Nagare Media Engine: Towards an Open-Source Cloud- and Edge-Native NBMP Implementation

Neugebauer, Matthias

Abstract

Making efficient use of cloud and edge computing resources in multimedia workflows that span multiple providers poses a significant challenge. Recently, MPEG published ISO/IEC 23090-8 Network-Based Media Processing (NBMP), which defines APIs and data models for network-distributed multimedia workflows. This standardized way of describing workflows over various cloud providers, computing models and environments will benefit researchers and practitioners alike. A wide adoption of this standard would enable users to easily optimize the placement of tasks that are part of the multimedia workflow, potentially leading to an increase in the quality of experience (QoE). As a first step towards a modern open-source cloud- and edge-native NBMP implementation, we have developed the NBMP workflow manager Nagare Media Engine based on the Kubernetes platform. We describe its components in detail and discuss the advantages and challenges involved with our approach. We evaluate Nagare Media Engine i n a test scenario and show its scalability.