My review of the Epiphan Pearl Nano is now available on Streaming Media. The video I produced for the review is below. Note that I really liked the feature set and usability but found that video quality suffered from a slight cast as you can in Figure 8 of the article and below. The cast is most visible in the …

Every year, the Streaming Media Sourcebook features tutorials to help streaming media professionals perform their daily tasks faster and better and buyer’s guides to help them purchase the right gear and software. This year I focused my articles on video production topics. Here are the tutorials with a brief description: Connecting a DSLR or Camcorder to an External Mic – …

Pleased to announce my second report on LCEVC Technology entitled LCEVC x264 Report: Live Sports & eGames, ABR Ladder. The first report assessed VOD performance at 1080p; this report tested live performance using a full encoding ladder and weighted average performance as well as BD-Rate comparisons. Here’s the Table of Contents. Note, in particular, the GB Tech report in the …

So, here I am, just about to launch a course on webinars and live video production (now launched), and I experience the worst two virtual presentations ever. In this blog, I’ll share the gory details and let you know how you (perhaps) can avoid the same fate. All that said, this is more a writer’s self-therapy for me than learning …

I was honored to present a free webinar entitled Video Codecs in 2021 and Beyond with Muvi on April 8, 2021. The slides and recording are below. Here’s the description. There has never been a time where so many video codecs were available (or soon to be available) for video producers. From MPEG, we have AVC (H.264), HEVC (H.265), VVC …

Reducing the reference frame setting from 16 to 1 when using x.264’s veryslow preset decreased encoding time by 46% on ten 2-minute test files while dropping the average VMAF score from 96.06 to 95.97, a decrease of less than .001. If you used the Medium preset, at the default setting of 3 reference frames, changing to ref=1 would drop encoding …

As the producer of webinars and virtual training events for Streaming Media Magazine and Streaming Learning Center, I’m always interested in information that helps me produce more effective events. A recent report from Bluejeans, the Verizon-owned video conference provider, provided several interesting data points. By way of background, the report discussed survey data collected by IDG from 200 respondents in a …

The webinar is over; thanks to all who registered and attended. You can watch the recorded version below. The handout is available here. Description: This free webinar teaches streaming media novices how to produce high-quality H.264 output delivered via efficient encoding ladders that optimize quality, compatibility, and bitrate efficiency. The webinar will also introduce the concept of per-title encoding and …