The creativity behind immersive VR filmmaking is only matched by the software engineering creativity that makes this type of video possible. I just started a consulting project relating to 360° VR video, and have some introductory conclusions. I am only an egg, as Robert Heinlein might say, but I thought I would share them. First,…
DetailsI’ve resisted upgrading to the latest version of Adobe Creative Cloud because the beloved titler has been replaced (but is still available). After producing a video tutorial on the new title function for Streaming Media Producer, I see that Adobe made a great decision; the new tool is both more capable and more accessible. The…
DetailsIt took awhile, but the first review of my book, Learn to Produce Videos with FFmpeg: In Thirty Minutes or Less, is up on Amazon. Here’s the key comment. “Everything here is already available on the net. But this is much easier. Worth the price just to have it all in one place. Easy to read…
DetailsInterested in how Apple’s adding HEVC to HLS is impacting streaming producer’s intent to start encoding with HEVC? How about their attitudes towards the Alliance for Open Media’s AV1 codec? A new report available on the Streaming Media website covers both of these issues and more. Entitled, The Impact of Apple’s HEVC Adoption: A Survey-Based Report, the…
DetailsThe skinny: Apple, a member of the MPEG LA H.264 and HEVC patent pools, and staunch supporter of standards (and avoider of open source-codecs) broke ranks and joined the Alliance for Open Media. Give me more: Apple has always deployed standards-based codecs, and Steve Jobs was very negative on Google’s VP8 open-source codec when launched.…
DetailsOne of the more intriguing streaming-related numbers out there is the Netflix ISP Speed Index which topped out at a paltry 3.98 Mbps in the US during December 2017 (Figure 1). According to Netflix, “The Netflix ISP Speed Index lists the average prime-time bitrate for Netflix content streamed to Netflix members during a particular month. For…
DetailsOn January 5, roughly 27 months after the inception of the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), Apple appeared on the organization’s website as a “founding member.” Like everyone else, we first read the story on CNET, and CNET likely found out when the Alliance simply updated its website. As you probably know, AOM was formed in September…
DetailsAt its June 2017 Worldwide Developer’s Conference, Apple announced support for HEVC playback in HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) delivered to iOS, MacOS, and tvOS end points. For many, this announcement raised more questions than answers, which we hope to address in this article. By way of background, at Streaming Media West 2017, I co-produced a…
DetailsIt’s easy to imagine the deployment of HEVC as a case study in business and technology schools about how not to launch a technology. Not only do you have a launch cycle that clearly limited adaption, you also have classic illustrations of two of the major problems related to standard-essential patents, patent holdup, and royalty stacking. Patent…
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