My latest column in Streaming Media Magazine; Here’s the lead.  There’s a lot of interest in ultra-high definition (UHD) video, and the two codecs that drive it, HEVC and VP9. Over the past few months, a new UHD codec called Daala has also come to the fore. I wanted to take this opportunity to update the status of HEVC and …

You can financially justify the expenses surrounding webcasting in multiple ways. First, streaming media can provide a cheaper alternative to an existing practice. Second, it can open new revenue opportunities. Finally, it can allow you to extend your marketing reach beyond what was available using traditional technologies. This article, entitled The ROI of Enterprise Webcasting: Justifying the Expense, presents  six …

Suppose you’re tasked with producing a high-profile live event. Perhaps the location has Ethernet connectivity, but you also want a redundant connection in case the Ethernet goes down. Or perhaps the location doesn’t offer Ethernet. What are your options?  That was the pitch for my article, Video for the Long Haul: Exploring Backhaul Options, which recently went live on the …

For this review of the Vidizmo EnterpriseTube, which just posted on Streaming Media, the lead says it all. Let me be up front about this. Vidizmo EnterpriseTube is the first corporate YouTube product that I’ve reviewed. So if you’re looking for a comparative analysis detailing how the product stacks up with other options, this, unfortunately, isn’t it. On the other …

I had a great opportunity to write a case study on eBay’s use of Qumu’s enterprise YouTube product. Sometimes, these discussions are strictly technical, the bits and bytes, procedures and workflows, that kind of thing. While I covered that with eBay’s Ryan Burnham, what really got interesting was how he saw the YouTube product, and the functionality they were building …

You’re streaming a high-profile event in the not-too-distant future, and you’re wondering about your options for transmitting your video to your streaming server or service provider. You’re concerned about quality, reliability, and

“The bottom line is that in the great struggle to find the true signal among the noise, you should ignore the claims of those who create and sell the codec, and prioritize those who actually have to put it to use. But you knew that already, didn’t you?” In a story reported by Streaming Media magazine, Netflix’s David Ronca, manager …

Most seasoned compressionists know that you can’t have high-quality streaming media without quality audio and video. In honor of our production issue, I thought I would list the production techniques that can make or break audio and video quality.  Let’s start with the setup. There are two concepts to keep in mind here: contrast ratio and detail. Cameras have limited …

Recent bad press received by MPEG LA seems to disprove the old adage that all PR is good PR. A few weeks ago, writing for Fox News, Steve Forbes said: One example is MPEG LA—a patent pooling entity and owner of the MPEG-2 standard commonly foun

I know, I know, Flash is dead, the war is over. We’ve all moved on to other battles. Still, I had to laugh the other day when I noticed how YouTube was encoding files for some browsers in HTML5 mode.  Here’s the story. I was writing another Video Doctor article for OnlineVideo.net. I remembered a YouTube video that looked like …