Wildcards let you to encode and package multiple files using a single script. This article teaches you how to create and run bash scripts that use wildcards on Ubuntu and the Mac. The overall schema discussed can create a simple and inexpensive per-title encoding facility. Whenever I test codecs or encoders, I customize the encoding…
A previous blog post entitled Compute VMAF Using FFmpeg on Windows covered this same topic but with a version of FFmpeg compiled by my colleague Abharana (Abi) Bhat, Ph.D., who is the Video Architect, Video Quality at DAZN, the London-based OTT subscription sports streaming service. Now the standard Windows FFmpeg download from Gyan.dev includes VMAF; all…
My wife was watching a webinar for CME and there were two physicians with such picture perfect presentation that I just had to snap the image and comment. The list of what these two did right is lengthy and instructive. Both practiced perfect rule-of-thirds positioning, with their eyes about 1/3 down from the top of the…
This article details how Brazilian OTT operator Telecine deployed MediaMelon SmartPlay and decreased bandwidth costs by about 42% while improving the MOS quality of the video delivered. SmartPlay also helped Telecine manage the 4X increase in demand due to COVID-19. This is the third and final story about MediaMelon SmartPlay. The first article describes how…
I recently recorded about ten interviews for a webinar produced by a client. I could have used Zoom or Skype but thought that I could achieve better quality by producing the videos with vMix Call. Briefly, vMix is a live streaming software package and Call is the feature that lets you connect with others via…
There are many quality metrics that use a variety of scoring mechanisms. One of the most frequently used metrics for subjective testing is called Mean Opinion Score, or MOS. The MOS rating is on a scale from 1-5 as shown below (from Wikipedia). You can use a variety of techniques to compute MOS, but typically…
Would you design a SmartTV that couldn’t play UHD videos from YouTube? Me neither and designers from LG and Samsung apparently agree. I was researching codec support among smart TVs for upcoming training sessions at Streaming Media East and noticed that the 2020 version of the Samsung SmartTV supports AV1 decode. A quick search found an…
Here are descriptions of the two courses I’ll be teaching in a few days on streaming media production. Streaming Media East will be held online, with five 3-hour pre-conference training sessions that cost $199 each and a robust assortment of free 1-hour sessions. Here are the titles, dates, and times of the pre-conference sessions I’ll…
I created Streaming Media 101: Technical Onboarding for Streaming Media Professionals because there were few formal training resources for those producing streaming video or the tools and services that enable streaming media production and distribution. My goal was a course that would efficiently provide streaming media training to professionals on both sides of that fence…
Streaming media production and delivery has become even more critical over the last few months; here’s an opportunity to boost your skills and knowledge via live online training by recognized industry experts. I’m sad that Streaming Media East won’t be held in Boston as planned; I really enjoy those shows. However, Streaming Media East will…