VVC is one of the three codecs to be launched by MPEG in 2020. I wrote about VVC extensively here (business side) and here (technical side), and wanted to provide some quick updates. By way of background, codecs have two sides, the performance side, and the business side. In this short article, I’ll address both.…
Pleased to share another five-star review of my online course Streaming Media 101: Technical Onboarding for Streaming Media Professionals. As the course tagline details, “This course teaches the fundamentals and skills necessary to succeed in a streaming media-related job, whether you’re producing and distributing streaming media or creating the tools, technologies, and services necessary to…
I’ve spent the last two months testing four AV1 codecs accessible via command-line arguments and I start testing VVC codecs next week. Trying to fairly and accurately test the capabilities of these codecs turned out to be a pretty grueling and messy task. The key challenge, of course, was creating the optimal command string for…
I’m teaching two boot camps (virtually) at Streaming Media West, one for VOD and the other for live streaming; each costs $199. The courses are designed for newbies who need to get up to speed quickly on these topics. Here’s the information for both. W1. Streaming Media Bootcamp, Part 1: Encoding, Packaging, And Delivery For…
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;…