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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.

New Five-Star Review for FFmpeg Book

One thing that never gets old is a five-star review on Amazon. I just received another one for my book, Learn to Produce Video with FFmpeg: In Thirty Minutes or Less (2018 Edition), which is available on Amazon ($34.95) and for PDF download ($29.95). In this review from a verified purchaser, the customer said: “I would consider this book a …

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Lesson of the Week: Codecs are Not Generic

I discuss the bandwidth savings delivered by VP9 and HEVC over H264 in my course Streaming Media 101: Technical Onboarding for Streaming Media Professionals. I wanted to illustrate this with my own tests, so I used FFmpeg to encode H.264, HEVC, and VP9 output using about 25 short test files. This felt like a good time to discuss the difference …

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Lesson of the Week: More Efficient Chart Title Creation in Excel

I just finished one consulting project that involved testing 22 clips with three codecs to produce nine rate-distortion charts per clip (1080p, 720p, 480p for VMAF, SSIM, and PSNR) and am working another with 35 clips with 4 RD charts each with two encoding modes. So efficient chart creation in Excel is now a huge priority. One frustration with Excel …

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Get Your Streaming Media Certification

If you’re onboarding new hires in streaming media-related positions, you now have an affordable option for providing and monitoring that streaming-specific training. If you’re a professional seeking to upgrade your skills and gain accreditation, you have that option as well.  Over the last few years, streaming media has become critical for entertainment and communications, with the quarantines necessitated by Covid-19 …

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MediaMelon’s SmartPlay Cuts Bandwidth Requirements Without Re-encoding

We’re all aware of the sudden need to reduce streaming bandwidth to alleviate congestion. MediaMelon’s SmartPlay/QBR is a very viable option for this that was recently adopted by Brazilian OTT producer Telecine. I reviewed MediaMelon’s QBR technology for Streaming Media Magazine back in 2017. I called it a “server-side, per-title delivery mechanism.” Unlike traditional per-title technologies that re-encode your files …

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Tuning for Metrics: What About VMAF and VP9?

If you’re comparing codecs with video quality metrics, you should consider tuning for that metric. However, x264 and x265 don’t have a VMAF tuning option. According to my analysis, it appears that tuning for PSNR is the best option and one you should strongly consider. When working with VP9, there’s an additional complication; tuning for PSNR doesn’t appear to work.  …

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Five Star Review of Streaming Media 101-Technical Onboarding for Streaming Media Professionals

The first review is up for my new course, Streaming Media 101 – Technical Onboarding for Streaming Media Professionals, and it’s a five-star review. I designed the course to provide technical fundamentals and an overview of key industry products and services and the companies that create and support them. The goal was to teach students skills like live and VOD …

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Lesson of the Week: Accessing hr:min:sec Info in Chrome to Speed Data Entry

Producing the chart above involved encoding 35 files using 5 different presets and then recording start and stop times. Since the files were about 20-seconds long, seconds were important. I’m sure a smarter compressionist than I could write a Python script to harvest the start and stop times but I do it by hand, which is complicated because Windows Explorer …

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Encoding VP9 in FFmpeg: An Update

This is a long post only of interest to those attempting to optimize their VP9 encodes. The three key takeaways are 1) use the command script shown on the bottom of the page, 2) a speed setting of 2 offers the optimal quality/performance tradeoff, and 3) the row-mt setting improves performance significantly with zero quality loss when multiple unused cores …

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VMAF is Hackable: What Now?

Just a quick note to let you know about some recent findings relating to the Netflix VMAF metric. By way of background, VMAF launched in June 2016 as the metric that powered Netflix’s per-title encoding engine, replacing PSNR. The fact that Netflix created and used VMAF gave the metric tremendous credibility and because Netflix open-sourced VMAF it was quickly added …

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