This post presents a return on investment view of choosing an x265 preset that delivers the optimal blend of encoding cost and storage and bandwidth savings. The first chart, x265 Encoding Time/Quality Tradeoff, is from a lesson in my course Streaming Media 101: Technical Onboarding for Streaming Media Professionals.  Given the bandwidth and storage savings that higher-quality x265 presets deliver, …

This article details how to plan, record, edit, and produce a lesson with screen recording software. So, you’ve been charged with producing a screencam-based training lesson for your organization and you’re wondering where to start. Well, you’re in the right place, because this tutorial will tackle the hardware and software needed, plus the planning, recording, editing, and output of the …

This tutorial teaches you how to connect a microphone and soundboard to a camcorder and DSLR for live and on-demand video production. This article was derived from a lesson in my Live Streaming Bootcamp course, which teaches you the skills and techniques that optimize the quality of your webinars and live streams. Click here for more detail on the course. …

This tutorial teaches you how to set exposure and white balance on your camcorder and DSLR for live and on-demand video production. This article was derived from a lesson in my Live Streaming Bootcamp course, which teaches you the skills and techniques that optimize the quality of your webinars and live streams. Click here for more detail on the course. …

This post describes how to choose a video mixer for live events and conferences. It was derived from a lesson in my Live Streaming Bootcamp course, which teaches you the skills and techniques that optimize the quality of your webinars and live streams. Click here for more detail on the course. At the most basic level, video mixers are hardware or …

This article describes how to buy a light kit for live streaming, webinars, and web conferences. It was derived from a lesson in my Live Streaming Bootcamp course, which teaches you the skills and techniques that optimize the quality of your webinars and live streams. Click here for more detail on the course. Lighting is the single most important determinant of …

This entry-level article describes what an encoder is and how to choose one and focuses on VOD, not live. It was derived from a lesson in my Streaming Media 101 course, which teaches you the skills and techniques to succeed in a streaming media-related role. Click here for more details about the course. This article walks newbies through what an …

Your encoding ladder should include lower resolution rungs even if higher resolution rungs deliver better quality. This blog explains why.  Several lessons in the online course Streaming Media 101: Technical Onboarding for Streaming Media Professionals focus on creating and configuring encoding ladders, including the Convex Hull technique discussed below. With advanced codecs like AV1 and HEVC, however, this analysis leads …

Note: I received some very useful responses to this blog that are summarized in a post entitled, Choosing the Resolution for Lower Rungs on Your Encoding Ladder.  I could use some input from practitioners out there about which lower resolution rungs are essential to an encoding ladder. By way of background, I’m preparing a per-title encoding comparison. To derive the …

I’ve been a fan of video optimization technologies for a while now, and consider optimization simpler, cheaper, and potentially just as effective as adding a new codec like HEVC or VP9. I’m pleased to see that the Crunch Mediaworks Video Enhancement Solutions App is now available on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace. I reviewed Crunch‘s technology back in 2019 for video …