they can make money. Is basically by, you know, saying, okay, well who knows what can happen, but if you take care of me now, I can make sure that I'm not going to cause you issues. Dror Gill: 20:23 Right. And that's why uncertainty is in the middle of FUD, fear, uncertainty, doubt, which is one of those tactics and uncertainty is definitely a big part of that. Shawn Ambwani: 20:33 Yeah. I mean, the other thing is that companies in general, it seems like a one way street a lot of the time, which is pretty unfortunate in that although I'm not sure if I have a good solution, you know, a lot of companies, the licensors have a way of getting together, agreeing on a price and then licensing through an organization like MPEG LA or others to do that type of activity or Velos (Media), or whatever it is. They choose, you know, they can select a price, they can work together, agree on a price. And the reason why they can do that according to the DOJ is because it's a different product than what's available before. So it decreases uncertainty by making it easier for people to take a license of convenience for that specific technology area. Dror Gill: 21:21 Otherwise, it might might've been considered price setting, Shawn Ambwani: 21:24 Right? Yeah. It would be considered price. It would be considered price setting. But in this case, the argument is always that you can always go to each individual company and get a license or negotiate a separate license. This is a license of convenience for this technology area from all these companies for one price. And that makes it a lot easier for people on both sides to be able to know exactly how much they're going to be getting and how much they're going to have to pay for clearing this risk. Which makes sense. I fundamentally have no problem with pools and what they do. The, the issue comes up is that a lot of these pools, A) don't talk about the pricing, they don't look at the validity. They don't really have a great essentially checking on top of it. And they're very much incentivized to help out the licensors, not the licensees figure stuff out. And what ends up happening is over time you kind of, and you have companies also that are not interested in making products, which is unfortunate. They're just interested in making money off of their licensing. Which is unfortunate because there's a lot of games that can be played in the standardization world to get your stuff in and then get your patents in basically. Mark Donnigan: 22:44 Well, it ultimately, it, it stops innovation. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, and one thing, and Dror and I have talked about this on episodes and we've certainly talked about this a lot, you know, privately within Beamr is, you know, it's a little bit mystifying as well because okay, so HEVC clearly was set back as a result of, of many issues. But you know, largely what we'd been talking about for the last 35 minutes and the adoption of HEVC. And yet these people, as you point out, the licensors, they don't make money if nobody's using the technology. So, so what's mystifying to us is that this is not, you know, it's not like somehow they're getting paid still. You know, even though the adoption of the technology is not in place or it's not being used, they're not getting paid. And so it seems like at some point, you know, a rational actor would stand up and say, wait a second, I'd rather get something rather than nothing! But, it's almost like they, they're not acting that way. Dror Gill: 23:46 But, but it did happen. They did reduce the royalty rate. Yes, yes, yes. Certainly. And they did come to their senses and they did put a cap and then initially it was uncapped and they did remove royalties from content. And you know, they did a lot of things in the right direction after the pressure from the market when they realized they're not going to get anything. And when AV1 started to happen, you know, and they were pressured by that, by a competing codec that was supposedly a royalty free and didn't have these issues. So I think the situation is improved. But you've launched a specific zone. It's called the video codec zone, but basically right now it deals only with HEVC. Shawn Ambwani: 24:33 A lot of these patents that we've challenged relate not just to HEVC but potentially to AV and other codecs like AVC as well. Cause there's such overlap between these things. That's why we generically call it a video codec zone. So, obviously a lot of the things that we've looked at in like the economic report and everything else and landscape, a lot of the focus has been on HEVC. Dror Gill: 24:59 So you examined the HEVC and and you saw this situation that you have three patent pools. One of them hasn't even announced the royalty rates and, and you have a lot of independent patent holders who claim to have standard essential patents for HEVC. And this is kind of your, you're opening a, a situation. So what, what was the first thing that, that you did, how did you start to, to approach the HEVC pattern topic and what actions did you take? Shawn Ambwani: 25:34 Like I said, we've done a bunch of different stuff. We had a submission repo called open, which where we collated all the prior art, not prior art, but submissions into the standard for HEVC and AVC and other standards from MPEG so people can make it easily searchable. In fact, 50% of the priority art that we got for our patent challenges came from the submission repo, which is great, which is basically, you know, previous submissions to the same standard. We have OPAL, which is our landscape tool. And then, you know, obviously we have OPEN which is our evaluation report that I mentioned for HEVC. And then we did a bunch of reviews of validity and challenged a bunch of patents in different licensing entities. I mean, Velos, I think they don't consider themselves a pool. Just to be clear. Dror Gill: 26:29 Because they actually own the patents. They've licensed those patents on their own? Shawn Ambwani: 26:34 Well, I think they just don't consider themselves tackling a patent pool in the way that MPEG LA and HEVC Advanced does simply that would throw them into a different bucket and they would have all kinds of requirements on them that they don't want basically. So you know when the DOJ kind of made the rules or kind of the lawyers decided what the right rules are to make it work, you know like you've got to show your stuff. Basically you got to show your price, you've got to make sure it's reasonable or it's, you know, like there's, there's no most favored nation clause. I mean there is a most favorite nation (MFN) let me rephrase this. So all these things to make sure that everything is very transparent in order to allow this kind of companies to get together and set a price for how much they want to license for it, which typically would have huge anti-competitive or antitrust issues. Right. They made all these rules and Velos I think would not consider themselves technically a patent pool like those guys because that would make them have the similar requirements. Dror Gill: 27:40 So they're like an independent patent holder? Shawn Ambwani: 27:42 I don't really know what they call themselves. I've definitely never heard them say that they're a patent pool. I've heard other people call them a patent pool. I probably have at some point, but I don't really know if they actually consider themselves a patent pool Dror Gill: 27:55 Because I noticed that your litigation was against the patent holders. Companies like GE and KBS and against Velos Media itself. Yeah. Shawn Ambwani: 28:07 Yeah. Well Velos is you know, an unusual beast in that it owns a number of patents that got transferred to it as well as it provides licenses to the people who participated. You know, the other patent holders in general are much more traditional in their patent pool type activity in that the patent holders are different from the people who are doing the licensing. Dror Gill: 28:28 And you're not suing the patent pools like MPEG LA and HEVC Advanced or not your targets? Shawn Ambwani: 28:32 Well, they don't own patents directly, so really nothing to do as far as I know. I mean, you could say, you know, part of it is we're challenging them to a certain degree on their pricing and kind of their whole model of not looking at validity by challenging some of their patents as well as, you know, putting them on notice that as they get more patents in, we might challenge further patents for validity. So why don't they do it ahead of time? I mean, the idea that, you know, validity is a victimless crime if you don't check for validity, it doesn't hurt anyone. It's just not true in my opinion. It's just not true because you are hurting the people who actually innovated. There's a set amount of money that goes to everyone. If you have a bunch of patents and they're just like, you're checking for essentiality before you allow a patent in, you check for validity because there's a bunch of patents that just aren't valid that shouldn't be, they should not be making money off of. It just incentivizes people to get more invalid patents in the same space that they can stick into a pool to get a bigger share of it, like a giant game. Right? Mark Donnigan: 29:43 Yeah, that's a really good point. I'm wondering what is the cost to test for essentiality? Is some of this just sort of practical like it's just either too time consuming or costly to test? Yeah. I mean Shawn Ambwani: 29:58 Esentiality is often times more expensive than validity in some cases, but I mean they do test for essentiality. The companies pay to have their own patents tested often times for essentiality, but there is no test for validity that they enforce. So no one actually does it. You know, if they did ask for it, I'm sure people in some cases would pay for it, but more importantly, people who didn't think their patents would be found valid, probably wouldn't submit them in the first place then. Then there would be, there'd be huge disincentive for people who had that risk of that happening. They just wouldn't submit it, which you know, obviously it's going to hurt the pool because they get less patents. And at the same time, the hope is that people will think twice before they submit stuff they know is crap. Anyway. Mark Donnigan: 30:43 So what is, what is your bar for determining low quality? I mean, what does that process look like? Shawn Ambwani: 30:52 We have a bunch of patents that come into our hopper that we're constantly looking at in every single zone that we're in and we're constantly looking and seeing if it's a valid patent or not. And there's multiple ways of doing that. We have crowd sourcing that we do for that. We just pay people, you know, in order to do prior art experts for example, to do prior art searches. You can prior art search infinitely long these, there's no stopping. You know, what you can do. But you know, in the end there's only so much you can reasonably expect to find. And so from my perspective, you know, there's definitely been situations where we've looked at patents and we've said, okay, we don't think we have good prior art. We're just not going to do anything about it. And that's okay. In fact, I mean it's okay if a licensing entity or licensor has a valid patent, that's perfectly fine with me. Shawn Ambwani: 31:49 I think if they have a valid patent, they should be able to make money off of it. I have no problem with, it should be a fair amount if it's in a standard based on FRAND principles, but in general, people should be able to make money off of a valid patent. The problem is is that a lot of people are making a lot of money, in my opinion, off of a lot of bad patents. And invalid patents, which hurts the people who actually do have good patents because they're getting crowded out, which is sad because that really is the disincentive for innovation then is when the people actually are innovating aren't making money off of it because they're getting crowded out by the people who are just playing a good game. Dror Gill: 32:25 You described earlier the, the process with a standard setting bodies such as MPEG where you declare your patents but you only, you can declare them as, as a pool or as a bunch of patents and not specifically, and then you can basically, Dror Gill: 32:40 You know, create a pool and charge as much as you want if it's under the FRAND principles. Do you think there's anything broken in the standard setting process itself? Do those committees need to do something else in order to make sure that when they create a standard, the situation of royalties of, of the situation of, of IP which is essential to that standard is more well known that you have less uncertainty in that IP? Shawn Ambwani: 33:09 Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean there's always ways of like tweaking the system. Every standards body has different ways of managing it. I mean the only really clean way of doing it is saying it's royalty free and having anyone who participates in the standard agree that it's royalty free. Anything above that, just you know, you can play all these different types of rules and machinations and 3GPP has their own and other people, organizations have their own. But in the end it ends up being the same issue of you know, under declaring over declaring - issues with essentiality, validity, all kinds of other things. So I'm not sure if you, unless you go to that binary level, how much, you know, changing that up is going to change things fundamentally. I think the more fundamental thing is that, you know, the idea that I think the fundamental reason why you have these patent pools and other things like that was to clear risk and decrease uncertainty. Unfortunately I'd say uncertainty is actually increasing in some of these cases not decreasing by all these different groups asking for money at this point, which is unfortunate. Dror Gill: 34:17 No, that's a very interesting insight, really. Mark Donnigan: 34:19 Hey, thanks for joining us, Shawn. This was really an amazing discussion and we definitely have to have a part two. Shawn Ambwani: 34:26 All right, well, thanks for your time, gentlemen. I really appreciate it. Dror Gill: 34:28 Thank you. Narrator: 34:30 Thank you for listening to The Video Insiders podcast, a production of Beamr Imaging limited. To begin using Beamr's codecs today, go to beamr.com/free to receive up to 100 hours of no cost HEVC and H.264 transcoding every month.

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E03: What does the future hold for video codecs? This week, The Video Insiders look at the past and present to assess the future landscape of video encoding as they discuss where AVC, VP9, and VVC fit into the codec stew. The following blog post first appeared on the Beamr blog at: https://blog.beamr.com/2018/12/15/the-future-of-3-character-codecs-avc-vp9-vvc/ Anyone familiar with the streaming video industry knows that we love our acronyms. You would be hard-pressed to have a conversation about the online video industry without bringing one up… In today's episode, The Video Insiders focus on the future of three-character codecs: AVC, VP9, and VVC. But before we can look at the future, we have to take a moment to revisit the past. The year 2018 marks the 15-year anniversary of AVC and in this episode, we visit the process and lifecycle of standardization to adoption and what that means for the future of these codecs. Want to join the conversation? Reach out to TheVideoInsiders@beamr.com. TRANSCRIPTION (lightly edited for improved readability) Mark Donnigan: 00:49 Well, Hi, Dror! Dror Gill: 00:50 Is this really episode three? Mark Donnigan: 00:52 It is, it is episode three. So, today we have a really exciting discussion as we consider the future of codecs named with three characters. Dror Gill: 01:03 Three character codecs, okay, let's see. Mark Donnigan: 01:06 Three character codecs. Dror Gill: 01:09 I can think of … Mark Donnigan: 01:09 How many can you name? Dror Gill: 01:10 Let's see, that's today's trivia question. I can think of AVC, VP9, AV1, and VVC? Mark Donnigan: 01:21 Well, you just named three that I was thinking about and we're gonna discuss today! We've already covered AV1. Yeah, yeah, you answered correctly, but we haven't really considered where AVC, VP9, and VVC fit into the codec stew. So when I think about AVC, I'm almost tempted to just skip it because isn't this codec standard old news? I mean, c'mon. The entire video infrastructure of the internet is enabled by AVC, so what is there to discuss? Dror Gill: 01:57 Yeah. You're right. It's like the default, but in fact, the interesting thing is that today, we're (in) 2018 and this is the twenty year anniversary of AVC. I mean, ITU issued the call for proposals, their video coding expert group, issued the call for proposal for a project. At the time was called H26L, and their target was to double the coding efficiency, which effectively means halving the bit rate necessary for given level of fidelity. And that's why it was called H26L, it was supposed to be low bit rate. Mark Donnigan: 02:33 Ah! That's an interesting trivia question. Dror Gill: 02:35 That's where the L came from! Mark Donnigan: 02:36 I wonder how many of our listeners knew that? That's kind of cool. H26L. Dror Gill: 02:42 But they didn't go alone. It was the first time they joined forces in 2001 with the ISO MPEG, that's the same Motion Pictures Experts Group, you know we discussed in the first episode. Mark Donnigan: 02:56 That's right. Dror Gill: 02:57 And they came together, they joined forced, and they created JVT, that was the Joint Video Team, and I think it's a great example of collaboration. There are standards by dealing with video communication standards, and ISO MPEG, which is a standards body dealing with video entertainment standards. So, finally they understood that there's no point in developing video standards for these two different types of applications, so they got all the experts together in the JVT and this group developed what was the best video compression standard at the time. It was launched May 30, 2003. Mark Donnigan: 03:35 Wow. Dror Gill: 03:36 There was one drawback with this collaboration in that the video standard was known by two names. There was the ITU name which is H.264. And then there's the ISO MPEG name which is AVC, so these created some confusion at the start. I think by now, most of our listeners know that H.264 and AVC are two of the same. Mark Donnigan: 03:57 Yeah, definitely. So, AVC was developed 15 years ago and it's still around today. Dror Gill: 04:02 Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's really impressive and it's not only around, it's the most popular video compression standard in the world today. I mean, AVC is used to deliver video over the internet, to computers, televisions, mobile devices, cable, satellite, broadcast, and even blu-ray disks. This just shows you how long it takes from standardization to adoption, right? 15 years until we get this mass market adoption market dominance of H.264, AVC as we have today. Dror Gill: 04:31 And the reason it takes so long is that, we discussed it in our first episode, first you need to develop the standard. Then, you need to develop the chips that support the standard, then you need to develop devices that incorporate the chip. Even when initial implementation of the codec got released, they are still not as efficient as they can be, and it takes codec developers more time to refine it and improve the performance and the quality. You need to develop the tools, all of that takes time. Mark Donnigan: 04:59 It does. Yeah, I have a background in consumer electronics and because of that I know for certainty that AVC is gonna be with us for a while and I'll explain why. It's really simple. Decoding of H.264 is fully supported in every chip set on the market. I mean literally every chip set. There is not a device that supports video which does not also support AVC today. It just doesn't exist, you can't find it anywhere. Mark Donnigan: 05:26 And then when you look at in coding technologies for AVC, H.264, (they) have advanced to the point where you can really achieve state of the art for very low cost. There's just too much market momentum where the encode and decode ecosystems are just massive. When you think about entertainment applications and consumer electronics, for a lot of us, that's our primary market (that) we play in. Mark Donnigan: 05:51 But, if you consider the surveillance and the industrial markets, which are absolutely massive, and all of these security cameras you see literally everywhere. Drone cameras, they all have AVC encoders in them. Bottom line, AVC isn't going anywhere fast. Dror Gill: 06:09 You're right, I totally agree with that. It's dominant, but it's still here to stay. The problem is that, we talked about this, video delivery over the internet. The big problem is the bandwidth bottleneck. With so much video being delivered over the internet, and then the demand for quality is growing. People want higher resolution, they want HDR which is high dynamic range, they want higher frame rate. And all this means you need more and more bit rate to represent the video. The bit rate efficiency that is required today is beyond the standard in coding in AVC and that's where you need external technologies such as content adaptive encoding perceptual optimization that will really help you push AVC to its limits. Mark Donnigan: 06:54 Yeah. And Dror, I know you're one of the inventors of a perceptual optimization technique based on a really unique quality measure, which I've heard some in the industry believe could even extend the life of AVC from a bit rate efficiency perspective. Tell us about what you developed and what you worked on. Dror Gill: 07:13 Yeah, that's right. I did have some part in this. We developed a quality measure and a whole application around it, and this is a solution that can reduce the bit rate of AVC by 30%, sometimes even 40%. It doesn't get us exactly to where HEVC starts, 50% is pretty difficult and not for every content (type). But content distributors that recognize AVC will still be part of their codec mix for at least five years, I think what we've been able to do can really be helpful and a welcome relief to this bandwidth bottleneck issue. Mark Donnigan: 07:52 It sounds like we're in agreement that for at least the midterm horizon, the medium horizon, AVC is gonna stay with us. Dror Gill: 08:01 Yeah, yeah. I definitely think so. For some applications and services and certain regions of the world where the device penetration of the latest, high end models is not as high as in other parts, AVC will be the primary codec for some time to come. Dror Gill: 08:21 Okay, that's AVC. Now, let's talk about VP9. Mark Donnigan: 08:24 Yes, let's do that. Dror Gill: 08:25 It's interesting to me, essentially, it's mostly a YouTube codec. It's not a bad coded, it has some efficiency advantages over AVC, but outside of Google, you don't see any large scale deployments. By the way, if you look at Wikipedia, you read about the section that says where is VP9 used, it says VP9 is used mostly by YouTube, some uses by Netflix, and it's being used by Wikipedia. Mark Donnigan: 08:50 VP9 is supported fairly well in devices. Though, it's obviously hard to say exactly what the penetration is, I think there is support in hardware for decode for VP9. Certainly it's ubiquitous on Android, and it's in many of the UHD TV chip sets as well. So, it's not always enabled, but again, from my background on the hardware side, I know that many of those SOCs, they do have a VP9 decoder built into them. Mark Donnigan: 09:23 I guess the question in my mind is, it's talked about. Certainly Google is a notable both developer and user, but why hasn't it been adopted? Dror Gill: 09:33 Well, I think there are several issues here. One of them is compression efficiency. VP9 brings maybe 20, 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AVC, but it's not 50%. So, you're not doubling your compression efficiency. If you want to replace the codec, that's really a big deal. That's really a huge investment. You need to invest in coding infrastructure, new players. You need to do compatibility testing. You need to make sure that your packaging and your DRM work correctly and all of that. Dror Gill: 10:04 You really want to get a huge benefit to offset this investment. I think people are really looking for that 50% improvement, to double the efficiency, which is what you get with HEVC but not quite with VP9. I think the second point is that VP9, even though it's an open source coder, it's developed and the standard is maintained by Google. And some industry players are kind of afraid of the dominance of Google. Google has taken over the advertising market online. Mark Donnigan: 10:32 Yes, that's a good point. Dror Gill: 10:34 You know, and search and mobile operating systems, except Apple, it's all Android. So, those industry players might be thinking, I don't want to depend on Google for my video compression format. I think this is especially true for traditional broadcasters. Cable companies, satellite companies, TV channels that broadcast over the air. These companies traditionally like to go with established, international standards. Compression technologies that are standardized, they have the seal of approval by ITU and ISO. Dror Gill: 11:05 They're typically following that traditional codec developer past. ISO MPEG too, now it's AVC, starting with HEVC. What's coming next? Mark Donnigan: 11:16 Well, our next three letter codec is VVC. Tell us about VVC, Dror. Dror Gill: 11:21 Yeah, yeah, VVC. I think this is another great example of collaboration between ITU and ISO. Again, they formed a joint video experts team. This time it's called JVET. Dror Gill: 12:10 So, JVET has launched a project to develop a new video coding standard. And you know, we had AVC that was advanced video coding. Then we had HEVC which is high efficiency video coding. So, they thought, what would be the next generation? It's already advanced, it's high efficiency. So, the next one, they called it VVC, which is versatile video code. The objective of VVC is obviously to provide a significant improvement in compression efficiency over the existing HEVC standard. Development already started. The JVET group is meeting every few in months in some exotic place in the world and this process will continue. They plan to complete it before the end of 2020. So, essentially in the next two years they are gonna complete the standard. Dror Gill: 13:01 Today, already, even though VVC is in early development and they haven't implemented all the tools, they already report a 30% better compression efficiency than HEVC. So, we have high hopes that we'll be able to fight the video tsunami that is coming upon us with a much improved standard video coder which is VVC. I mean, its improved at least on the technical side and I understand that they also want to improve the process, right? Mark Donnigan: 13:29 That's right, that's right. Well, technical capabilities are certainly important and we're tracking of course VVC. 30% better efficiency this early in the game is promising. I wonder if the JVET will bring any learnings from the famous HEVC royalty debacles to VVC because I think what's in everybody's mind is, okay, great, this can be much more efficient, technically better. But if we have to go round and round on royalties again, it's just gonna kill it. So, what do you think? Dror Gill: 14:02 Yeah, that's right. I think it's absolutely true and many people in the industry have realized this, that you can't just develop a video standard and then handle the patent and royalty issues later. Luckily some companies have come together and they formed an industry group called The Media Coding Industry Forum, or MC-IF. They held their first meeting a few weeks ago in Macau during empic meeting one through four. Their purpose statement, let me quote this from their website, and I'll give you my interpretation of it. They say the media coding industry forum (MC-IF) is an open industry forum with a purpose of furthering the adoption of standards initially focusing on VVC, but establishing them as well accepted and widely used standards for the benefit of consumers and the industry. Dror Gill: 14:47 My interpretation is that the group was formed in an effort for companies with interest in this next generation video codec to come together and attempt to influence the licensing policy of VVC and try to agree on a reasonable patent licensing policy in advance to prevent history from repeating itself. We don't want that whole Hollywood story with the tragedy that took a few years until they reached the happy ending. So, what are you even talking about? This is very interesting. They're talking about having a modular structure for the codec. These tools of the codecs, the features, can be plugged in and out, very easily. Dror Gill: 15:23 So, if some company insists on reasonable licensing terms, this group can just decide not to support the feature and it will be very easily removed from the standard, or at least from the way that companies implement that standard. Mark Donnigan: 15:37 That's an interesting approach. I wonder how technically feasible it is. I think we'll get into that in some other episodes. Dror Gill: 15:46 Yeah. That may have some effect on performance. Mark Donnigan: 15:49 Exactly. And again, are we back in the situation that the Alliance for Open Media is in with AV1. Where part of the issue of the slow performance is trying to work around patents. At the end of the day you end up with a solution that is hobbled technically. Dror Gill: 16:10 Yeah. I hope it doesn't go there. Mark Donnigan: 16:13 Yeah, I hope we're not there. I think you heard this too, hasn't Apple joined the consortium recently? Dror Gill: 16:21 Yeah, yeah, they did. They joined silently as they always do. Silently means that one day somebody discovers their logo… They don't make any announcement or anything. You just see a logo on the website, and then oh, okay. Mark Donnigan: 16:34 Apple is in the building. Mark Donnigan: 16:41 You know, maybe it's good to kind of bring this discussion back to Earth and close out our three part series by giving the listeners some pointers. About how they should be thinking about the next codec that they adopt. I've been giving some thought as we've been doing these episodes. I think I'll kick it off here Dror if you don't mind, I'll share some of my thoughts. You can jump in. Mark Donnigan: 17:11 These are complex decisions of course. I completely agree, billing this as codec wars and codec battles, it's not helpful at the end of the day. Maybe it makes for a catchy headline, but it's not helpful. There's real business decisions (to be made). There are technical decisions. I think a good place to start for somebody who's listening and saying “okay great, I now have a better understanding of the lay of the land of HEVC, for AV1, I can understand VP9, I can understand AVC and what some of my options are to even further reduce bit rate. But now, what do I do?” Mark Donnigan: 17:54 And I think a good place to start is to just look at your customers, and do they lean towards early adopters. Are you in a strong economic environment, which is to say quite frankly, do most of your customers carry around the latest devices? Like an iPhone X, or Galaxy 9. If largely your customers lean towards early adopter and they're carrying around the latest devices, then you have an obligation to serve them with the highest quality and the best performance possible. Dror Gill: 18:26 Right. If your customers can receive HEVC, and it's half the bit rate, then why not deliver it to them better quality, or say when you see the end cost with this more efficient codec and everybody is happy. Mark Donnigan: 18:37 Absolutely, and again, I think just using pure logic. If somebody could afford a more than $1000 device in their pocket, probably the TV hanging on the wall is a very new, UHD capable (one). They probably have a game console in the house. The point is that you can make a pretty strong argument and an assumption that you can go, what I like to think of as all in HEVC including even standard definition, just SDR content. Mark Donnigan: 19:11 So, the industry has really lost sight in my mind of the benefits of HEVC as they apply across the board to all resolutions. All of the major consumer streaming services are delivering 4K using HEVC, but I'm still shocked at how many, it's kind of like oh, we forget that the same advantages of bit rate efficiency that work at 4K apply at 480p. Obviously, the absolute numbers are smaller because the file sizes are smaller, etc. Mark Donnigan: 19:41 But the point is, 30, 40, 50% savings applies at 4K as it does at 480p. I understand there's different applications in use cases, right? But would you agree with that? Dror Gill: 19:55 Yeah, yeah, I surely agree with that. I mean, for 4K, HEVC is really an enabler. Mark Donnigan: 20:00 That's right. Dror Gill: 20:01 For HEVC, you would need like 30, 40 megabits of video. Nobody can stream that to the home, but change it to 10, 15, that's reasonable, and you must use HEVC for 4k otherwise it won't even fit the pipe. But for all other resolutions, you get the bang with the advantage or you can trade it off for a quality advantage and deliver higher quality to your users, or higher frame rate, or enable HDR. If all of these possibilities that you can do with HD and even SD content, give them a better experience using HEVC and being able to stream on devices that your users already have. So yeah, I agree. I think it's an excellent analysis. Obviously if you're up in an emerging market, or your consumers don't have high end devices, then AVC is a good solution. If there are network constraints, and there are many places in the world that network conductivity isn't that great. Or in rural areas where we have very large parts of the population spread out (in these cases) bandwidth is low and you will get into a bottleneck even with HD. Mark Donnigan: 21:05 That's right. Dror Gill: 21:06 That's where perceptual optimization can help you reduce the bit rate even for AVC and keep within the constraints that you have. When your consumers can upgrade their devices and when the cycle comes in a few years when every device has HEVC support, then obviously you upgrade your capability and support HEVC across the board. Mark Donnigan: 21:30 Yeah, that's a very important point Dror, is that this HEVC adoption curve in terms of silicon, on devices. It is in full motion. Just the planning life cycles. If you look at what goes into hardware, and especially on the silicon side, it doesn't happen that way. Once these technologies are in the designs, once they are in the dies, once the codec is in silicon, it doesn't get arbitrarily turned on and off like light switches. Mark Donnigan: 22:04 How should somebody be looking at VP9, VVC, and AV1? Dror Gill: 22:13 Well, VP9 is an easy one. Unless you're Google, you're very likely gonna skip over this codec. Not just that the VP9 isn't the viable choice, it simply doesn't go so far as HEVC in terms of bit rate efficiency and quality. Maybe two years back we would consider it as an option for reducing bit rate, but now with the HEVC support that you have, there's no point in going to VP9. You might as well go to HEVC. If you talk about VVC, (the) standard is still a few years from being ratified so, we actually don't have anything to talk about. Dror Gill: 22:49 The important point is again to remember, even when VVC launches, it will still be another 2 to 3 years after ratifying the standard before you have even a very basic playback ecosystem in place. So, I would tell our listeners if you're thinking, why should I adopt HEVC, because VVC is just around the corner, well, that corner is very far. It's more like the corner of the Earth than the corner of the next block. Mark Donnigan: 23:15 That's right. Dror Gill: 23:18 So, HEVC today, VVC will be the next step in a few years. And then there's AV1. You know, we talked a lot about AV1. No doubt, AV1 has support from huge companies. I mean Google, Facebook, Intel, Netflix, Microsoft. And those engineers, they know what they're doing. But now, it's quite clear that compression efficiency is the same as HEVC. Meanwhile, after removing other royalty cost for content delivery, HEVC Advance removed it. The license situation is much more clear now. You add to this the fact that at the end of the day, two to three years, you're gonna need five to ten times more compute power to encode AV1, reaching effectively the same result. Now Google, again. Google may be that they have unlimited compute resources, they will use it. They developed it. Dror Gill: 24:13 The smaller content providers, all the other ones, the non Googles of the world and other broadcasters with growing support for HEVC that we expect in a few years. I think it's obvious. They're gonna support HEVC and then a few years later when VVC is ratified, when it's supported in devices, they're gonna move to VVC. Because this codec does have the required compression efficiency improvement over HEVC. Mark Donnigan: 24:39 Yeah, that's an excellent summary Dror. Thank you for breaking this all down for our listeners so succinctly. I'm sure this is really gonna provide massive value. I want to thank our amazing audience because without you, the Video Insiders Podcast would just be Dror and me taking up bits on a server somewhere. Dror Gill: 24:59 Yeah, talking to ourselves. Mark Donnigan: 25:01 As you can tell, video is really exciting to us and so we're so happy that you've joined us to listen. And again, this has been a production of Beamr Imaging Limited. Please, subscribe on iTunes and if you would like to try out beamer codecs in your lab or your production environment, we are giving away up to $100 of HEVC and H264 in coding every month. That's each and every month. Just go to https://beamer.com/free and get started immediately.

Is AV1 more efficient than HEVC? Dror & Mark get into the middle of a 3 against 1 standoff over whether AV1 is actually more efficient than HEVC. The following blog post first appeared on the Beamr blog at: https://blog.beamr.com/2018/11/23/codec-efficiency-is-in-the-eye-of-the-measurer-podcast/ When it comes to comparing video codecs, it's easy to get caught up in the “codec war” mentality. If analyzing and purchasing codecs was as easy as comparing fuel economy in cars, it would undoubtedly take a lot of friction out of codec comparison, but the reality is that it's not that simple. In Episode 02, The Video Insiders go head-to-head comparing two of the leading codecs in a three against one standoff over whether AV1 is more efficient than HEVC. So, which is more efficient? Listen in to this week's episode, “Codec Efficiency Is in the Eye of the Measurer,” to find out. Want to join the conversation? Reach out to TheVideoInsiders@beamr.com. TRANSCRIPTION (lightly edited to improve readability only) Mark Donnigan: 00:41 Hi everyone I am Mark Donnigan and I want to welcome you to episode two of the Video Insiders. Dror Gill: 00:48 And I am Dror Gill. Hi there. Mark Donnigan: 00:50 In every episode of the Video Insiders we bring the latest inside information about what's happening in the video technology industry from encoding, to packaging, to delivery, and playback, and even the business behind the video business. Every aspect of the video industry is covered in detail on the Video Insiders podcast. Dror Gill: 01:11 Oh yeah, we usually do cover everything from pixels, to blocks, to microblocks, to frames, to sequences. We go all the way up and down the video delivery chain and highlight the most important things you should know before you send any video bits over the wire. Mark Donnigan: 01:28 In our first episode we talked about a very hot topic which asked, “Hasn't this kind of been worn out?” The whole HEVC, AV1 discussion. But I think it was very interesting. I sure enjoyed the talk. What about you Dror? Dror Gill: 01:47 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I sure did. It was great talking about the two leading codecs. I don't want to say the word, codec war. Mark Donnigan: 01:58 No, no, we don't believe in codec wars. Dror Gill: 01:59 We believe in codec peace. Mark Donnigan: 02:00 Yeah, that's true. Why is it so complicated to compare video codecs? Why can't it be as simple as fuel economy of cars, this one gets 20 miles per gallon and that one gets 30 and then I make a decision based on that. Dror Gill: 02:15 I wish it was that simple with video codecs. In video compression you have so many parameters to consider. You have the encoding tools, tools are grouped into what's called profiles and levels, or as AV1 calls them “experiments.” Mark Donnigan: 02:31 Experiments, mm-hmm… Dror Gill: 02:35 When you compare the codecs which profiles and levels do you use. What rate control method? Which specific parameters do you set for each codec? And each codec can have hundreds, and hundreds of parameters. Then there is the question of implementation. Which software implementation of the codec do you use? Some implementations are reference implementations that are used for research, and others are highly performance optimized commercial implementations. Which one do you select for the test? And then, which operating system, what hardware do you run on, and obviously what test content? Because encoding two people talking, or encoding an action scene for a movie, is completely different. Dror Gill: 03:13 Finally, when you come to evaluate your video, what quality measure do you use? There're various objective quality measures and some people use actual human viewers and they assesses subjective quality of the video. On that front also, there're many possibilities that you need to choose from. Mark Donnigan: 03:32 Yeah, so many questions and no wonder the answers are not so clear. I was quite surprised when I recently read three different technical articles published at IBC actually, effectively comparing AV1 versus HEVC and I can assume that each of the authors did their research independently. What was surprising was they came to the exact same conclusion, AV1 has the same compression efficiency as HEVC. This is surprising because some other studies and one in particular (I think we'll talk about) out there says the contrary. So can you explain what this means exactly, Dror. Dror Gill: 04:16 By saying that they have the same compression efficiency, this means that they can reach the same quality at the same bitrate or the other way round. You need the same bitrate to reach that same quality. If you need for example, two and a half megabits per second to encode an HD video file using HEVC at a certain quality, then with AV1 you would need roughly the same bitrate to reach that same quality and this means that AV1 and HEVC provide the same compression level. In other words, this means that AV1 does not have any technical advantage over HEVC because it has the same compression efficiency. Of course that's if we put aside all the loyalty issues but we discussed that last time. Right? Mark Donnigan: 04:56 That's right. The guys who wrote the three papers that I'm referencing are really top experts in the field. It's not seminar work done by a student, not to downplay those papers, but the point is these are professionals. One was written by the BBC in cooperation with the Multimedia and Vision Group at the Queen Mary University of London. I think nobody is going to say that the BBC doesn't know a thing or two about video. The second was written by Ateme, and the third by Harmonic, leading vendors. Mark Donnigan: 05:29 I actually pulled out a couple of phrases from each that I'd like to quote. First the BBC and Queen Mary University, here is a conclusion that they wrote, “The results obtained show in general a similar performance between AV1 and the reference HEVC both objectively and subjectively.” Which is interesting because they did take the time to both do the visual assessment as well as use a quality measure. Mark Donnigan: 06:01 Ateme said, “Results demonstrate AV1 to have equivalent performance to HEVC in terms of both objective and subjective video quality test results.” Dror Gill: 06:10 Yeah, very similar. Mark Donnigan: 06:16 And then here is what Harmonic said, “The findings are that AV1 is not more advantageous today than HEVC on the compression side and much more complex to encode than HEVC.” What do you make of this? Dror Gill: 06:32 I don't know. It sounds pretty bad to me, even two of those papers also analyzed subjective quality so they used actual human viewers to check out the quality. But Mark what if I told you that researchers from the University of Klagenfurt in Austria together with Bitmovin published a paper which showed completely different results. What would you say about that? Mark Donnigan: 06:57 Tell me more. Dror Gill: 06:58 Last month in Athens I was the ICIP conference that's the IEEE International Conference on Image Compression and Image Processing. There was this paper presented by this University in Austria with Bitmovin and their conclusion was, let me quote, “When using weighted PSNR, AV1 performs consistently better for bit rate compared to AVC, HEVC, and VP9.” So they claim AV1 is better than three codecs but specifically it's better than HEVC. And then they have a table in their article that compares AV1 to HEVC for six different video clips. The table shows that with AV1 you get up to 25% lower bitrate at the same quality than HEVC. Dror Gill: 07:43 I was sitting there in Athens last month when they presented this and I was shocked. Mark Donnigan: 07:50 What are the chances that three independent papers are wrong and only this paper got it right? And by the way, the point here is not three against one because presumably there're some other papers. I'm guessing other research floating around that might side with Bitmovin. The point is that three companies who no one is going to say that any of them are not experts and not highly qualified to do a video assessment, came up with such a different result. Tell us what you think is going on here? Dror Gill: 08:28 I was thinking the same thing. How can that be. During the presentation I asked one of the authors who presented the paper a few questions and it turned out that they made some very questionable decisions in all of that sea of possibility that I talked about before. Decisions related to coding tools, codec parameters, and quality measures. Dror Gill: 08:51 First of all, in this paper they didn't show any results of subjective viewing. Only the objective metrics. Now we all know that you should always your eyes, right? Mark Donnigan: 09:03 That's right. Dror Gill: 09:04 Objective metrics, nice numbers, but obviously you need to view the video because that's how the actual viewers are going to assess the (video) quality. The second thing is that they only used the single objective metric and this was PSNR. PSNR, it stands for peak signal-to-noise ratio and basically this measure is a weighted average of the difference in peaks between pixel values of the two images. Dror Gill: 09:30 Now, we're Video Insiders, but even if you're not an insider you know that PSNR is not a very good quality measure because it does not correlate very well with human vision. This is the measure that they choose to look at but what was most surprising is that there is a flag in the HEVC open source encoder which they used that if chosen, the result is improved PNSR. What it does, it turns off some psycho-visual optimizations which make the video look better but reduce the PSNR, and that's turned on by default. So you would expect that they're measuring PSNR they would turn that flag on so you would get higher PSNR. Well, they didn't. They didn't turn the flag on! Mark Donnigan: 10:13 Amazing. Dror Gill: 10:17 Finally, even then AV1 is much slower than HEVC, and they also reported in this data that it was much, much slower than HEVC but still they did not use the slowest encoding standing of HEVC, which would provide the best quality. There's always a trade off between performance and quality. The more tools you employ the better quality you can squeeze out of the video, of course that takes you more CPU cycles but they used for HEVC, the third slowest setting which means this is the third best quality you can get with that codec and not the very best quality. When you handicap an HEVC encoder in this way, it's not surprising that you get such poor results. Dror Gill: 11:02 I think based on all these points everybody can understand why the results of this comparison were quite different than all of the other comparison that were published a month earlier at IBC (by Ateme, BBC, Harmonic). Mark Donnigan: 11:13 It's interesting. Mark Donnigan: 11:14 Another critical topic that we have to cover is performance. If you measure the CPU performance on encoding time of AV1, I believe that it's pretty universally understood that you are going to find it currently is a hundred times slower than HEVC. Is that correct? Dror Gill: 11:32 Yeah, that's right. Typically, you measure the performance of an encoder and FPS which is frames per second. For HEVC it's common to measure an FPM which is frames per minute. Mark Donnigan: 11:42 Frames per minute, (more like) frames per hour, FPH. Dror Gill: 11:45 A year and a half ago or a year ago when there were very initial implementation, it was really FPD or FPH, Frames per hour or per day and you really needed to have a lot of patience, but now after they've done some work it's only a hundred times slower than HEVC. Mark Donnigan: 12:02 Yeah, that's pretty good. They're getting there. But some people say that the open source implementation of AV1 I believe it's AOM ENC. Dror Gill: 12:11 Yeah, AOM ENC. Mark Donnigan: 12:16 ENC exactly has not been optimized for performance at all. One thing I like about speed is either your encoder produces X number of frames per second or per minute, or it doesn't. It's really simple. Here is my next question for you. Proponents of AV1 are saying, “well it's true it's slow but it hasn't been optimized, the open source implementation,” which is to imply that there's a lot of room (for improvement) and that we're just getting started, “don't worry we'll close the gap.” But if you look at the code, and by the way I may be a marketing guy but my formal education is computer science. Mark Donnigan: 13:03 You can see it already includes performance optimizations. I mean eptimizations like MMX, SSE, there's AVX instructions, there's CPU optimization, there's multithreading. It seems like they're already trying to make this thing go faster. So how are they going to close this a hundred X (time) gap? Dror Gill: 13:22 I don't think they can. I mean a hundred X, that's a lot and you know even the AV1 guys they even admit that they won't be able to close the gap. I talked to a few senior people who're involved in the Alliance for Open Media and even they told me that they expect AV1 to five to 10 times more complex than HEVC at the end of the road. In two to three years after all optimization are done, it's still going to be more complex than HEVC. Dror Gill: 13:55 Now, if you ask me why it's so complex I'll tell you my opinion. Okay, this is my personal opinion. I think it's because they invested a lot of effort in side stepping the patents (HEVC). Mark Donnigan: 14:07 Good point. I agree. Dror Gill: 14:07 They need to get that compression efficiency which is the same as HEVC but they need to use algorithms that are not patented. They have methods that use much more CPU resources than the original patent algorithms to reach the same results. You can call it kind of brute force implementation of the same thing to avoid the patent issue. That's my personal opinion, but the end result I think is clear, it's going to be five to 10 times slower than HEVC. It has the same compression efficiency so I think it's quite questionable. This whole notion of using AV1 to get better results. Mark Donnigan: 14:45 Absolutely. If you can encode let's say on a single computer with HEVC a full ABR stack, this is what people want to do. But here we're talking speeds that are so slow let's just try and do (encode) one stream. Literally what you're saying is you'll need five to 10 computers to do the same encode with AV1. I mean, that's just not viable. It doesn't make sense to me. Dror Gill: 15:14 Yeah, why would you invest so much encoding into getting the same results. If you look at another aspect of this, let's talk about hardware encode. Companies that have large data centers, companies that are encoding vast amount of video content are not looking into moving from the traditional software encoding and CPUs and GPUs, to dedicated hardware. We're hearing talks about FPGAs even ASICs … by the way this is a very interesting trend in itself that we'll probably cover in one of the next episodes. But in the context of AV1, imagine a chip that is five to 10 times larger than an HEVC chip and which is the same complexity efficiency. The question I ask again is why? Why would anybody design such a chip, and why would anybody use it when HEVC is available today? It's much easier to encode, royalty issues have been practically solved so you know? Mark Donnigan: 16:06 Yeah, it's a big mystery for sure. One thing I can say is the Alliance for Open Media has done a great service to HEVC by pushing the patent holders to finalize their licensing terms … and ultimately make them much more rational shall we say? Dror Gill: 16:23 Yeah. Mark Donnigan: 16:25 Let me say that as we're an HEVC vendor and speaking on behalf of others (in the industry), we're forever thankful to the Alliance for Open Media. Dror Gill: 16:36 Definitely, without the push from AOM and the development of AV1 we would be stuck with HEVC royalty issue until this day. Mark Donnigan: 16:44 That was not a pretty situation a few years back, wow! Dror Gill: 16:48 No, no, but as we said in the last episode we have a “happy ending” now. (reference to episode 1) Mark Donnigan: 16:52 That's right. Dror Gill: 16:52 Billions of devices support HEVC and royalty issues are pretty much solved, so that's great. I think we've covered HEVC and AV1 pretty thoroughly in two episodes but what about the other codecs? There's VP9, you could call that the predecessor of AV1, and then there's VVC, which is the successor of HEVC. It's the next codec developed by MPEG. Okay, VP9 and VVC I guess we have a topic for our next episode, right? Mark Donnigan: 17:21 It's going to be awesome. Narrator: 17:23 Thank you for listening to the Video Insider podcast a production of Beamr limited. To begin using Beamr codecs today go to beamr.com/free to receive up to 100 hours of no cost HEVC and H.264 transcoding every month.