Articles

By creating a video mixer that’s accessible from any location, EasyLive promises no-fuss live streaming to multiple platforms. Here’s how it performed in our testing. The simplest way to understand the EasyLive service is to think of it as a video mixer in the cloud. You can input videos from multiple sources; add titles, logos, Twitter feeds, and scorecards; and …

Summary (The MPD) When distributing video under constrained conditions, the bitrate control technique used to encode the files can have a profound impact on the quality of experience (QoE). Specifically, under some conditions, CBR-encoded files deliver a superior QoE to files encoded using 200% constrained VBR, while also reducing the overall bandwidth delivered. For producers concerned with the potential for …

Microsoft’s new enterprise YouTube isn’t ready for prime time yet, but it offers several impressive features making it one to watch over the next 12 to 18 months. Reviewing the preview version of Microsoft Stream is like watching video clips on ESPN to assess whether Lebron James Jr. is ready for pro ball. At age 11, “Bronny” has obvious game …

If you haven’t been watching the live titling space, you’ve missed the NDI revolution, and your productions may be falling behind in terms of graphics quality. In this article I’ll explain what NDI is and how it works, and I’ll explore how it enhances the titling capabilities of the NewTek TriCaster, Telestream Wirecast, and vMix GO. I’ll also look at …

The move away from plugins like Flash and Silverlight has made video delivery easier, but it’s also made DRM more complicated. Here’s what DRM looks like today, along with a discussion of the leading DRM technologies and DRM service providers. If you plan to distribute premium content from the major U.S. studios, you’ll need to encrypt that content, which typically …

Every compressed file involves dozens of configuration-related decisions, including resolution, data rate, H.264 profile, VBR or CBR, entropy coding technique, x.264 preset, b-frames, reference frames—the list goes on and on. Most encoding prof

Publishers and encoding companies alike are beginning to embrace VP9, Google’s open source codec. Here’s how it stacks up on quality and data rates. The value proposition for VP9 is clear, as stated in Figure 1: “Adaptive HD streaming with 1/2 the data of H.264!” Half the data rate cuts your bandwidth and storage costs and allows you to reach …

London-based V-Nova has made some impressive claims about Perseus, its compression technology. Streaming Media’s preliminary testing shows that it lives up to some of them. V-Nova launched its compression technology, Perseus, on April Fools’ Day 2015, claiming “2x–3x average compression gains, at all quality levels, under practical real-time operating scenarios versus H.264, HEVC and JPEG2000.” The timing and the claims …

Netflix announced the open-source availability of the Video Multimethod Assessment Fusion, which it’s now using instead of PSNR to analyze the quality of transcodes in its vast catalog. Yesterday, Netflix announced the open-source availability of its new video quality metric, the Video Multimethod Assessment Fusion (VMAF) in a long, explanatory blog post. Netflix uses the metric now, and it appears …

Scheduled to be the first codec released by the Alliance for Open Media, AV1 is positioned to replace VP9 and compete with HEVC. While we don’t know many details yet, the backing of the Alliance should give AV1 a significant competitive advantage. The AV1 codec will be the first codec released by the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), and it’s …