As we transition from H.264 to VP9, HEVC, AV1, and soon VVC (Versatile Video Coding), it’s important to understand the fundamentals of codec comparisons and how to evaluate their effectiveness and utility. In this expanded column I’ll cover both. Evaluating the Evaluation Let’s begin with how to evaluate the evaluation. I start by identifying the evaluator and its affiliations, giving …

Lots going on in the codec world, lots to analyze. But for the most part in this article, I’m going to let the pictures do the talking. New HEVC Codec Leaders Emerge I’m a big fan of Moscow State University tools and reports. Unlike many codec analysts, MSU asks the codec vendors to suggest the settings used for the encodes, …

Number of hours of streaming required to recoup 60-minute encoding cost.  Author’s note: The author would like to acknowledge the shocking fact that he is not perfect and that this lack of perfection often reveals itself, quite embarrassingly, in spreadsheet-intensive articles. I did the best I could and checked every number and assumption multiple times, but if something doesn’t look right, …

This is the fourth article in a series on saving encoding and delivery costs. The first three articles are: Saving on Encoding and Delivery: Dynamic Packaging Saving on Encoding and Streaming: Deploy Capped CRF Saving on Encoding: Adjust Encoding Configuration to Increase Capacity Cloud encoding is a great alternative for producers who don’t want to invest CAPX for their own …

The launch of FFmpeg 4.0 gave many compressionists their first chance to test the new AV1 codec, which is included in experimental form. For the first time, you had a single encoder that could produce all relevant codecs: H.264 with the x264 codec, HEVC with the x265 codec, VP9 using the Google Libvpx-vp9 codec, and AV1 using the LibAOM codec. …

There are two mostly vestigial problems that I didn’t address in Learn to Produce Video with FFmpeg in 30 Minutes or Less because so few people encounter them. These are deinterlacing and aspect ratio mismatches. Now I’m writing a textbook with a greater scope, so I had to learn how to deal with both in FFmpeg. These will make it …

This is the second in a five-part series on how to cut your encoding and streaming costs. The first article was Saving on Encoding: Adjust Encoding Configuration to Increase Capacity. Article summary: Capped CRF encoding is a single-pass encoding method that can save encoding costs compared to two-pass VBR. Capped CRF is also a simple per-title encoding method that can reduce …

This is the first of five articles on how to cut your encoding and streaming costs. [dt_quote type=”pullquote” layout=”left” font_size=”big” animation=”none” size=”1″]This article discusses how you can cut x264 encoding costs by 73% without noticeable quality degradation and triple your x265 capacity while actually improving real world video quality. [/dt_quote] A key focus of my book Video Encoding by the Numbers …

Most of the x264 commands that I use in FFmeg are simple and well documented. Today, I had to duplicate a Handbrake preset that included some obscure x264-specific configuration options like the following: cabac=0:aq-mode=3:slices=24:direct=auto:subme=8:trellis=1:deblock=-2,-1:me=umh Cabac, I got, but most of the rest I use the default setting for the selected preset. Since Handbrake was displaying x264 commands which are different …

The internet is full of free FFmpeg documentation. Why should you pay $34.95 for my book (or $29.95 for the PDF)? Because it will help you get your work done fast and get it right the first time. This book eliminates the time you’d spend hunting for answers on Superuser or Stack Overflow and teaches you to make informed encoding decisions …