I was once a skeptic on cloud encoding, but over the last 12 months have become a believer. In my Streaming Media article, The Cloud Vs. On-Premises Encoding Dilemma, I discuss why, discussing three classes of companies. The first should go directly to the cloud. The second should go hybrid, encoding normal demand on-premise and overflow in the cloud. The …

Holiday buying season is right around the corner, and soon you’ll be subjected to advertising from multiple sources to buy a new UHD TV set. I like shiny new objects as much as the next guy, but before you succumb, you should know that there’s a good chance that the set will be obsolete within the next couple of years. …

On one level, Amazon’s Elastic Transcoder is a finely-tuned service well crafted for the largest sweet spot of the cloud encoding market, Plain Jane H.264 transcoding. On another level, its a service that aimed low from an interface and usability standpoint, and clearly hit its mark. I’m used to the public side of the Amazon house, which is always top …

Direct Embed Embed from Embedded Video   Embed from Rich Media Video

Here’s the description; click below to download the handout and access the sample files. This session explores the current status of HEVC, identifying options for encoding live and on-demand HEVC and discussing player options in the streaming and OTT markets. Topics include the comparative quality and usability of HEVC encoders, how HEVC quality compares to H.264 and VP9 (if encoders …

Here’s the session description. This session details the playback capabilities and technology compatibilities of desktop, mobile, and TV screens, and explores the technical issues and feasibility of producing one set of streams for all platforms, including how technologies like transmuxing and live transcoding simplify the overall distribution workflow. Click below to download the handout. The video is directly below. 

A few weeks ago, I ran a survey to determine the average data rate used by video producers when encoding H.264 to 720p and 1080p resolutions. The thought was, once I knew this, I could encode using HEVC at the half the data rate and compare the quality to see if HEVC lived up to its “same quality at half …

My recent column, MPEG LA’s HEVC Licensing Terms Are Flawed, Will Prevent Adoption, has generated lots of comments in the LinkedIn HEVC/H.265 Group. One comment, from Anthony Mai, sparked a lengthy response, which I wanted to share. By way of background, I don’t like the proposed licensing terms for multiple reasons, including: – They don’t match the expense of the license …

  My Udemy course entitled, Mastering the Adobe Media Encoder CC, just got its first review, a five-star rating. Reviewer Jill Hoven commented: “The BEST Tutorial on Adobe Media Encoder!! Jan Ozer is already my go-to expert on everything streaming media, but this course quickly and easily helped me resolve an issue that threatened to keep me from meeting a …