The Bitmovin Video Developer Report, now in its 6th edition, is one of the most far-reaching and useful documents available to streaming professionals (now with no registration required). It’s a report that I happily download each December and generally refer to frequently during the next twelve months. Like the proverbial elephant, what you find important in the report depends upon …

The thing about FFmpeg is that there are almost always multiple ways to accomplish the same basic function. In this post, we look at four approaches to scaling. We found that if you’re scaling using the default -s function (-s 1280×720), you’re leaving a bit of quality on the table as compared to other methods. How much depends upon the …

Learning how to build an encoding ladder is one of the most fundamental tasks for a streaming media professional. It’s astounding how much you need to know to get it right. By way of background, the original encoding ladder used by most professionals was from Apple Tech Note TN2224, long since replaced by Apple’s HLS Authoring Specifications. This H.264-only ladder …