I’m pleased to announce my new video compression course on Udemy entitled Video Compression for Web, Disc and PC/TV/Console Playback. The course will help those new to compression get up to speed quickly, and will serve as a valuable resource for novice to intermediate users seeking to optimize their encoding quality and workflows. You can see a video describing the …

Author’s note:  The article has been updated with information about Valdor acquiring the Niagara and GoStream product lines. It’s no secret that ViewCast, one of the longest tenured veterans in the streaming media marketplace, has been under a lot of financial pressure lately, though their products have always been solid, at least for me. Last August, they formed a strategic …

MPEG LA is the licensing authority that manages the patent portfolios for MPEG-2 and H.264 patent groups. The organization has received some bad press lately from Steve Forbes, writing in Fox News, and Howard Williams, writing for TelecomTV. The common complaint seems to be that MPEG LA is charging royalties for old and expired patents, which, in the words of Williams, …