Recent Posts

H.264 Codec Backgrounder

This article on the Wowza website provides a quick overview of the H.264 codec: what it is, how it performs, what it costs, and what it’s good for. It concludes with a section on what you need to know to effectively deploy the H.264 codec, particularly within the Wowza Streaming Engine software and the Wowza Streaming Cloud service. The article …

Read More »

Per-Title Encoding Article up on Streaming Media Magazine

We have been huge proponents of per-title encoding since its inception in 2015. Boy, has it come a long way. In this Streaming Media article, I recount the history of per-title encoding and trace its advancement from single file optimizations that could adjust only file data rate to AI-driven adjustments that can change resolution, data rate, frame rate, codec, color …

Read More »

Real-World Bandwidth Savings from VP9, HEVC, and AV1

This article is about a video lesson that computes the bandwidths savings afforded by the FFmpeg-based implementations of VP9 (libvpx-VP9), H.264 (x264), HEVC (x265), and AV1 (libaom-AV1). The lesson uses the Netflix convex hull analysis to build unique encoding ladders for each test clip and codec and shows why BD-Rate figures don’t accurately predict real-world savings. Towards the end, it …

Read More »