Codecs

Telestream resurrects encoding.com’s Global Media Format Report to provide valuable data on codec usage and other production details.  For years, encoding.com’s Global Media Format Report provided a key set of data points on codec usage and other topics from the prior years encoding production. Since encoding.com was the first and remains one of the largest cloud encoding providers, this data …

This article provides a quick reference for video codec details from H.264 to LCEVC, excluding EVC, because so little progress has been made on productization. Codec Overview Starting at the top, the year released emphasizes how long H.264 has remained the dominant codec, as evidenced by ReThink’s 2023 usage rate of about 72%. Browser penetration, as measured by CanIuse, is …

Recently I was asked to visually illustrate the data rate difference between two HEVC files, one encoded with CBR at 6 Mbps, the other using capped CRF with the same cap. Of course, everyone’s go-to bitrate visualization viewer has always been Bitrate Viewer, which does a great job displaying the bitrate of a single H.264-encoded file. Unfortunately, it can’t input …

One of my sweetest memories of bringing up our two daughters was weekly trips to the grocery store. Each got a $5.00 bribe for accompanying their father, which they happily invested in various tchotchkes that seldom lasted the week. When we exited the car, “parking lot rules” always applied, which meant that each daughter held one of Daddy’s hands for …

If you encode with FFmpeg on AWS, you probably know that you have three CPU options: AMD, Graviton, and Intel. Which is the best AWS CPU for FFmpeg? This article reveals all. For those in a hurry, it’s Graviton for x264 and AMD for x265, often by a significant margin. But the devil is always in the details, and if …

Below are six video presentations and downloadable PDFs relating to VVC deployment from a session at Streaming Media East in 2023, all from recognized experts from companies developing and deploying VVC. The session was sponsored by Access Advance.  The sessions begin with an in-depth exploration of VVC and how it compares to other codecs such as H.264, HEVC, and AV1. …

Codecs are tools we use to reach our viewers. So, when it comes to codecs, the best ability is play-ability, or the ability to play on the target platforms our viewers prefer to watch. For years, H.264 has remained dominant simply because it played everywhere; but as videos grow larger, faster, and deeper in color, the cost of distributing H.264 …

This blog includes the video and handout from my talk on “How to Produce x264 and x265 Video at Maximum Quality and Maximum Efficiency” at NAB 2023 (thanks to Dan Rayburn). Here’s the description. This research-based session explores configuration options like presets, threads, color depth, and others that impact output quality and encoding efficiency. Balancing encoding cost and streaming bandwidth, …

The last time I looked at VVC playback in software was for this article in Streaming Media Magazine. Fraunhofer’s VVDec decoder delivered an uninspiring 39 frames per second when converting the input file to YUV. This was on a (then) nine year old i7-based HP desktop. I just retested with a version of FFmpeg that Fraunhofer supplied, and this number …

Two free learning resources are available on the Streaming Media website; How to Produce VVC With FFmpeg and How to Script for FFmpeg Using PowerShell and BASH. They’re tutorials in the Streaming Media Sourcebook, an annual production containing useful articles and collections. Learn Variables and For Loops Here’s the abridged intro: Most FFmpeg users start by creating a simple static command …