I’m releasing the 2018 update to my book Learn to Produce Video with FFmpeg in 30 Minutes or Less, and you can download a chapter for free below. It’s Chapter 4 on bitrate control techniques which includes constant bitrate encoding (CBR), variable bitrate encoding (VBR), Constant Rate Factor (CRF), and Capped CRF. As with all chapters,…
DetailsThis is the third in a five-part series on how to cut your encoding and streaming costs. The first article was on Adjusting Encoding Configurations to Increase Capacity, while the second was on Deploying Capped CRF Encoded videos. You can dramatically reduce net encoding and storage costs by implementing dynamic packaging for your live or VOD…
DetailsThere are two mostly vestigial problems that I didn’t address in Learn to Produce Video with FFmpeg in 30 Minutes or Less because so few people encounter them. These are deinterlacing and aspect ratio mismatches. Now I’m writing a textbook with a greater scope, so I had to learn how to deal with both in…
DetailsThis is the second in a five-part series on how to cut your encoding and streaming costs. The first article was Saving on Encoding: Adjust Encoding Configuration to Increase Capacity. Article summary: Capped CRF encoding is a single-pass encoding method that can save encoding costs compared to two-pass VBR. Capped CRF is also a simple per-title…
DetailsThis is the first of five articles on how to cut your encoding and streaming costs. A key focus of my book Video Encoding by the Numbers was to isolate the qualitative impact of critical encoding decisions, particularly when they significantly impact encoding time. For example, if a configuration improves quality by 1%, it likely…
DetailsSorenson Squeeze was one of the first encoding tools that many streaming professionals used and now it’s officially end-of-lifed as you can see from the featured image atop this page (from here). It’s not really a surprise; in 2015, I interviewed new Sorenson CEO Marcus Liassides who described how Sorenson would be focusing on building tools…
DetailsAs corporations move their compute resources into public and private clouds, and other virtual environments, most encoding vendors are doing the same with their encoders, though not all markets are moving at the same speed. In my Streaming Media article, A Hybrid Approach Guides the Changing Face of On-Prem Encoding, I spoke with about 13 vendors,…
DetailsAV1 has been all consuming from a mindshare perspective for many streaming professionals, but the fact of the matter is that unless you’re distributing stream quantities on par with Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, and Hulu, AV1 won’t be relevant for at least two years, maybe longer. I discuss why in my Streaming Media article, Return of the…
DetailsIf you’ve been following my work, you know that I’m very bullish on per-title encoding and optimization technologies, and have reviewed them several times. One technology that I haven’t tested before is from Crunch Media Works, which offers video optimization tools that can be used on public and private computer servers, as well as mobile…
DetailsIf you’re trying to load AVCHD files into Premiere Pro and you’re on Windows 7 or earlier, the AVCHD video will likely load without the audio file. That’s because instead of supporting Dolby decoding natively in Premiere Pro, like they used to, Adobe now piggybacks off the operating support in Windows 8 and beyond. Since…
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