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 post details how to install, update and add FFmpeg to Windows Subsystem for Linux so you can run Linux in Windows with minimal muss or fuss. Here’s why you might want to install WSL in the first place. I recently taught a session at Streaming Media East on using variables with FFmpeg (download handout here – note that free …

This blog includes the video and handout from my talk on “How to Produce x264 and x265 Video at Maximum Quality and Maximum Efficiency” at NAB 2023 (thanks to Dan Rayburn). Here’s the description. This research-based session explores configuration options like presets, threads, color depth, and others that impact output quality and encoding efficiency. Balancing encoding cost and streaming bandwidth, …