Articles

…is NOT how they encode their video. But, they do a lot of other things right with their streaming video. GoDaddy.com aggressively advertises videos on television to convince you to visit their web site. With celebrities Danica Patrick and Jillian Michaels on board, it’s a pretty good strategy. Of course, when most viewers see these TV commercials, they probably wonder …

In my latest survey, the average video configuration was very close to 640×360, with a combined audio/video data rate of 837 kbps (758 kbps video, 79 kbps audio). This computes to an average bits per pixel value of .115. If videos posted on your site are lower than these figures, you’re probably being unnecessarily conservative. I track the data rate …

This article discusses what data rate is and why it’s important, and what bits per pixel measures and how to compute it.  What is Data Rate? Data rate (or bit rate) is the amount of data per second of video, usually expressed in kilobits (kbps) or megabits per second (Mbps). When I say that ESPN distributes their video at 800 …

According to the latest statistics from NetMarketShare, the current penetration of HTML5-compatible browsers in the desktop market is 58.1% maximum. To completely serve these browers, you’d have to encode in three formats, with 47.5% of desktops compatible with WebM, 44.1% compatible with H.264, and 8.3% compatible with Ogg (this is the Firefox 3.6 crowd). To calculate these numbers, I created …

By now you’ve heard that Adobe will discontinue the development of the Flash Player on the Android platform, stating in part that “HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms.” Boy, they weren’t kidding. I was interested to …

Summary Depending upon the project type, rendering with GPU-acceleration in Creative Suite 5.5 can reduce rendering time by up to 92% over CPU-only rendering. Since NVIDIA’s CUDA technology is the only GPU that currently accelerates rendering in the Adobe Media Encoder and Premiere Pro, buying a notebook without NVIDIA hardware for CS5.5 production is a huge mistake. If you’re in …

Executive Summary: Adobe’s Mercury Engine, as powered by NVIDIA’s CUDA-enabled graphics cards, can be a huge time saver during project preview and rendering. But the performance benefit depends upon the source content and project type. In some instances, a high-end CUDA card delivers the most benefits; in others, investing in a dual-CPU workstation makes more sense. This detailed analysis looks …

Here are the handouts from my recent presesentation at Streaming Media West in LA. Here’s the description. This seminar starts by detailing the playback specs for all iDevices, old and new. Then, it shares the strategies used by prominent iTunes publishers to serve the complete range of installed iDevices. Next, the seminar switches to cellular wireless delivery, with a technical …

Here are the handouts from my recent presesentation at Streaming Media West in LA. Here’s the description. This session identifies the most relevant adaptive streaming technologies and details the most critical factors for comparing them. Next, it details how to choose the ideal number of streams and key encoding parameters. Then it provides an overview of options for encoding and …

Here are the handouts from my recent presesentation at Streaming Media West in LA. Here’s the description. Learn the technological fundamentals behind encoding both H.264 and WebM formats for playback with the HTML5 <video> tag. Learn the basics of H.264 and WebM encoding and how to produce it for HTML5 distribution. In addition, see how the various H.264 and WebM …