CAPSTAN Channel Syndication: An Introduction

Len Feldman
April 25, 2010

If you’re making on-demand video content available on the Internet, there are many ways
to do it. You can use conventional webpages with links to the video. You can create an
RSS syndication feed that a web browser or feed reader can use to locate the most recent
content. You can even put links to the videos in emails and tweets.

However, if you want to make video content available the way that broadcasters and
cable networks do, with series and episodes that run at specified times, there’s no
standard way of doing it. It’s even worse if you want to intermix live, scheduled and on-
demand content. So, there are dozens of incompatible approaches to solving the problem.
For example, Boxee, Roku and Popbox all require content providers to write special
applications in order to access their video clients. Blu-Ray players require their own
special applications.

There should be an open, standardized way to make live, scheduled and on-demand video
content available to virtually any device. Now, there is an open data format that provides
everything that’s needed to do the job, plus everything that’s needed to market, locate,
search, secure and monetize video content. What’s more, it doesn’t require any
application development on the part of content providers. This new format is called
CAPSTAN Channel Syndication, or CCS.

CCS does for scheduled content and video libraries what RSS does for fixed content. A
CCS “schedule” is a set of XML files that organize video content into five components:

1. Networks, which consist of Series, Episodes and Segments

2. Series, containing a list of Episodes and Segments
3. Episodes, which consist of one or more Segments
4. Segments, which include links to the actual video content
5. Windows, for content providers who want to bypass the CCS structure, but still
want to make their content available to CCS-compatible clients

Each CCS component contains descriptive metadata that’s used to identify, locate and
display its contents. The metadata also includes availability schedules for live and on-
demand content. Schedules can be changed dynamically by content providers; for
example, if a sports event runs past its scheduled end, the content provider can “push” a
revised schedule to CCS-compatible clients with new start and end times for subsequent
programming.

This information is more than enough to fill an Interactive Program Guide (IPG), but
much more is needed in order to deliver a commercial video service. That’s why CCS
also includes the following features:
 1. Authentication: Subscription video services require a means to authenticate
viewers in order to determine whether or not they’re authorized to access them.
CCS allows content providers to specify the authentication method and service
provider that they choose.
2. Encryption/Decryption: Content providers want the ability to encrypt their video
in order to protect it from interception. CCS supports industry-standard SSL
encryption and decryption, and doesn’t preclude the use of any Digital Rights
Management (DRM) system chosen by content providers.
3. Monetization: Content providers want the ability to charge for content on a pay-
per-view or subscription basis. CCS enables them to specify both which method
and the service provider that they want to use for processing transactions, at any
level down to a segment-by-segment basis.

Sophisticated search, content recommendation/voting, and social networking features can

be built on top of CCS. If client developers and content providers want even more
flexibility, they can add their own features to CCS through XML Namespaces. Clients
that understand and can use these features can take advantage of them, while clients that
are incompatible with these features will simply ignore them.

CCS will dramatically decrease the time and cost of developing new video clients.
Developers will be able to focus on their user interfaces and differentiating features
instead of writing new APIs and building developer relations programs. CCS can also be
implemented in existing video clients alongside existing APIs in order to offer viewers
more content more quickly.

Content suppliers will also save time and money, because they can make their video
available to any CCS-compatible client without having to write and support separate
applications or formats for each client. They can also secure and monetize their content,
using the methods and service providers that they prefer.

CCS will have the same impact on video services that RSS had on blogs, webpages and
podcasts. It provides an open, royalty-free standard for making video content available to
clients ranging from smartphones to set-top boxes. It saves time and money for both
video client developers and content providers. And, it opens up new business
opportunities for video client developers, content providers, DRM vendors, transaction
processors, online video platforms, content delivery networks, content management
systems and more.