In my latest survey, the average video configuration was very close to 640×360, with a combined audio/video data rate of 837 kbps (758 kbps video, 79 kbps audio). This computes to an average bits per pixel value of .115. If videos posted on your site are lower than these figures, you’re probably being unnecessarily conservative. I track the data rate …

I don’t spend a lot of time in the big-iron encoding space, but I was pleasantly surprised a few weeks ago when I saw Elemental Technologies, who sells GPU-based hardware encoders, written about in BusinessWeek. So when the company approached Streaming Media Magazine with an exclusive story about ESPN using their technology, I was psyched to chat with company president …

This article discusses what data rate is and why it’s important, and what bits per pixel measures and how to compute it.  What is Data Rate? Data rate (or bit rate) is the amount of data per second of video, usually expressed in kilobits (kbps) or megabits per second (Mbps). When I say that ESPN distributes their video at 800 …

According to the latest statistics from NetMarketShare, the current penetration of HTML5-compatible browsers in the desktop market is 58.1% maximum. To completely serve these browers, you’d have to encode in three formats, with 47.5% of desktops compatible with WebM, 44.1% compatible with H.264, and 8.3% compatible with Ogg (this is the Firefox 3.6 crowd). To calculate these numbers, I created …

In the desktop/mobile streaming marketplace, most producers provide two sets of streams; HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) for Apple iOS devices and Android devices and either Flash or Silverlight for the desktop. A number of content and technology companies have gotten together to promote a specification called DASH, which stands for Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP. Its promise is a single …

Two new Amazon reviews for my book, Video Compression for Flash, Apple Devices and HTML5, both 5 star, though the UK review was kind of … mixed, shall we say. In the States, John Talbert was pretty positive, stating “This book is very technical and detailed. It is the perfect tool to help you decipher all the techno jargon found …

Wow, what a roller coaster. Just last week, Adobe announced their decision to stop developing the Flash Player for mobile devices, a decision that looks predestined in retrospect. Faced with the expense of supporting a diverse and growing range of Android devices, while shut out in the iOS and Windows 8 markets, Adobe decided to seek greener pastures. Makes perfect …

By now you’ve heard that Adobe will discontinue the development of the Flash Player on the Android platform, stating in part that “HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms.” Boy, they weren’t kidding. I was interested to …

My colleague Tim Siglin wrote an insightful analysis of Adobe’s decision to cease development of the mobile Flash Player that you can read here. To his credit, Siglin actually predicted that Adobe might withdraw Flash from mobile markets in his August article The TouchPad is Dead; Is Adobe’s Mobile Strategy Next? I just hope he doesn’t remind me of that …

Summary Depending upon the project type, rendering with GPU-acceleration in Creative Suite 5.5 can reduce rendering time by up to 92% over CPU-only rendering. Since NVIDIA’s CUDA technology is the only GPU that currently accelerates rendering in the Adobe Media Encoder and Premiere Pro, buying a notebook without NVIDIA hardware for CS5.5 production is a huge mistake. If you’re in …