TimeLine Layout

August, 2021

  • 31 August

    Webinar: Choosing the Optimal Remote Production Technology and Workflow

    Here’s the webinar; links to the handouts are below the video window. Thanks to Corey, Anthony, and John for pulling together the information and delivering three great presentations. Corey’s handout here: Anthony’s handout here: John’s handout here: Here’s the description: Remote production became a “thing” during the pandemic and it will remain a thing going forward. But what precisely is …

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  • 26 August

    Which Codecs Does YouTube Use?

    Author’s Note (March 15, 2022): A colleague recently advised me that YouTube was now encoding all videos into VP9 format. A quick check revealed that he was correct; literally every video that I checked, including some uploaded back in 2010, was encoded into VP9 as well as H.264. What’s interesting is that many low-volume videos, like this one with 118 …

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  • 20 August

    Take the Bitmovin Video Developer Survey

    Contribute to the one of the most valuable sources of industry data by completing the Bitmovin Video Developer Survey.  One of the most important information sources that I’ve come to rely upon is the Bitmovin Video Developer Report (2020, 2019, 2018, 2017). I’ve covered it for Streaming Media multiple times (see here) and refer to its findings frequently in my …

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  • 6 August

    AVQT Compared to VMAF and SSIMPLUS

    Author’s note: After completing this long and arduous post, Apple sent a note that I was interpolating their scores incorrectly, leading to more analysis shown as an addendum below.  What: This article compares Apple’s AVQT metric to VMAF and SSIMWAVE’s SSIMPLUS metrics, with very limited subjective testing from Subjectify.us. The testing was extremely limited as are the conclusions you should …

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  • 1 August

    Beginner’s Guide to Encoding H.264

    Encoding H.264 with Wirecast

    The H.264 codec is still the most widely used video compression technology — aka codec in the world and likely will be for the next few years. For this reason, every streaming media professional should know what the H.264 codec is and how to encode with H.264. This beginner’s guide to encoding H.264 will describe what H.264 is, detail the …

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July, 2021

  • 29 July

    Panel Discussion on Advanced Video Compression and Applications

    I’m appearing on a panel next week at the SPIE Optics and Photonics Conference entitled Advanced Video Compression and Applications with a host of encoding luminaries. The panel will be streamed on August 3, 2021, at 3:30 PM PDT, but only registered guests can watch the Zoom feed (you can register here). The discussion will then be made available on YouTube …

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  • 27 July

    Testing Video Quality With Apple AVQT

    In the first article in this series, Baby Steps with Apple’s Advanced Video Quality Tool and Quality Metric, I detailed what Apple’s Advanced Video Quality Tool (AVQT) is and how to use it. In this article, I tested multiple video files with Apple AVQT and describe my user experience. In the next article, I’ll review how AVQT scoring compares to …

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  • 27 July

    How to Choose Your Bitrate Control Technique

    This article is derived from a lesson in Streaming Media 101: Technical Onboarding for Streaming Media Professionals. If you’re looking for an efficient way to get up to speed on key streaming terms, technologies, workflows, and best practices, check out the course here.  Every time you encode a video file with a distribution-oriented codec like H.264, HEVC, VP9, or AV1, …

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  • 27 July

    The past, present, and future of per-title encoding

    Figure 2. Finding the Convex Hull.

    Maya Angelou once said that “You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been,” and so it is with per-title encoding. What began as a one-dimensional data rate adjustment that reflected the simple reality that all videos encode differently is now a complex analysis that incorporates frame rate, resolution, color gamut, and dynamic ranges, …

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  • 26 July

    AV1 Codec: AOMedia Video 1 Explained

    This article on the Wowza website provides a quick overview of the AV1 codec: what it is, how it performs, what it costs, and what it’s good for today. It’s useful if you want to get a quick feel for where AV1 fits in with other codecs. The article is the fourth in a five-part series that covers H.264, VP9, …

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