Articles

We’ve updated several lessons in our Video Quality Metrics course, including some relating to the Moscow State University Video Quality Measurement Tool.  The Moscow State University (MSU) Video Quality Measurement Tool (VQMT) is a tool that I use almost every day to analyze and compare encoded files. Our course, Computing and Using Video Quality Metrics: A Course for Encoding Professionals, …

This freely downloadable report measures the qualitative impact of GOP sizes on animated, general entertainment, sports, and office footage for H.264 and HEVC. One of the most fundamental encoding decisions is GOP size or the frequency of I-frames in our encoded files. I-frames, also called keyframes, start each “group of pictures” comprised of I-, B-, and P-frames. Most of the …

Here are the free “must-have” apps I install on every Windows computer (and three for-fee tools for deeper analysis).  I just received a new Dell Precision 7820 server and had to prepare it for video transcoding and analysis. Here are the tools I installed to get up and running. I present the list and links first and then a list …

Learn to use Capped CRF with SVT-AV1 and FFmpeg for live transcoding, including how capped CRF compares to VBR and CBR. All tests and results are available in downloadable PDF. Capped CRF is an alternative to VBR and CBR that saves bandwidth on easy-to-encode sequences and preserves quality on hard-to-encode sequences. Our tests with SVT-AV1 and FFmpeg show: Performance: Capped …

There are four bitrate control techniques worth considering for live encoding/transcoding using the SVT-AV1 codec. These are: Capped CRF VBR Capped VBR Constrained VBR Here’s what I found: Overall: Capped CRF shows promise with significant bitrate savings, good quality retention, and the best overall performance by ~10 – 25% (meaning more streams from the same hardware). VBR was generally the …

A recent review from The Ohio State University’s Derrick Freeman highlighted what he learned from Streaming Media 101. Below is his review, which I’ve chopped up into bullet points. “I just recently earned my certificate from Jan Ozer’s “Streaming Media 101: Technical Onboarding for Streaming Media Professionals” e-learning course at Streaming Learning Center. I was amazed at how much I …

I was raised in a beachfront commuter town about 60 miles south of Manhattan and five miles north of Springsteen’s Asbury Park. I went to Seashore Day Camp years 8-13, swimming laps in the pool each morning and clowning around in the ocean each afternoon. I spent middle school and high school in the Atlantic as often as possible, swimming, …

Telestream resurrects encoding.com’s Global Media Format Report to provide valuable data on codec usage and other production details.  For years, encoding.com’s Global Media Format Report provided a key set of data points on codec usage and other topics from the prior years encoding production. Since encoding.com was the first and remains one of the largest cloud encoding providers, this data …

This article provides a quick reference for video codec details from H.264 to LCEVC, excluding EVC, because so little progress has been made on productization. Codec Overview Starting at the top, the year released emphasizes how long H.264 has remained the dominant codec, as evidenced by ReThink’s 2023 usage rate of about 72%. Browser penetration, as measured by CanIuse, is …

Just a quick announcement to let you know that if you’re taking a course on the Streaming Learning Center, you can now access lessons via a mobile app. By way of background,  we use a learning management system called Thinkific to host all Streaming Learning Center courses. Thinkific recently launched its new mobile app for iOS and Android that we …