Here’s the description; link to the PDF is below: W1. Introduction To ABR Production & Delivery Monday, May 6: 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. This course helps those new to streaming media get familiar with the relevant terms, concepts, and technologies. The session begins with a definition of terms like codecs, container formats, and adaptive bitrate streaming, as well as encoding …
Read More »CanIUse Pegs AV1 Availability at 32.46%; Twice that of HEVC (16.71%)
I was preparing for the codec discussion of my preconference sessions next week at Streaming Media East and visited www.caniuse.com to report codec availability. While I expected H.264 (96.96%) and VP9 (80.78%) to easily win, and they did, I was surprised to find AV1 availability at 32.46%, well ahead of HEVC at 16.71%. Digging into the numbers, I noticed that …
Read More »YouTube Quality at Lower Resolutions was Awful in my Tests
I’m preparing for my per-title presentation at Streaming Media East next Tuesday (presentation description below) and found some anomalous results for lower-resolution files produced by YouTube. I’m including YouTube in the analysis because I’ve always respected their work and for perspective vis a vis other per-title technologies that I’ll analyze (including Elemental MediaConvert QVBR, Capella Systems SABL, Epic Labs Lightflow, …
Read More »You Are Almost Certainly Wasting Bandwidth Streaming to Mobile Phones
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the VMAF Phone Model which measures VMAF score for viewers watching on a mobile phone. Since then, I gave a presentation at NAB on VMAF and ran some calculations comparing the phone and default models. I share those below. First, have a quick look at the three VMAF models shown on the slide …
Read More »Sisvel Update
I’ve been asked for an update on the Sisvel AV1/VP9 pool situation; here’s what we know. Before beginning, as I wrote about here, I am working as a consultant with Sisvel during the launch. To recap, Sisvel announced their pool late March: Before signing on as a consultant, I wrote two articles for Streaming Media and produced one video interview …
Read More »We Serve Hard Drinks to Men Who Want to Get Drunk Fast
I just waded through another NAB’s worth of press releases. With depressing frequency, the first few graphs are filled with so much ancillary gobblygook that I often have no idea what the new product or service does after reading them. This invariably brings to mind the classic line from a bar scene in the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, …
Read More »Transparency Alert: I Will Be Working With Sisvel
Just a brief note to let you know that I’ve signed on as a consultant for Sisvel regarding their launch of the AV1 and VP9 patent pools. What? Sisvel just announced patent pools on VP9 and AV1 and was aware that HEVC-related pools were controversial and were concerned about properly communicating its vision and goals. I’ll help them work with …
Read More »Talking on VMAF at the NAB Streaming Summit
Just a quick note to let you know that I’ll be speaking at the NAB Streaming Summit on Using VMAF, Netflix’s Video Encoding Metric to Measure QoE. Description: Netflix uses video quality metric VMAF that combines human vision modeling with machine learning, to make automated encoding decisions in their per-title/per-scene encoding workflow. This presentation will cover what VMAF is, how …
Read More »Free Video: Scaling and Letterboxing in FFmpeg
Embedded below is a free lesson from my course, Produce Videos with FFmpeg: The Beginner’s Course (http://bit.ly/learn_ffmpeg). The previous lesson in the course describes when you can use the -s command to set resolution; this lesson details your options when you can’t. This typically occurs when the display aspect ratio of your output is different from your input, which happens often …
Read More »New Course: Encoding and Packaging for Multiple Screen Delivery
I’m launching a new course entitled Encoding and Packaging for Multiple Screen Delivery. It’s an advanced course detailing how to create and configure encoding ladders using objective quality metrics like VMAF, packaging for DASH/HLS (both static and dynamic), CMAF, per-title encoding, and more. The course is designed for professionals who need to get up to speed on these topics and …
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