Articles

H.264 is the most widely used codec today, whether for streaming via Flash or Silverlight or for the Apple iPod, iPhone, and iPad product lines. If you’ve worked with H.264 before, the format is old hat for you. But if you’re cutting over from VP6 or Windows Media or expanding distribution to H.264-compatible devices, you’re faced with a learning curve. …

This article compares H.264 to WebM, Google’s implementation of the VP8 codec, using three variables (encoding time, compressed quality, and CPU requirements) for playback on three personal computers. Here’s the CliffsNotes version of the results: Using Sorenson Squeeze to produce both H.264 and WebM, the latter definitely took longer, but there are techniques that you can use to reduce the …

WebM/VP8 is Google’s recent entry into the codec market. Here’s a roughly chronological list of resources about the codec/technology. If you see any prominent articles that I’m missing, please let me know. Webm – an open web media project – Google site for WebM. The Moving Picture: Past Performance is No Guarantee of Future Success – (8/2/2010) – EventDV, by …

Google recently open-sourced the VP8 codec for video on the web (for the key facts on this development, see Tim Siglin’s latest Streamline column). Should you care? Not so much, I’d say; Google’s recent launch of VP8 reminded me of a couple of theories that I hold dear, one current, one from long ago. The current one is that past performance …

In the first edition of this month’s Affordable HD enewsletter, we keep the focus on the Apple Mac Pro, specifically analyzing the optimal memory configurations for editing and encoding with Apple Final Cut Studio, Adobe Creative Suite 4, and Telestream Episode Engine. I looked at several scenarios. Figure 1. The Apple Mac Pro’s memory tray. First, I tested performance at …

Camtasia has been my go-to screen recording application on Windows since forever, and I have at least 200 Camtasia recorded projects under my belt. But seldom, if ever, have I edited and produced my project in Camtasia, preferring the more familiar environs of Adobe Premiere Pro or Apple Final Cut Pro. To be brutally honest, in previous versions, Camtasia’s editing application, Camtasia Studio, felt clunky, inefficient, and frequently dysfunctional, …

There’s an old Hollywood joke with the punch line, “but I really want to direct.” I’m not sure what the actual joke is, or if it’s funny, but the reason I bring it up is that if you talk to writers, most would say, “but I really want to be on TV.” Certainly the web and websites such as Livestream …

Just finished watching an interesting video entitled Video Case Studies – Top 10 Tips, which was produced by UK video producer Aspect Film and Video. You can watch it here, though you may need to sign in first. The top ten tips were (drumroll please): 1. Structure – have customer identify business challenge, then action you took, then beneficial results. …

As part of my First Looks review of VP8 and WebM for StreamingMedia.com, ran a bunch of VP8 and H.264 comparisons, initially using the MainConcept H.264 codec, since that’s the codec included with Sorenson Squeeze, which I used to produce the VP8 files. Then, I added some comparison files produced using the x264 codec, encoding via the QuickTime-based x264Encoder version …

The launch of Adobe CS5 brings to bear the obvious comparison with Final Cut Studio (FCS). Since life has been far too quiet lately, I decided to tackle this subject, but from the perspective of the totally new user, not the experienced user who would rather fight than switch. In other words, what would you say if a total newbie …