January, 2020

• 21 January

  Using a Simple Wildcard Command in FFmpeg

  

  Author’s note: This is a very simple automation technique for FFmpeg beginners. I’m sure there are much more efficient ways to script this project, but this represents my baby steps in FFmpeg automation. I recently started a consulting project that involved encoding multiple files to multiple CRF values to create rate-distortion curves and BD-Rate computations. I’m testing three codecs with …

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• 17 January

  Balance of Power Shifts Among HEVC Patent Pools

  

  Nine members of the MPEG LA HEVC patent pool are leaving the pool and now will be included within the HEVC Advance HEVC pool. This changes the balance of power between these two pools, though licensees who signed with the MPEG LA pool before the departures will continue to have coverage for these patents going forward. The MPEG LA pool, which has more …

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• 2 January

  Another Five-Star Review of Video Encoding by the Numbers

  

  Any book author will tell you that while the revenue is nice, hearing from readers that find your book useful is even better. In this regard, I’m excited to blog about the following new five-star review of my book Encoding by the Numbers. What I tried to do in Encoding by the Numbers was to tie all configuration decisions to …

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December, 2019

• 23 December

  Open and Closed GOPs – All You Need to Know

  

  This article defines open and closed GOPs, identifies why closed GOPs are better, and details how to produce closed GOPs in FFmpeg with x264 and x265. The level of testing and analysis detailed here is consistent with the instruction in my book, Learn to Produce Videos with FFmpeg In 30 Minutes or Less ($34.95), and my course, FFmpeg for Adaptive …

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• 19 December

  NETINT Transcoder Tops in Subjective HEVC Benchmark Comparison

  

  On September 11, 2019, Streaming Media Magazine published an article entitled Hardware-Based Transcoding Solutions Roundup: Testing Performance, that compared various H.264 and HEVC encoders using objective and subjective testing. The HEVC encoders tested included Intel’s SVT (Scalable Video Technology)-HEVC, a software-based codec; NGCodec’s FPGA-based HEVC encoder (now owned by Xilinx) and x265 using the medium and veryfast presets. After the …

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• 18 December

  When and How to Use Objective Quality Metrics

  

  Recently, video quality metrics have gotten a lot of hate, primarily from codec vendors. For example, yesterday on LinkedIn, respected Beamr CTO Dror Gill wrote, “everyone agrees that subjective (human) testing is the only accurate way to measure true perceptual quality.” After I pointed out industry support for using video quality metrics, Gill graciously changed this to “everyone agrees that …

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• 16 December

  Reports Show HEVC Usage on the Rise

  

  I know Thanksgiving was a couple of weeks ago, but as we close out the year, I want to say thank you to the three suppliers of codec-related usage data—Bitmovin, Encoding.com, and LiveU—and summarize the data they supplied us in 2019. This will put the stamp on what we know this year and set the stage for 2020. I’ll discuss …

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• 11 December

  Fine-Tune Your Encoding With Objective Quality Metrics – Video and Handout

  

  My Streaming Media session on using video quality metrics is now available for replay immediately below. You can download the handout here. Here’s the session description. T101. HOW-TO: Fine-Tuning Your Encoding With Objective Quality Metrics Tuesday, November 19: 10:30 a.m. – 11:15 a.m. Choosing the number of streams in an adaptive group and configuring them is usually a subjective, touchy-feely …

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• 10 December

  Buy Moscow State University Video Quality Measurement Tool; Get Video Quality Metrics Course for Free

  

  The Moscow State University Video Quality Measurement Tool has long been my go-to desktop tool for computing video quality metric scores. When I created my course on Video Quality Metrics, I included six lessons on using the tool. Here’s a brief video that shows operation and the new features in Version 12.  Lessons in the tutorial cover operations like …

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• 4 December

  My Three Favorite Features in MSU VQMT Version 12

  

  Moscow State University’s Video Quality Measurement Tool (VQMT, $999 with volume discounts available) is my go-to desktop tool for computing metrics like VMAF, PSNR, and SSIM. The program is easy to use, has great visualization tools, and lets me inspect videos on a frame-by-frame basis. MSU recently released version 12 which has three great enhancements.This article covers these plus this …

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