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Deciding whether to encode on-premise or in the cloud is one of the most critical decisions facing any streaming publisher. Two recent articles provide both strong opinions and insights on this decision and are worthy of review. Our take? Do the math and make your own decision. The first article is “Why we’re leaving the cloud,” by David Heinemeir Hannson. …

This tutorial teaches you how to install and use FFMetrics, a free tool that lets you compute and visualize VMAF, SSIM, and PSNR on up to 12 files.  Let me start this article by stating that the one program I couldn’t live without in my role as video tester and evaluator is the Moscow State University Video Quality Measurement Too …

I took two pictures of clocks in my kitchen this morning, on the left is the microwave, on the right, the coffee maker. Which time is correct and what’s the key clue? If you guessed microwave because it’s about the time I actually start working in the morning, you’d be half right. The answer? The microwave’s clock is correct, and …

This article compares VVC, EVC, and LCEVC with H.264, HEVC, and AV1. Its’ useful if you’re attempting to understand the goals and capabilities of these codecs. In 2020, MPEG announced three new codecs, Versatile Video Coding (VVC), Essential Video Coding (EVC), and Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding (LCEVC). As of January 2022, all are released and available for testing which I …

Dr. Dmitriy Vatolin is the Head of the Moscow State University Graphics and Media Lab and one of my favorite colleagues in the streaming quality space. His group produces the Video Quality Measurement Tool (VQMT) that I use almost every day and publishes many codec studies that compare the latest and greatest with comprehensive, and real-world testing. Dr. Vatolin was …

Streaming producers need tools to explore different encoding options and verify their work. Here are two free Windows tools that I couldn’t live without. MediaInfo MediaInfo is a video analysis tool that displays the most significant data points regarding a video file, including resolution, data rate, codec, bit depth, frame rate, duration, etc. It’s available for download here, and there …