A recent Netflix post trumpets AV1’s suitability for mass-market distribution, but high encoding costs, the lack of HDR support, and nascent support in the living room make AV1 a non-starter for most producers. Most of these issues should be resolved by mid-2023, when mainstream usage should really start to blossom. Netflix: AV1 on (Some) Smart TVs In their November 2021 …

This video discusses how to choose the best cloud-based per-title provider. This was a talk I gave to the Streaming Video Alliance in late November 2021. The 23-minute presentation covers the following agenda with extensive examples. You’ll find the talk useful if you’re comparing per=title encoding features, particularly cloud-based, but also third-party options you can buy/lease and install and run …

Companies attempting to formulate the ideal encoding ladder for specific videos or classes of content should incorporate both the harmonic mean VMAF score for overall quality and the percentile score to minimize transient quality issues.   I’ve spent much of the last few weeks benchmarking H.264 and HEVC cloud-based per-title encoding capabilities like those available from AWS Elemental, Microsoft Azure, Brightcove, …