Overview: When measuring video quality with metrics like VMAF you should measure and report consistency (transient quality and standard deviation) as well as mean quality. If you’re interested in the quality consistency of AV1 codecs and typical configuration options, you can attend a webinar ($149) or take a course on AV1 production that I will…
Jan Ozer here. I spent the last 2 months working with four AV1 codecs, benchmarking them against each other and x264 and x265. I’m presenting my findings in this for-fee 75-minute webinar ($149.99). There are two parts; the first shares what I learned about the codecs, and the second details what I learned about encoding…
Wildcards let you to encode and package multiple files using a single script. This article teaches you how to create and run bash scripts that use wildcards on Ubuntu and the Mac. The overall schema discussed can create a simple and inexpensive per-title encoding facility. Whenever I test codecs or encoders, I customize the encoding…
Setting your I-frame interval in seconds rather than frames allows you to use one encoding string for files with varying frame rates, saving time and minimizing the risk of error. Author’s note: See a new section regarding a LinkedIn comment that this technique “interferes with the rate control mechanism of codecs.” I just finished a…
While standards-based video codecs like H.264 and HEVC tend to dominate, standards-based video quality metrics have never risen to the same usage or attention level. With two innovative and highly accurate metrics now available from the ITU-T, this may change in the near term. Briefly, these models are: ITU-T Rec. P.1203, which calculates the quality…
A previous blog post entitled Compute VMAF Using FFmpeg on Windows covered this same topic but with a version of FFmpeg compiled by my colleague Abharana (Abi) Bhat, Ph.D., who is the Video Architect, Video Quality at DAZN, the London-based OTT subscription sports streaming service. Now the standard Windows FFmpeg download from Zeranoe includes VMAF;…
Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve published a comprehensive report that documents the testing, quality, and performance of the Low Complexity Enhanced Video Codec (LCEVC) as developed by V-Nova and in the process of becoming standardized by MPEG. By way of background, I’ve been consulting with V-Nova to test LCEVC using…
Previous tests presented here showed that a Windows version of FFmpeg compiled by Zeranoe was about four times slower than a version compiled by a colleague who works in an OTT organization. Since then, Miguel Perez contacted the FFmpeg organization and Zeranoe, who researched the issue, recompiled, and created a new download that resolves the…
AV1 encoding on Windows is now only 2x slower than x265. With a properly compiled version of FFmpeg, encoding performance is slightly faster than the Alliance for Open Media’s encoder, though output quality is very slightly lower. Congrats to AOM for delivering on their promise to get encoding times down. Thanks for all the help…
AV1 encoding is now only 2x slower than x265. See the latest results here. Though FFmpeg took 50 minutes to produce a test file that both x264 and x265 encoded in about two minutes, the Alliance for Open Media’s aomenc encoder, running the same version of AV1 (version 2) produced the file in about 15…