The promise of a unifying standard to simplify our lives is attractive, but putting it into practice is another thing. Here’s how one HTML5 video project got messy in a hurry. As much as we expect standards like HTML5 to simplify our jobs, oftentimes they don’t. In fact, a recent HTML5-related project convinced me that the term “multivendor standard” is …

Stephen Nathans-Kelly, a video producer at Streaming Media Magazine, is carving conference videos into short useful segments. Here are the first two videos on building your encoding ladder from my talk on how to use objective quality metrics you can watch in its entirety here, as well as download the handout. The first video covers the bitrate side, the second …

Every compressed file involves dozens of configuration-related decisions, including resolution, data rate, H.264 profile, VBR or CBR, entropy coding technique, x.264 preset, b-frames, reference frames—the list goes on and on. Most encoding prof