Encoding

Jan Ozer here. I spent the last 2 months working with four AV1 codecs, benchmarking them against each other and x264 and x265. I’m presenting my findings in this for-fee 75-minute webinar ($149.99).  There are two parts; the first shares what I learned about the codecs, and the second details what I learned about encoding with them and creating the …

This lesson is derived from my book, Learn to Produce Videos with FFmpeg In 30 Minutes or Less ($34.95), and my course, FFmpeg for Adaptive Bitrate Production ($29.95)  (which includes a PDF copy of the book). Don’t just learn FFmpeg; become an expert in video compression.  Overview: Setting your I-frame interval in seconds rather than frames allows you to use …

While standards-based video codecs like H.264 and HEVC tend to dominate, standards-based video quality metrics have never risen to the same usage or attention level. With two innovative and highly accurate metrics now available from the ITU-T, this may change in the near term. Briefly, these models are: ITU-T Rec. P.1203, which calculates the quality of HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) …

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.  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.

This article details how Brazilian OTT operator Telecine deployed MediaMelon SmartPlay and decreased bandwidth costs by about 42% while improving the MOS quality of the video delivered. SmartPlay also helped Telecine manage the 4X increase in demand due to COVID-19. This is the third and final story about MediaMelon SmartPlay. The first article describes how SmartPlay works and the benefits …