Encoding

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 …

In the previous post, I described what MediaMelon SmartPlay is and identified some of the benefits. In this post, I’ll discuss pricing and how to integrate SmartPlay into your encoding, delivery, and playback infrastructure. Pricing Overview Let’s briefly discuss the SmartPlay pricing model here and look at ROI at the end of this document. There are two pricing models. The …

MediaMelon’s SmartPlay is a streaming optimization solution that reduces bandwidth use by 35% or more and improves QoE while working with your existing ABR content without reencoding. As you’ll read in this post, SmartPlay works by analyzing the quality of every segment in an ABR package and producing a hintfile used by the SmartPlay plug-in installed in the player to …

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 …

MediaMelon SmartPlay is a streaming optimization solution that reduces bandwidth costs by 35% or more and improves QoE while working with your existing ABR content without re-encoding. SmartPlay works with any existing encoder, including those with content-adaptive encoding (also called per-title), and most existing players and CDNs. Briefly, SmartPlay works by analyzing the quality of your live or VOD ABR …

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 …

Here are descriptions of the two courses I’ll be teaching in a few days on streaming media production.  Streaming Media East will be held online, with five 3-hour pre-conference training sessions that cost $199 each and a robust assortment of free 1-hour sessions. Here are the titles, dates, and times of the pre-conference sessions I’ll be teaching plus a short …

Streaming media production and delivery has become even more critical over the last few months; here’s an opportunity to boost your skills and knowledge via live online training by recognized industry experts.  I’m sad that Streaming Media East won’t be held in Boston as planned; I really enjoy those shows. However, Streaming Media East will be held online, with five …

One thing that never gets old is a five-star review on Amazon. I just received another one for my book, Learn to Produce Video with FFmpeg: In Thirty Minutes or Less (2018 Edition), which is available on Amazon ($34.95) and for PDF download ($29.95). In this review from a verified purchaser, the customer said: “I would consider this book a …