Video Streaming Engineer - Imaging, Playback and Review Tools
Summary
DNEG is looking for an experienced C++ software engineer to join our team developing xSTUDIO, our open source video playback and review application for the VFX and Feature Animation industries. xSTUDIO is freely available through the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) GitHub page.
This role will be focused on developing a solution for real-time streaming of high definition, live video between DNEG’s studio locations across the globe with xSTUDIO providing the interactive front-end and image display. A similar experience for external clients connecting from outside of DNEG’s infrastructure via the public internet is also a project goal. Robust and efficient data synchronisation between instances of the user-facing application running at either end of the connection will be part of this challenge. Maximising performance within constraints of the given network latency and bandwidth plus ensuring security and data encryption at the WAN and internet levels are also key problems to be solved.
About xSTUDIO
Viewing moving images is an activity fundamental to almost every role in a VFX and Feature Animation studio. This goes a long way beyond just video playback – VFX and animation artists, supervisors, and producers all require fast, accurate, highly interactive and flexible interfaces for examining their work, submitting notes and feedback as well as producing their own creative edits. Large format image sequences with high bit depth and high frame rate demand the utmost in performance optimization to make the most of available graphics hardware resources. In addition to this, collaborative working is a crucial aspect of our workflows, requiring innovative solutions to allow multiple users to work together fluently. All this must be delivered by a solution that offers the very best in UX and UI design. To meet these requirements and to take advantage of recent advances in associated technologies, such as HDR displays and projectors, new graphics rendering pipelines, and modern video formats, DNEG is investing in xSTUDIO.
About the Role
xSTUDIO has been successfully deployed throughout DNEG’s business and is used daily by our crew of more than 7000 digital artists, animators, producers and supervisors both on an individual basis and in collaborative team review sessions. However, collaborative sessions between geographical locations are currently limited to the use of common screen sharing technologies like PCOIP or Zoom, neither of which are optimised for our use case where image fidelity and playback accuracy is paramount. We believe that xSTUDIO could directly encode its framebuffers and broadcast to remote xSTUDIO instances for a radically improved experience. A superior quality video signal will allow our internal teams and external clients to review the final image with confidence. With a local instance of xSTUDIO providing the front end we can provide a huge improvement to our review capability, where note entry, draw-overs and playback control is available to all participants.
To develop this capability there are multiple exciting challenges and possible solutions to explore. Optimising video encode/decode, leveraging hardware acceleration, managing network connections and responding to dynamic changes in the network performance are just a few examples of what is being considered. Security is a key consideration where we must exclude unauthorised parties from being able to receive any data. A thorough survey of commercial technologies on the market that could form part of our solution will also be undertaken as we search for a cost effective product that can be delivered in a short timescale.
As well as demonstrating technical skill and initiative you will need to be an excellent communicator – your ability to communicate between technical developers and non-technical artists and end users will help you thrive in this role. We encourage a technically creative attitude and are looking for individuals who are willing and able to bring their own solutions and ideas to the table.
We follow Agile development methodologies and you will work closely with Product Owners and Stakeholders to understand artist needs and deliver bespoke software products. You will have influence in all aspects of the software development life-cycle; designing, supporting and maintaining software as well as integrating tools into our existing pipeline.
This is a rare and exciting opportunity to join the open source xSTUDIO project and collaborate with internal and external industry experts to reinvent playback and review workflows across the VFX and Animation Industries.
About the Product Department and Imaging Domain
Unique among VFX studios, the Product Development Department is disparate from show-supporting technology groups, and is focused on developing stand alone applications and DCC plugins to enable new creative capabilities and improve production efficiency. xSTUDIO is part of the Imaging Domain under the general Product Development umbrella. Other disciplines under this domain include Colour Science, Computer Vision, Editorial, and IO Data, you will also have the opportunity to work in these technology areas too.
Must have:
Technical:
- Degree in Computer Science, Engineering or similar, or equivalent experience
- Strong programming skills in modern C/C++ (2011, 2017)
- A good understanding of networking technologies, protocols and physical network infrastructure
- Knowledge of network security and data encryption
- Ability and enthusiasm for learning new technologies and APIs rapidly
Interpersonal:
- Excellent written, verbal, and graphical communication
- Experience drafting, reviewing and maintaining technical documentation
- Working experience in the Agile Development model
- Knowledge of product development best practices
Nice to have:
- Familiarity with video codecs, encode/decode APIs (e.g. ffmpeg) and network video streaming
- Experience of software development in a Linux environment (shells, version management etc)
- Experience of cross platform development including exposure to MacOS and Windows environments
- An understanding of image processing techniques including image sampling and filtering, colour science
A note on Equal Opportunities
We would not be able to produce award-winning work without our Production Technology department, which is committed to nurturing an inclusive, diverse and exciting workplace. Our teams have a variety of backgrounds and originate from a number of different countries, working across the globe at the forefront of technology in the industry.
