Recent Posts

Comparing CPUs, GPUs, and ASICs for High-Volume Transcoding

ASIC was the overall cost and performance leader.

This case study compares CAPEX, power consumption, and co-location costs for GPU, CPU, and ASIC-based transcoding.  This case study was derived from Ilya Mikhaelis‘ recent talk at NETINT’s symposium on Building Your Live Streaming Cloud. Images have been consolidated and modified slightly. You can view Ilya’s talk and download his slides here: bit.ly/vovs.   Ilya Mikhaelis is the streaming backend tech …

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Learn To: Use Capped CRF with SVT-AV1 for Live Streaming

Learn to use Capped CRF with SVT-AV1 and FFmpeg for live transcoding, including how capped CRF compares to VBR and CBR. All tests and results are available in downloadable PDF. Capped CRF is an alternative to VBR and CBR that saves bandwidth on easy-to-encode sequences and preserves quality on hard-to-encode sequences. Our tests with SVT-AV1 and FFmpeg show: Performance: Capped …

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Best SVT-AV1 Bitrate Control Technique for Live Streaming

There are four bitrate control techniques worth considering for live encoding/transcoding using the SVT-AV1 codec. These are: Capped CRF VBR Capped VBR Constrained VBR Here’s what I found: Overall: Capped CRF shows promise with significant bitrate savings, good quality retention, and the best overall performance by ~10 – 25% (meaning more streams from the same hardware). VBR was generally the …

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