On a LinkedIn post here, Johan Skaneby asked: Technical comparisons and documentation on different codec performance are very interesting and important, but all development of technologies are always closely related to market requirements and business models. My experience is that the challenge for decision-makers in existing and profitable distribution workflows is to understand the business…
This post provides an introduction to video codecs. It’s an entry-level article designed to help streaming newbies understand what codecs are, what they do, how to compare them, and why they succeed or fail. If you’re new to streaming and need to get up to speed quickly, I’m hosting two three-hour boot camps at Streaming…
Here are some of the most popular codec-related articles that I’ve written lately for this site, Streaming Media Magazine, and some other outlets. General The Streaming Codec Landscape in 2021 – (January 2021) By any measure, 2020 was a hectic year for video codecs or the compression technologies that drive streaming video. This year saw…
I recently received the following message from a colleague, a respected IP attorney, on LinkedIn. Hi Jan, hope all’s well. What do you make of Google joining HEVC Advance’s pool (now Access Advance)? Talking to some relevant players, I think it’s a prelude to Chrome supporting HEVC. Do you think it has any implications for…
Thank you to all who registered and attended. The archived version of this event is available here: registration is required. Free Webinar: Choosing a Codec in 2021 and Beyond December 8, 2020, 2:00 – 3:00 PM EST Codecs like H.264 and AV1 are the key enabling technologies for all entertainment and business-oriented video distribution,…
Recently I received a short list of compression-related questions from a consulting buddy; he’s always been gracious in answering my questions and I wanted to return the favor. Since he’s asking, I thought others might be curious as well; hence this blog post that largely incorporates my responses to his questions. Here are the questions:…
VVC is one of the three codecs to be launched by MPEG in 2020. I wrote about VVC extensively here (business side) and here (technical side), and wanted to provide some quick updates. By way of background, codecs have two sides, the performance side, and the business side. In this short article, I’ll address both.…
I’ve spent the last two months testing four AV1 codecs accessible via command-line arguments and I start testing VVC codecs next week. Trying to fairly and accurately test the capabilities of these codecs turned out to be a pretty grueling and messy task. The key challenge, of course, was creating the optimal command string for…
Overview: When measuring video quality with metrics like VMAF you should measure and report consistency (transient quality and standard deviation) as well as mean quality. If you’re interested in the quality consistency of AV1 codecs and typical configuration options, you can attend a webinar ($149) or take a course on AV1 production that I will…
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…