FFmpeg

If you’re building a large-scale in-house VOD encoder, your job just got easier as SVT open-sources Encore, their VOD encoder.  One of the most fundamental decisions all streaming publishers must make is whether to purchase a commercial encoder, use a commercial cloud encoder, or build their own, the classic make vs. buy. One of the most startling findings from the …

These are the most popular FFmpeg-related articles on the Streaming Learning Center over 2019-2020. I hope you find this list of FFmpeg resources useful. Discover Six FFmpeg Commands You Can’t Live Without – FFmpeg is a free command-line utility that serves as the engine for most of the largest cloud encoding farms in the world, public and private. But it …

I’m teaching two boot camps (virtually) at an upcoming Streaming Media Connect event, one for VOD and the other for live streaming; each costs $199. The courses are designed for newbies who need to get up to speed quickly on these topics. If the courses sound familiar, I taught both courses at Streaming Media West in October, though I’ve updated …

I’m teaching two boot camps (virtually) at an upcoming Streaming Media University event, one for VOD and the other for live streaming; each costs $199. The courses are designed for newbies who need to get up to speed quickly on these topics. If the courses sound familiar, I did teach the same courses at the Streaming Media West event in …

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 …

Note: This update details how to compute VMAF with FFmpeg on Windows. From my perspective, this feature has gotten progressively less usable and increasingly frustrating. Documentation is poor and the syntax is idiosyncratic and hard to use. If you have any alternative, like Moscow State University’s Video Quality Measurement Tool, I would spend the money and get something that works …

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, …

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.