VR and 360° video has all of the compression-related issues of flat video, and then some. Facebook’s new metrics, called SSIM360 and 360QVM, might simplify quality analysis for developers in the future, particularly if Facebook open sources the metrics. In a blog post called “Quality Assessment of 360° Video View Sessions,” Facebook will announce two objective quality metrics—SSIM360 and 360QVM—that the company …

Reaching multiple viewing platforms with a single live video stream used to be impossible, but not anymore. Here’s how to do it with Switchboard Cloud. Live content can be extremely engaging, and oftentimes, the more you spread it around, the better. This means streaming to accounts you have access to, and also to accounts controlled by partners, stakeholders, and others …

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ll be speaking twice at NAB in Las Vegas next week; once as host of a panel discussion on HEVC and AV1, the other a session on how to use objective quality metrics to assist encoding configurations. Details are below. If you’re at NAB and free, and the topics are relevant …

With streaming video data rates, less is always more, unless of course, lower data rates mean visible artifacts. I just finished a review of the ZPEG Engine for x264, which produced bitrate savings of 21% without blocks, banding, mosquitoes, or other problems that would be noticeable by typical viewers. This was an average saving; the data rate reduction in some …

After three years and multiple delays, the Alliance for Open Media froze its AV1 codec bitstream, thus setting up a cacophony of HEVC/AV1 face-offs in booths and meeting rooms at the upcoming NAB Show. These comparisons will largely dictate which codec will replace H.264 as the “it” codec for streaming to desktops, mobile devices, Smart TVs, and OTT devices, though the …

Moscow State University’s Video Quality Measurement Tool was already good. Enhancements in the new version, including new metrics and the ability to run multiple analyses simultaneously, make it even better. Moscow State University’s Video Quality Measurement Tool (VQMT) has always been one of the least expensive and most functional quality measurement tools available. The latest updates (10.0 and 10.1) add …

HEVC Advance announced today that it is eliminating subscription and title-by-title royalty fees for non-physical HEVC content distribution, making all streaming, cable, over-the-air broadcasts, and satellite distributions of encoded HEVC content royalty free. HEVC encoded content sold on Blu-ray discs and other storage devices will continue to be subject to a royalty. In a related move, HEVC Advance also reduced hardware royalty …

Now that programs like Wirecast and vMix make it simple to perform side-by-side interviews like my recent interview with Beamr’s Dror Gill below, I’ve been doing more of them. The tension has always been regarding video quality. Specifically, do I connect a camera to my HP notebook, or go with its internal webcam or my aging Logitech C615 webcam. Even …

We’ve known Beamr as an optimization company, and in 2016 they bought Vanguard Video, a codec company. Traditionally, Beamr sold SDKs to large customers, but now they’re launching a cloud transcoding service. I recently interviewed CTO Dror Gill about the new service; here’s the video.

The graph below shows two off-the-shelf players retrieving the same HLS manifest under the similar test conditions, which vary from 512 kbps at the low end to 5120 kbps at the top end. On the left, Player A, stopped retrieving video multiple times during the low bandwidth transmissions, stalling playback, which are the red lines at the bottom of the …