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Jan Ozer

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I help companies train new technical hires in streaming media-related positions; I also help companies optimize their codec selections and encoding stacks and evaluate new encoders and codecs. I am a contributing editor to Streaming Media Magazine, writing about codecs and encoding tools. I have written multiple authoritative books on video encoding, including Video Encoding by the Numbers: Eliminate the Guesswork from your Streaming Video (https://amzn.to/3kV6R1j) and Learn to Produce Video with FFmpeg: In Thirty Minutes or Less (https://amzn.to/3ZJih7e). I have multiple courses relating to streaming media production, all available at https://bit.ly/slc_courses. I currently work as www.netint.com as a Senior Director in Marketing.

Encoding Screencams: Codecs and Techniques

In Producing Screencams that Market and Sell, I described how to script, record, and edit a screencam presentation for fun or profit. In this article, I’ll detail which codec does the best job compressing screencams for internet delivery, wh

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The Moving Picture: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About H.264 but Were Afraid to Ask

I recently taught an H.264-specific class at Streaming Media East in New York. Though the class was 3 hours long, I can distill a bunch of useful knowledge into this column if you don’t mind missing the sample videos and example screens, not to mention the insightful and surprisingly compelling lecture. Let’s begin. H.264 is today’s “it” codec because it …

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Video tutorial: Understanding the critical H.264 encoding options

This short (under 10-minute) PowerPoint-based tutorial details how to configure the most important H.264 encoding parameters (profiles, levels, entropy encoding and b-frames), discusses why H.264 encoding quality varies by encoding tool and identif

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Peer Review: The Wine Library

This is a peer review of streaming video produced by the Wine Library, written as a sidebar to a feature story by StreamingMedia.com. Here's the intro:As you’ve read in Troy Dreier's feature, the Wine Library's producer and star, Gary Vaynerch

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Test Drive: Apple Mac Pro, Part 1

When some people get a powerful new computer, they want to produce a new video, play games, or show it off to their friends. I just want to run as many tests as possible to analyze its performance, which I guess means that I’m well suited for this portion of my job description.         This navel-gazing aside, …

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Video advertising is more effective than Flash animations or simple images

If you're looking for hard data that proves the effectiveness of video advertising over other rich meda formats, look no further. A new Doubleclick study entitled "The Brand Value of Rich Media and Video Ads" found that rich media ads containing vide

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Video tutorial: producing H.264 video for Flash Distribution with Sorenson Squeeze

This is the second in a series of video tutorials on producing H.264, in this case detailing how to do so using Sorenson Squeeze. Here's some  background information explaining some of the encoding decisions made in the tutorial. First, the

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H.264 Royalties: what you need to know

Whenever I speak at industry groups about H.264, and detail the upcoming royalty obligation, some attendees are invariably surprised that using H.264 will generate royalties. Here's what you need to know about H.264 and royalties, in an except fro

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Video: streaming production: improving your video quality

streaming quality, shooting for streaming, bit rates for streaming,

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Video tutorial: Producing H.264 video for Flash distribution with the Adobe Media Encoder

This is the first in a series of video tutorials on producing H.264, in this case detailing how to do so using the Adobe Media Encoder. Here's some  background information explaining some of the encoding decisions made in the tutorial. Firs

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