Robert Walch
Media Streaming Engineer at Apple
Cupertino, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRobert Walch is a Media Streaming Engineer with 14+ years building high-performance front-end and streaming solutions, currently focused on web playback at Apple. He brings deep expertise in HTML5 video, WebGL, media encoding (ffmpeg/x264) and cross-browser compatibility, and has led web player teams and product delivery at JW Player where he maintained the widely used JW Player and contributed to the popular hls.js project. Robert blends hands-on engineering (JavaScript, Node, Canvas, MSE) with backend and deployment experience, troubleshooting complex streaming, subtitle and playlist issues across platforms. His background includes mobile and native SDK work, ActionScript-era media systems, and a history of architecting large-scale client projects for brands like HBO and MTV. Known for optimizing playback performance and UX, he also pursues side interests in game development, 3D graphics and computer vision that inform his practical, graphics-aware approach to streaming problems.
14 years of coding experience
22 years of employment as a software developer
School of Visual Arts
Stackoverflow
619reputation
59kreached
20answers
0questions
Github Skills (28)
javascript10
http-streaming10
css10
typescript10
http-live-streaming10
ui-design10
uid10
media-playback10
substr10
front-end-development10
video-player10
playback10
hls-stream10
subtitle10
typescript-types10
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
jwplayer/jwplayer
Apr 2014 - Jun 2021
JW Player is the world's most popular embeddable media player.
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:19 releases, 278 reviews, 1406 commits in 7 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Robert's commits primarily focused on enhancing the JW Player's functionality within the front-end, particularly concerning user interface components. They made various improvements including fixing UI focus issues, styling the controls bar and player elements, improving the appearance of the display icon, and implemented and updated tooltip display functionality. The contributions also include modifications to the player controls during different states, and corrections to the display of subtitles.
html5-videoandroidmedia-playervideo-playermse
video-dev/hls.js
Oct 2016 - Jan 2023
HLS.js is a JavaScript library that plays HLS in browsers with support for MSE.
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:2 releases, 988 reviews, 582 commits in 6 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Robert made several code contributions across multiple files in the `hls.js` repository, indicating involvement in both front-end and back-end aspects of the project. Their work included addressing issues related to subtitles and media playback, implementing new features, and fixing existing bugs. The user also enhanced the handling of playlist and media-source errors.
hlsjshls-streamplaybackhtml5stream
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