November, 2010

• 2 November

  WebM vs. H.264 Bakeoff – Presentation and Handout

  I just finished my H.264 vs. WebM Bakeoff presentation – you can download the PDF below. You’ve heard the hype about VP8, but how does it really compare to H.264? This session compares quality, encoding speed, and playback requirements. It also details access to VP8 encoding from within live and on-demand encoding tools, the availability of hardware playback acceleration, and …

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• 2 November

  Encoding H.264 Video for Streaming and Progressive Download – Presentation

  Here’s the description of the presentation that I just gave at StreamingMedia West. You can download the PDF below. Enjoy! This seminar focuses on producing H.264 video  for streaming or progressive download. It starts with a deep look at key H.264 encoding parameters like B-frames, profiles, and levels and how to customize encoding parameters for distributing via QuickTime and Flash. …

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• 2 November

  Fear and Loathing at StreamingMedia West

  Here at StreamingMedia West in Los Angeles this year (November, 2010) – same crowd, different location. I taught one seminar on H.264 Production for Streaming and Progressive Download, you can download the PDF here. You can find a few items of interest there; two tables showing H.264 playback statistics on Mac and Windows computers, and lots of details about streaming …

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• 1 November

  Microsoft Throws Silverlight Under the Bus

  Microsoft Silverlight has been very noticably used by NBC (Olympics/Sunday Night Football), but never achieved the penetration necessary for smaller businesses to adopt it. The thing is, while the sizzle behind Silverlight has always been video (as with Flash), the steak has always been Rich Internet Applications, and more specifically, the tools that developers use to build them. In my …

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October, 2010

• 21 October

  Adobe Announces HTML5 Player Widget

  Here’s a copy of the release that you can find here. HTML5 has received a tremendous amount of buzz, much of it driven by the potential for plugin-free video. However, the limited browser support for the HTML5 <video> tag has forced web designers to scramble for a solution that would work across platforms as well as browsers.  To help customers …

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• 15 October

  H.264 Presentations from Streaming Media Europe

  I gave two presentations at Streaming Media Europe last week, one a three hour presentation on producing H.264 for Flash, Silverlight, QuickTime and HTML5, the other a 30 minute short course on producing H.264. Both presentations are attached hereto. Here’s the agenda from the longer presentation. Most notable are new performance stats that I collected for H.264 playback on files …

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• 15 October

  Column on Distributing HD Videos over the Internet at EventDV.net

  Here’s how it starts. So there I was, struggling for an idea for a column, and editor Stephen Nathans-Kelly mentioned that there was growing interest in distributing HD event-based videos to clients over the internet. Fortunately, this dovetailed well with some research that I recently performed, so here we are. If you’re considering distributing some or all of your wedding …

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• 13 October

  The Moving Picture: So You Want to Deliver Your HD Videos Online…

  So there I was, struggling for an idea for a column, and editor Stephen Nathans-Kelly mentioned that there was growing interest in distributing HD wedding videos to clients over the internet. Fortunately, this dovetailed well with some research that I recently performed, so here we are. If you’re considering distributing some or all of your wedding or event-related content over …

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September, 2010

• 21 September

  Producing H.264 with Episode 6 and Squeeze 6.5

  Article just posted at Digital Content Producer. I got an early look at Telestream’s completely new Episode 6, with a hot new interface, and improved H.264 quality and performance. I also looked at Squeeze 6.5, which didn’t really update any H.264-related features.                               The bottom line …

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• 15 September

  The Moving Picture: Encoding Tips for 24p Footage

  If you’re shooting in 24p, you should deliver your projects in 24p. This sounds obvious and simple, but it can get surprisingly complex depending upon your choice of encoding and authoring tool. I just spent 2 weeks comparing MPEG-2 encoders, and I saw a surprising difference in quality and ability to deliver 24p footage that Apple’s DVD Studio Pro could …

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