February, 2023

• 11 February

  How Firmware Helps Keep ASICs Up to Date

  

  ASICs have an unfair (and inaccurate) reputation for being obsolete the day they leave the foundry. However, while some functions are baked into the hardware, firmware, and driver software enable continual upgrades in both features and performance. To explore these capabilities, I spoke with two members of the NETINT development team, Neil Gunn, who is NETINT’s Video Firmware Tech Lead, …

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• 11 February

  Streaming Industry Insights: The Bitmovin Video Developer Report 2023

  

  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 …

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• 11 February

  Maximizing Quality and Throughput in FFmpeg Scaling

  

  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 …

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• 11 February

  How to Build an Encoding Ladder: What You Need to Know

  

  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 …

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• 11 February

  Key Lessons from YouTube’s ARGOS Encoding ASIC

  

  Even in 2023, many high-volume streaming producers continue to rely on software-based transcoding, despite the clear CAPEX, OPEX, and environmental benefits of ASIC-based transcoding. At least part of this inertia relates to outdated concerns about the shortcomings of ASICs, including sub-par quality and lack of upgradeability. As a parent, I long ago concluded that there were no words that could …

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• 11 February

  What is Cloud Gaming (and Why You Care)

  

  Video games are a huge market segment, projected to reach US$221.4 billion in 2023 and expanding to an estimated US$285 billion by 2027. Of that, cloud gaming grossed an estimated US$3 billion+ in 2022 and is projected to produce over US$12 billion in revenue by 2026. If you’re not familiar with cloud gaming, the next few blog posts will bring …

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December, 2022

• 24 December

  HEVC Passes AV1 on CanIUse

  

  For some reason I can’t explain, Molly Brown’s comment from the movie Titanic, “there’s something you don’t see every day,” (while watching the doomed ship sink), has stuck with me since I saw the movie back in 1997. It recently came to mind when a colleague informed me that HEVC support had eclipsed AV1 on the CanIUse website. You see …

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• 17 December

  Computing the payback period on ASIC-based transcoders

  

  One of the most power-hungry processes performed in data centers is software-based live transcoding, which can be performed much more efficiently with ASIC-based transcoders. With power costs soaring and carbon emissions an ever-increasing concern, data centers that perform high-volume live transcoding should strongly consider switching to ASIC-based transcoders like the NETINT T408. To assist in this transition, NETINT recently published …

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• 13 December

  SVT-AV1 vs. LibAOM

  

  In August 2020, the Alliance for Open Media created a software working group to “use the Scalable Video Technology for AV1 (SVT-AV1) encoder developed by Intel…to create AV1 encoder implementations that deliver excellent video compression across applications in ways that remove computational complexity trade-offs for an ever-growing video delivery marketplace.” Testing published around that time indicated that SVT-AV1 had quite …

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• 9 December

  The Intersection of AI and Video Encoding

  

  The intersection of video processing and artificial intelligence (AI) delivers exciting new functionality, from real-time quality enhancement for video publishers to object detection and optical character recognition for security applications. Forward-thinking product designs incorporate both video processing (decode/scale/overlay/encode) and AI to provide the optimal platform for video-related AI applications like those discussed below.   For example, I recently joined NETINT in …

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