Codecs

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve published a comprehensive report that documents the testing, quality, and performance of the Low Complexity Enhanced Video Codec (LCEVC) as developed by V-Nova and in the process of becoming standardized by MPEG. By way of background, I’ve been consulting with V-Nova to test LCEVC using a range of test files …

Previous tests presented here showed that a Windows version of FFmpeg compiled by Zeranoe was about four times slower than a version compiled by a colleague who works in an OTT organization. Since then, Miguel Perez contacted the FFmpeg organization and Zeranoe, who researched the issue, recompiled, and created a new download that resolves the problem.  To test the new …

AV1 encoding on Windows is now only 2x slower than x265. With a properly compiled version of FFmpeg, encoding performance is slightly faster than the Alliance for Open Media’s encoder, though output quality is very slightly lower. Congrats to AOM for delivering on their promise to get encoding times down. Thanks for all the help I got from multiple sources, …

AV1 encoding is now only 2x slower than x265. See the latest results here.  Though FFmpeg took 50 minutes to produce a test file that both x264 and x265 encoded in about two minutes, the Alliance for Open Media’s aomenc encoder, running the same version of AV1 (version 2) produced the file in about 15 minutes. So FFmpeg’s slow AV1 …

AV1 encoding is now only 2x slower than x265. See the latest results here.  I began testing AV1 early this week. Briefly, my tests involve 16 ten-second clips in four genres (movies, sports, animations, gaming) and an “other” category (music video, nature video). I’ve completed the first set of tests with FFmpeg 4.3, benchmarking x264, x265, and the latest version …

I’m reviewing AV1 encoders for Streaming Media Magazine and was performing some QC on the AV1 files that I produced with the latest version of FFmpeg. Two file details I always check are GOP size and whether the GOPs are closed or not. I check these for multiple reasons.

AV1 encoding is now only 2x slower than x265. See the latest results here.  I’m comparing AV1 encoders for Streaming Media Magazine. I plan to include codecs from: The Alliance for Open Media (hopefully versions 1.0/2.0) Visionular Intel Mozilla (Mozilla is out – didn’t respond to my inquiry). If there are any other codecs that should be considered, please get …

On its preview page for Apple TV 4K, Apple announced that the update to tvOS 14, which is expected to ship this fall, will support “YouTube videos in their full 4K glory.” By way of background, YouTube produces most 1080p videos using H.264 which plays everywhere but produces larger resolutions using either the VP9 or AV1 codecs. Apple never supported …

Live streaming at scale is the perfect application for hardware transcoders that deliver highly-affordable encoding density. Xilinx just announced a series of transcoding appliances targeting these live streaming use cases built around the new Xilinx Real-Time (RT) Server reference architecture. I’ve been benchmarking output quality with two card-based encoders deployed in these appliances, the Alveo U30 and Alveo U50. The …

Many 2021 model Smart TVs support AV1 decoding, making it a good time to start thinking about how to encode AV1 videos. A great way to start is our course Encoding with the AV1 Codec, which details how to encode AV1 encoded video with FFmpeg (libaom-av1), the Alliance for Open Media’s standalone aomenc encoder, Intel’s SVT-AV1, and Visionular’s Aurora1.  Would …