TL/DR: Netflix updates VMAF to include a new model that reverses out the effects of techniques like sharpening, contrasting, and histogram equalization. As I reported in VMAF is Hackable: What Now?, you can increase VMAF scores via simple image enhancement techniques like sharpening, contrasting, and histogram equalization, which, when applied inappropriately, may not actually improve…
AV1 encoding is now only 2x slower than x265. See the latest results here. I began testing AV1 early this week. Briefly, my tests involve 16 ten-second clips in four genres (movies, sports, animations, gaming) and an “other” category (music video, nature video). I’ve completed the first set of tests with FFmpeg 4.3, benchmarking x264,…
I’m reviewing AV1 encoders for Streaming Media Magazine and was performing some QC on the AV1 files that I produced with the latest version of FFmpeg. Two file details I always check are GOP size and whether the GOPs are closed or not. I check these for multiple reasons. First, FFmpeg doesn’t have the most…
This article details how Brazilian OTT operator Telecine deployed MediaMelon SmartPlay and decreased bandwidth costs by about 42% while improving the MOS quality of the video delivered. SmartPlay also helped Telecine manage the 4X increase in demand due to COVID-19. This is the third and final story about MediaMelon SmartPlay. The first article describes how…
AV1 encoding is now only 2x slower than x265. See the latest results here. I’m comparing AV1 encoders for Streaming Media Magazine. I plan to include codecs from: The Alliance for Open Media (hopefully versions 1.0/2.0) Visionular Intel Mozilla (Mozilla is out – didn’t respond to my inquiry). If there are any other codecs that…
In the previous post, I described what MediaMelon SmartPlay is and identified some of the benefits. In this post, I’ll discuss pricing and how to integrate SmartPlay into your encoding, delivery, and playback infrastructure. Pricing Overview Let’s briefly discuss the SmartPlay pricing model here and look at ROI at the end of this document. There…
MediaMelon’s SmartPlay is a streaming optimization solution that reduces bandwidth use by 35% or more and improves QoE while working with your existing ABR content without reencoding. As you’ll read in this post, SmartPlay works by analyzing the quality of every segment in an ABR package and producing a hintfile used by the SmartPlay plug-in…
Live streaming at scale is the perfect application for hardware transcoders that deliver highly-affordable encoding density. Xilinx just announced a series of transcoding appliances targeting these live streaming use cases built around the new Xilinx Real-Time (RT) Server reference architecture. I’ve been benchmarking output quality with two card-based encoders deployed in these appliances, the Alveo…
MediaMelon SmartPlay is a streaming optimization solution that reduces bandwidth costs by 35% or more and improves QoE while working with your existing ABR content without re-encoding. SmartPlay works with any existing encoder, including those with content-adaptive encoding (also called per-title), and most existing players and CDNs. Briefly, SmartPlay works by analyzing the quality of…
When I first started using Bento4 it ran only on Python 2.7x and earlier. For this reason, the installation instructions in my book Learn to Produce Videos with FFmpeg in 30 Minutes or Less describe how to install Python version 2.7. At some point, however, Bento upgraded to Python 3.x, obsoleting those instructions. I’ve upgraded…
